Ads that appear in search results are targeted to meet a specific audience and often earn almost half of all page clicks. Users who click on paid ads are usually ready to make a decision and therefore more likely to buy a product or service by comparison to an organic visitor. With PPC ads, your ads are targeted for the online users searching for your type of business. This can make a significant impact on your bottom line.

The cost of running a PPC ad campaign varies. Different cost factors include your industry type, business type and business size. These will influence the pricing of your PPC ad campaign. Pricing can also be affected by the type of strategy you're rolling out. However, expect to spend up to $5,000 per month for a small-to-medium company. This price includes both your ad spend and professional services from your chosen PPC agency.

Your PPC costs must be calculated based on your bid, your targeting and your ad quality. The amount of money you're willing to spend for a user to click on your ad is called your bid. You enter your bid into an ad auction and the highest bidder wins, so you could end up paying less than your bid amount, but never more. Targeting factors include all aspects of your goal, from the keywords you’re ranking for to the demographics of your audience. The more competitively you want to target, the higher the costs. For instance, bidding on a very competitive keyword costs more because it features a higher cost-per-click (CPC). Google also monitors the quality of your ads. If your ad quality is high, you can often maintain lower costs because Google will rank your ad ahead of competitors with low-quality ads. Understanding and accounting for all of these factors are how you determine your PPC budget.

PPC is a flexible online advertising method that lets you create a budget and adjust it at any time necessary. Most importantly, you can target your ideal audience directly, which is impossible with traditional advertising or digital marketing campaigns. The insights gleaned from the data tracked from PPC campaigns is invaluable because it gives you a better idea of your users' behavior. Your paid advertising campaigns appear ahead of all organic results in search results, helping you to instantly outrank your competitors and support your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.