Does Pay Per Click Advertising Work for Print Companies?

“Does PPC Actually Work for Print?”

This is a question we get often from our customers so we’re finally answering it here. When it comes to PPC, or Pay Per Click, advertising, there are a ton of “best practices” or strategies that the experts say are the secret to getting paid search to work for businesses. The problem with that is that PPC isn’t a one size fits all marketing channel for all industries and there are things that are unique to the print industry that affect how well PPC can work for the industry. 

We’ve found that many printers have tried and somewhat failed at PPC spending a lot of money with no leads or sales to show for it so it makes sense to question if it can actually work. 

Yes, PPC can and does work for print companies and we’re going to share some insight into how you can make it work for your business 

 

What Exactly Is PPC?

Even though most of you reading this probably know what PPC is, we wanted to quickly explain what it is to help better explain how it works for the print industry. 

Pay per click advertising is a model where you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. With other ad channels, you pay when someone in your target audience sees your ads but with PPC, you’ll only pay when they actually click on it. 

PPC ads can come in a variety of forms such as text ads, shopping ads, video and display ads and more. 

 

PPC Strategies for The Print Industry

Now that we’ve defined what it is, let’s dig into the good stuff which are a few real PPC strategies that work. Like we said, there isn’t a global paid strategy that works for all industries so it’s important to know what works for the print industry specifically. 

 

Focused Keyword Campaigns vs Broad or General Campaigns

There are a lot of resources out there that will tell you to bid on broad match general printing keywords. But that is where tons of ad spend can be wasted with no ROI because it will generate a lot of unqualified clicks that aren’t looking for what you’re advertising. So instead of bidding broadly  on “print companies” or “printing”, bid on product specific keywords with ads that are focused on exactly what they are searching for. 

Utilize Geotargeting or a Local PPC Approach

When it comes to printing, it can be a competitive market out there in search engines and there are companies that have successfully become national print partners for both consumers and businesses. Because of that, it’s important to focus your PPC efforts locally by either bidding on keywords in your area and/or setting your location to your geographic area. This can help increase your chances of actually showing up for people looking for print near you. 

Choose Your Product Campaigns Wisely

If you do a quick Google Search of “brochure printing”, you’ll see shopping ads which are where companies with ecommerce functionality on their print website bid on print terms and run ads that link directly to a page where someone can get their product printed right there. Unless you have an ecommerce website, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to get your ads to show let alone be clicked on for those types of products. To ensure you’re not wasting your time and money on these types of campaigns, you can do some research on your own to see what products show those types of ads and you can also use our PPC resources that are ready for you to use when you become a customer. 

 

While this is not a comprehensive list of all the pay per click strategies we know work for print companies, taking these things into consideration and applying them to your campaigns is a great place to start. 

 

We hope that after reading this you’re confident that PPC can work for your print business. If you have questions about what we’ve shared here, want to learn more or become a customer to take advantage of our PPC courses and pre-built assets, sign up below for Free.