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PPC Monday – Let’s Start with the Basics

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In an effort to help staffing agencies and recruiters understand the potential in the area of search engine marketing, the Haley Marketing Group is starting a new weekly series with the hope of helping recruiters understand this effective online marketing technique.

We’ve coined this series “PPC Monday” because it’s catchy and uses one of the numerous terms (pay-per-click) in the area of search engine marketing.

Let’s get started.

What Is PPC?

PPC stands for pay-per-click. It can have a variety of meanings in online advertising but essentially, it’s an online newspaper ad. Companies buy valuable real estate across millions of websites with the hopes of getting clicks back to their website or to increase brand awareness.

Literally, your ad campaign will incur costs when someone clicks on your ad result. (There are other strategies about paying by the impression instead of the click, but we won’t go there today).

What Is Search Engine Marketing? ppc-monday-search-engine-marketing

Head over to your favorite search engine (probably Google but it could be Yahoo or Bing), and type in a search for anything. Usually I like to search about golf clubs.

The top results are related to shopping on Google and are all sponsored images. That might not be relevant to staffing and recruiting, but it is valuable ad space in e-commerce.

The next result is from TGW and is a search engine marketing ad. That is a very competitive spot. Those results are straight text ads (with some adaptable) and have a lot of awesome features.

Below that result are organic search results, which are the benefits of search engine optimization. SEO is always a hot-button topic and can’t be ignored when looking at search engine marketing. We won’t be talking about it a lot in our PPC Monday blogs, but it should be a foundation of your content marketing strategy.

I’ve Heard the Term “Google AdWords.” What Does That Mean?

Remember that TGW ad at the top of my Google search for “golf clubs?” That’s a PPC ad that gets displayed when someone enters that search into Google. A number of factors come into play to determine which ad appears and in what order. Google has an algorithm and bidding model to determine the order and appearance of certain ads. In staffing, this can be a tough place to rank (at least in the top spot) because a local staffing agency wants to gain attention but a huge company (think Indeed, CareerBuilder) could come in and buy every top spot.

Those Ads That Follow You Around? That’s Remarketing!

We’ve all been there. Whether it’s for a vacation, birthday present or new patio furniture. We visit a couple of websites and then get bombarded (seemingly) with ads from that website or for that product during the following days and weeks. It actually happened for me on Wednesday night when looking for a pair of sneakers. I was on one website looking at sneakers and less than 15 minutes later, I was a totally separate website and saw an ad for those sneakers.

Remarketing is a very effective PPC strategy that shows online ads to people in that capacity. We visit a website and later on we see ads for that exact product or service. It’s the perfect strategy to create brand awareness and to always be present. When someone has a need for your business, you are right there.

Don’t Forget About Social Media Advertising

While social media advertising (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn), isn’t officially search engine marketing, it is a valuable part of the PPC arena, especially for staffing agencies and recruiters in specific industries. Facebook advertising provides one of the best, if not the best, return on investment in terms of a PPC strategy. Twitter and LinkedIn have their uses as well but we haven’t seen as much success in terms of ROI with those social media outlets.

Next Time on PPC Monday

We’ll dig a little deeper into PPC advertising vs. search engine advertising. When is each one effective and how it can fit the goals and strategies of a staffing agency?

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