The Thomas Blog

PPC And Paid Advertising: Display vs. Search vs. Social Ad Differences

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and other forms of paid advertising have become popular — and effective — marketing tools for many manufacturing companies. 

However, if you're new to paid advertising, it's important to know that several disciplines fall underneath this umbrella. Understanding the differences and figuring out which industrial paid strategy will work best for your company isn’t always easy or straightforward. We’ll explore the advantages and disadvantages of each below.

SEO Vs. SEM Vs. PPC For Manufacturers: What’s The Difference?

The industrial manufacturing sector is constantly seeing new technological innovations and advancements as businesses compete to stay ahead of the competition and at the forefront of their industry. Similarly, digital B2B advertising and marketing practices undergo the same rapid rate of change and advancement. But with so many options and platforms available today, getting started can be daunting — especially if you're new to the industrial marketing world.

Some of the most common questions we field at Thomas involve a slew of acronyms — SEO, SEM, and PPC: What’s the difference between SEO, SEM, and PPC, and what can they do for my company?

PPC For Manufacturing: What Is Paid Search?

PPC (Pay-Per-Click advertising) is an amazing tool for reaching customers online. It acts as a pull marketing technique that brings customers to you based on their searches and it's a win-win when executed properly. Through PPC, advertisers pay only when a user clicks on their ad; these clicks increase site traffic and, ultimately, also increase the chances of converting these leads into buyers. Unlike outbound marketing, which involves pushing your message out to potential customers, PPC is inherently inbound, since it brings potential customers in.

However, there are a lot of misconceptions about what PPC is, and maybe more importantly, what PPC isn't. Let's clear some faulty understandings that should be helpful when before beginning your first PPC campaign.

Everything Manufacturers Need to Know About Paid Marketing

If you’ve been keeping up with our blog posts, you’ve been staying up to date about our marketing best practices for manufacturers.

We’ve covered a range of marketing topics:

• How to grow your business with inbound marketing
• Content marketing ideas for each stage of the marketing funnel
• Email marketing campaign best practices
• 77 percent of B2B buyers utilize search engines when sourcing new suppliers
• 61 percent of B2B industrial buyers utilize word-of-mouth referrals
• 33 percent of B2B buyers use internal company-preferred databases.

11 Ways To Make Your Industrial PPC Campaign More Effective

For manufacturing companies, getting started with pay-per-click advertising can be simple.

Seriously, Google touts that it takes "just a few minutes" to build your first ad. That means you can go from having absolutely no search engine presence at all to having your ads show on the first page of results in less time than it takes to heat up your leftovers for lunch.

7 Terms You Need To Know About PPC Marketing

Pay-per-click advertising can be a critical — and highly successful — component of your industrial marketing strategy. However, many manufacturers remain mystified by the discipline, confused by the terminology, and unsure how to measure their efforts. 

5 Ways to Boost Traffic for Under $500

A metal fabricator has big news — they’ve just completed a partnership that will allow them to offer more manufacturing services at a better quality and a lower rate. 

This is a great opportunity for distributors and future prospects, so the business does everything right — writes a blog, posts content to social media, and updates their website’s homepage with the announcement.

The traffic comes — but not at the quantity the company was hoping for. What went wrong?

Three Reasons to Hit Pause on Your PPC Campaigns

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is an effective tool among many industrial manufacturing companies looking to expand their outreach and to connect with new customers. Part of what makes this particular advertising model so popular is its ability to easily find new, potential customers who are already interested in the products or services that your company offers.

The Long (And Costly) History Of Ad Fraud

Way back in the digital dark ages of 2013 — before watches became smart, before LTE data speeds became reality, and before mobile traffic eclipsed traffic from desktops — AdWeek published an article with a provocative headline:

“Online Ad Fraudsters Are Stealing $6 Billion From Brands.”