How Long Does It Take for PPC to Work?

PPC (pay-per-click) advertising is often considered the fastest solution in the digital marketing “toolkit” for driving traffic, generating leads, and making sales for your business.   

And while PPC advertising generates impressions and clicks faster than SEO (search engine optimization), PPC doesn’t give you instant results like form fills and sales conversions. 

Just like any digital marketing strategy, buying traffic through PPC ads takes planning, patience, and monitoring.  

Meaningful results don’t happen overnight. 

So, how long does it take for PPC to work? Let’s look at an overview of a typical PPC timeline, the main factors that influence how long it takes, and strategies to speed up the process.

How Long PPC Takes: What a Typical Timeline Looks Like

To answer the question of how long it takes for PPC to work, it’s important to define what we’re talking about in terms of results. 

Yes, PPC advertising can bring in impressions and clicks right away. Sometimes you can even get lucky with a few sales and leads in the first few days and weeks.  

But fine-tuning your campaign to bring in consistent, cost-efficient, and high-quality results takes time. Getting all aspects of the campaign working together can take between 3 and 9 months. 

Here’s a quick overview of how this process can play out over a 9-month timeline.

Months 1-3: Gather Data and Make Early Adjustments

You can’t optimize a PPC campaign without data. So, the first stage of the campaign is getting enough relevant traffic to gather data for campaign optimization and expansion. 

As soon as you have enough data to start noticing trends, you can begin to refine your campaign to increase its visibility and performance. For example: 

• In a search ad campaign, adjust your keywords to ensure your ads show up for relevant searches. You can also add negative keywords to keep your ads from showing up for search queries that aren’t related or swap out headlines and descriptions that aren’t getting impressions. 
• In a display ad campaign, pause underperforming ad creatives or exclude publisher placements that aren’t relevant to your ad or aren’t generating results. 
• In a social media ad campaign, pause ads that are underperforming so more of your budget is spent on what works. You can also pause ad placements if they aren’t generating results or adjust your audience targeting.

With these early optimizations, your PPC traffic quality, conversion rate, and return on investment will improve. But to truly bring your PPC campaign results to the next level, there is still more work to do.

Months 3-6: Build on What Works

Once you have an idea of what’s working, you can start experimenting with new options that iterate on your current strategy.  

Having some confidence in what’s going to drive clicks, leads, and sales can also allow you to increase your budget. Spending more on ad groups that are already bringing results can boost your results while also bringing in even more valuable data. 

This is also the time when you have clarity on what’s not working, which may include entire advertising platforms. For example, if you started out with a combination of search ads and social media ads and only one channel is working, you should have enough data by now to decide whether to stop one channel altogether and focus on the one that is working. 

Lastly, at this stage in your campaign, focus on your landing page’s quality and performance, especially if your ads are still underperforming. Be sure to pay attention not only to the technical performance (like load times and mobile responsiveness) of your landing pages but also to the relevance of its messaging to your ads.

Months 6-9: Remarket and Optimize

Now that we have collected a wealth of data and know what works, it’s time to start remarketing to track down lost leads and potential customers that need a little push. 

Remarketing can also help to boost brand awareness and increase conversions. 

At this point, you may need to refresh your ads with new imagery, headlines, or descriptive copy. Eventually, your audience will grow tired of the same old ads, especially if you’re dealing with a smaller audience.  

Keep an eye on your social media and display ad frequency. You want to get in front of your customers, but you don’t want to overwhelm them with ads.

Why Aren’t PPC Ads Always an Overnight Success?

In order to be successful at PPC advertising, regularly monitoring and optimizing campaigns based on real, statistically relevant data is imperative. 

Although PPC advertising can sometimes generate fast results, getting consistent, cost-efficient, and high-quality results is a long-term process. 

 
You need to collect enough data to make smart decisions on which messages, imagery, keywords, and/or targeting strategies will work best. That takes time, especially if your budget can only buy you so many impressions and clicks per day.

How to Speed Up Your PPC Advertising Success

While there’s no ‘magic bullet’ that leads to overnight PPC advertising success, there are a few factors you should be aware of that may give you an edge. 

1. Send clicks to an awesome landing page. Having a great landing page waiting for your visitors when they click through from your ad is crucial. Clicks become sales when they land on a well-designed, incredibly relevant landing page that fulfills the promise of your ads. 
2. Start by building a great brand. Having a well-established product or website page with lots of organic traffic and a high conversion rate will greatly influence your PPC advertising success. It takes time for new businesses to build brand awareness and domain authority online, so expect PPC advertising to take longer as well if you are a new business. 
3. Make ads just one part of your digital marketing mix. The more trustworthy your brand and website are, the easier it will be to establish a foothold in PPC advertising. Using SEO, social media marketing, and email marketing in addition to PPC advertising will boost your brand awareness and produce the best results. 
4. Constantly monitor, manage, and optimize your campaigns. It is clear from the timeline above that PPC advertising is an ongoing process. Only by continuously improving your ad setup will you be able to ramp up its visibility, cost-efficiency, and overall success.
5. Choose the best objective/goal for your campaign. There are many different ways to get value out of ads: you can build awareness of your business, get more website traffic, sell more products, and more. Think about what exactly you want to achieve and choose a campaign objective/goal that fits! For example, if you want to reach new customers and start building a relationship, choose Reach or Impressions as your goal rather than Conversions.
6. Make sure your ads fit your buyer journey. Someone who already knows and loves your business won’t hesitate to click an ad that says, “Buy Now!” But someone who only just heard of you will probably need more convincing ‒ they don’t know who you are or how you can help them yet! Think about your buyer’s journey and adjust your ads accordingly.
   

PPC advertising is one of the most cost-effective ways to generate qualified traffic, leads, and sales online. For small businesses, using PPC campaigns can be their “big break” and a cost-effective way to get in front of potential customers who may have never heard or thought of them.  

Success doesn’t happen overnight, but the right team with the right expertise can dramatically speed up your success rate and save you money in the process. 

Looking for PPC advertising advice from digital marketing pros? Reach out to our team if you need help getting started!