As you launch your startup and gear up for the first year of business, you're no doubt feeling a little overwhelmed by everything you've got to take care over for the next few months.

Since winning over legions of new customers with your beautifully designed website is a top priority, digital marketing will no doubt pop up somewhere on your ever-growing to-do list.

But it's probably a task you're also dreading.

Because although you know it's important to build your online presence, it's all so damn confusing - and it's tempting to keep putting it off just a little bit longer.

Digital marketing jargon

You're not the only one who's left utterly baffled by the jargon and acronym-filled world of digital marketing.

Search engine optimisation (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC), search engine marketing (SEM), sponsored placements, influencer outreach, Google AdWords - there are so many different elements involved, it can be hard to keep up.

What's important and what's not? That's the key question you need to answer.

So to give you a helping hand, we're going to clear up one key element we think you can and should be getting on with ASAP - PPC.

What is PPC?

PPC, or pay-per-click, is a technique for using advertising to generate clicks to your website rather than earning them organically.

It normally means using Google AdWords, one of the world's biggest PPC advertising services, to target ads against specific keywords related to your business offering.

Paid search is one of the most popular forms of PPC, and basically means you get your ad boosted to the top of sponsored results when someone searches using your chosen keywords.

You can also place an ad on the Google Display Network, a massive platform consisting of YouTube, blogs and websites.

Whether you go for search or display (or both), you'll pay a fee each time someone clicks on your ad.

Why is it important?

So what's all the fuss about? Why is PPC so important?

In short, it's a great way of reaching more customers and driving more traffic to your website.

Which, in turn, hopefully boosts your sales.

And it's also very flexible.

With Google AdWords and Analytics offering plenty of reporting and feedback, you can quickly identify what campaigns are working and what ones aren't performing so well.

Meaning you can reshuffle your keywords, targets and placements until you get results you're happy with.

How do I get started?

In fact, therein lies the biggest difficulty with PPC. Setting up might be (relatively) simple once you've mastered the basics, but managing campaigns to achieve maximum exposure and results isn't so easy.

Keyword researching, organising campaigns, optimising landing pages - there's a lot of work involved.

If you're starting totally from scratch and don't fancy spending months studying at your computer, then it's worthwhile hiring an external digital marketing firm to take care of your PPC (it also means you can tick one more thing of your to-do list).

Of course, there's also always the trial and error approach - start experimenting with PPC yourself.

You'll learn as you go and have total control over how your business's digital marketing plan shapes up.