Pay Per Click Marketing

Why we DON'T and YOU shouldn't do Pay Per Click marketing

Let's look at how search engines return search results. On the left hand side of the page are the Natural or Organic search results (this includes local business listings next to a local map) and on the right are the Adwords paid advertisements. A website gains more traffic being seen on the left side of the Google page listings than in the paid section... in fact the #1 listing in the organic listings gains at least 85% more traffic than the #1 paid listing. Of course, gaining top position in the organic results is much harder than buying your way to the top of the paid results. But the rewards of a high organic listing result in far more traffic.

There are a few things that make an Adwords PPC (pay per click) advertising campaign tough to swallow for a small business. In order to gain top position you have to outbid other sites for top position. These top bids continually fluctuate throughout the day and can result in bidding wars that raise the click rate through the roof. For good, highly sought after, keywords these PPC click fees can easily be over $1.00 a click and will deplete a marketing budget in a matter of weeks.

Most businesses hire a company to take care of their PPC marketing for them as it can be time consuming. In most cases these companies charge 15% of the budget spent on PPC. As an example, if a website generated 100 clicks at $1.00 a click, the company managing the PPC campaign would charge $15 for their management services. (15% of $100) Well, actually not $15 as there is some funny math that calculates the gross cost and you end up with a charge of 17+%. It ends up being $17 and some change.

The problem with this way of doing business is that there is no incentive for the management company to keep the click costs low. It's not that the company doing the Adwords PPC management does not deserve a cut for doing the work, but that they actually make more money if they are not careful and spend frivolously... the more money that you spend the more money they make. What is the benefit of them taking the time to find inexpensive keywords that will still drive traffic to your site? They are more likely to sign you up for high traffic and very expensive keywords so that you spend more and they make more. Setting up a PPC account is easy to do and once it is set up there is very little work needed to maintain it. PPC management companies make a lot of money for very little work.

Pay Per Click is not necessarily a bad idea. With carefully chosen long tail keywords or phrases you can pay very little money per click and pull in a targeted market. Granted, the number of clicks you get will be much lower than a high traffic keyword but your R.O.I. will be much higher. But again, a PPC management company doesn't benefit from you saving money and they certainly don't benefit from you getting less clicks, even if they are clicks from your ideal client and your target market. It is also time consuming to locate targeted phrases and research hidden words to keep click costs low for the customer.

The other major drawback with Pay Per Click is that you can burn through cash very quickly. Google is NOT cheap. You end up paying a lot of money for one click and only one click. A better marketing plan would reap the rewards of future growth for every dollar spent... pay $100 now and reap the benefits for month/years down the road for branding, search engine ranking, etc. The minute you stop shelling out cash for PPC advertisements, you fall off the face of the search engines with nothing to show for it.

I am a big fan of building a strong brand name for a business. A website that appears high on the organic search results carries a perception of being important and having clout in an industry. Everybody knows that the ads on the right hand side of Google are paid listings. The perception of these listings are that they are the sites that did not make the Google cut, the 'B' team, the JV club, and the sites that just didn't know how to hire the marketing company to get them to the top.

This is why SEO (Search Engine Optimization, Optimizing your site for optimal Search Engine visibility and ranking) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing - building site popularity) is so important. Gaining top position in organic search results can make a business a lot of money because of the high click through rate, the longevity of the marketing, and a much lower long-term cost than that of PPC. The perception of your business as being an industry player is worth gold. Would you rather spend $100 for 100 clicks or would you rather spend $100 to generate continuous traffic, increased branding, and build longer term marketing potential for your site?

Best of luck with your marketing!

Dan
2TheTopMarketing