I have been speaking with a number of small businesses lately. It seems that we have taken on the task of getting little companies in competition with global companies, expanding their reach to anyone with a computer. One of the common denominators that seems to rear its ugly head in each conversation is the huge amounts of money being poured into pay-per-click (PPC) or paid search campaigns by these smaller companies.
Granted I have often said that a PPC campaign is a great idea for some, and it can increase traffic and sales, but if you are trying to capture those people using search for buying, PPC is not the best way to be spending your advertising dollar. I recently spoke to a prospective client regarding their online marketing campaign. The conversation revealed that they were spending nearly 100% of their advertising budget on PPC. My next question was obvious, asking the amount of their budget. Not everyone is interested in responding to that question, and in fact I don’t expect that I have ever been given the entire truth when given a response. Actually whether the answer is proprietary, or an open book, my response is the same.
"After 3-6 months, how would you like to be putting your advertising budget you have been using in PPC and put it in the income column of your balance sheet?"
This statement is usually followed by a moment of silence and then some chuckle and they ask me if I’m asking them to buy oceanfront property in Arizona.
According to a recent study reported by eMarketer.com:
The fact that marketers use PPC was clear from the survey. In fact, with 44% of e-commerce executives surveyed saying they allocate 20% of their entire advertising budgets to PPC search ads, it constitutes a significant portion of online marketing budgets.
They agree on where to spend PPC ad dollars, too. Of the marketers who invest in PPC campaigns:
- 100% use Google
- 90% use Yahoo!
- 76% use MSN
- 27% use Ask.com
The problem is that 40% of the respondents reported that they manage more than 5,000 keywords. To accomplish the task, 59% manage internally, 18% outsource and 24% use a combination of internal and outsourced solutions.
I’m not afraid to tell prospective clients about my PPC campaign and my SEM campaign budget. It has always been $0.00, and chances are unless I change philosophy, it will remain such. I do tell people that they should continue with their search engine marketing (SEM) and PPC efforts, as long as they are in good hands, but when the pool is full of water, it’s time to jump in and make a splash in organic search. I have yet to find any campaign other than blog marketing that has been as successful in the organic search arena. I would put a blog marketing campaign up against any other SEM campaign and bet the farm that I would win in the organic search race. Think about your SEM campaign and the money you are spending, now put that money in your pocket every month and contact me about a blog campaign replacing your SEM philosophy.
Tags: blog marketing, PPC, SEO, SEM, online marketing, advertising, Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask.com, organic search, paid search
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Thanks, Jim.
I think the bigger problem, beyond what you address, is that people separate SEO and paid search too easily.
I’d absolutely agree to start investing resources with SEO, especially at first. Anywhere from 60% to 85% of search clicks go to natural results.
Paid search has a great place though. You can perfectly control your message, you can clearly measure ROI (if you take the time to do so and know what a customer’s worth), and you can turn the campaign on or off on the fly.
As for blogging replacing PPC, I think blogging should just be considered part of the SEO strategy (and in some cases, it can definitely be a huge part of it – though I’d hardly say all of it).
Just a few thoughts. Thanks for your feedback – it’s always good hearing from you.
David