Many companies hear pay-per-click (PPC) marketing and the budget obsessed mentality hits. In such an up-and-down economy, every company is trying to cut costs, so the idea of having to pay every time someone clicks onto your website seems less than appealing. After all, there is no guarantee that the person doing the clicking will buy anything from your company (but there is a guarantee that you’ll have to pay for their clicks). For this reason, many companies turn to search engine optimization (SEO) and leave PPC on the back burner. While SEO is extremely important, pushing PPC marketing aside is not the answer to your budget woes or lead generation aspirations.
In the long run, SEO probably costs just as much as PPC. Improving your company’s SEO efforts is extremely time consuming, and in many cases you need to hire an SEO professional or writer to manage your company’s SEO efforts. In other words, a new staff member plus a lot of time needed equals you having to pay.
In short, don’t expect to get your marketing needs met for free. Spend a lot of time on SEO, but also add pay per click marketing to the mix. Consider a few of the reasons PPC marketing is worth your while:
You will be able to easily track your keyword research efforts.
It can take months to see any kind of results when it comes to SEO, but PPC marketing yields results fast. Your company will be able to determine which keywords equal the most profitable results by simply looking at the results of the PPC ads. This is also a great way to test out similar keywords. Once you know which is more popular when it comes to your audience, you will be able to improve your SEO efforts. It’s quick, easy, and accurate.
PPC advertising helps to keep things fair amongst all companies.
Small companies (startup companies in particular) have a difficult time getting to the top of that Google search engine page because SEO efforts take so long. However, PPC marketing can bring that company up to the top just as it would any major corporation. Although you will have to pay for the advertisement, which does create a bit of competition, you will be surprised to find that there are certain keywords available with lots of open spaces for your ads.
You will be able to count on your PPC efforts and advertisements.
SEO results are less than reliable because they are constantly changing. PPC, on the other hand, is very constant. All you have to do is pay for the ad and then watch it show up at the top of a Google search engine page. If your SEO efforts fail, you’ll be able to count on your PPC campaign to get you the results you were hoping for in the first place.
You can set the budget of your PPC campaigns.
If you’re afraid that PPC will be too expensive, don’t sweat it. You can set your own budget when it comes to this type of advertising because you bid on a spot. Set out a certain budget for PPC campaigns, and then decide whether you want to aggressively target one or two keywords or divide the money up amongst many keywords. The price is entirely up to you.
PPC campaigns will give you instant gratification.
Not only are PPC campaigns reliable and track able, but they’re also immediate. If you decide that you really want to drive traffic to a product webpage, put out a PPC ad and you will see results almost immediately. This works well if you notice a competitor is going out of business, you have a large payment coming up in the coming weeks, or you want to show an investor that you have large numbers coming in to your site.
Getting starting with PPC marketing is actually quite simple. Decide your search engine (Google isn’t the only one available!), choose your keywords, bid on a space, and watch the number of clicks rise. For more PPC information or to work with a company, consider our sister company HigherVisbility’s PPC services here.
Of course, these aren’t the only reasons that SEO should be mixed in with a PPC strategy. Let us know what works for your or what reasons you would add to the list in the comment section below.