« Google Knol Launches. Sort of. | Blogs: You’re Doing It Wrong »
Paid Search Marketing (also known as Pay-Per-Click & PPC) should never be cut out of your marketing budget, even during an economic recession. Your pay per click campaigns, if created, monitored, and managed correctly, should always be profitable for you and your company.
Traditional marketing (appealing to a mass audience) is no longer the most cost-efficient way to obtain/increase leads and sales for your company, especially during difficult economic times. When using these channels of marketing - such as television, radio, newspaper, and magazines - businesses are advertising towards a mass audience, the majority of which may not even be interested in your product or service.
PPC has many benefits that other traditional forms of advertising do not:
1. PPC connects you to interested consumers. Paid search marketing connects your marketing message right to an audience that is eagerly searching for your product or service. Search engines then connect you to the consumer.
2. PPC allows you to weed out consumers who are not interested in your products and services. With several tools such as ad scheduling, geo-targeting and negative keywords, you can choose when, where and to whom your ad shows up to. If your business is solely interested in sales, use negative keywords to weed out consumers using the Internet for research ("what is," "define," "free," "information on," etc).
3. PPC allows you to easily track your campaign’s performance. Conversion tracking shows you exactly where a sale/lead comes from. Unlike traditional marketing, PPC uses conversion tracking, which enables you to see the exact keyword searched that led to a sale or lead for your company. From the opposite spectrum, conversion tracking allows you to see what keywords you are "wasting" your money on. Conversion tracking gives you the ability to also calculate the exact revenue or profit down to the keyword level.
4. PPC is generally much cheaper than traditional forms of advertising. With paid search, you are only charged when someone clicks on your advertisement. In addition, the cost tends to be much cheaper compared to traditional marketing. Therefore, consider cutting your company’s budget in traditional forms of advertising, not pay-per-click marketing.
I hope the following reasons provided above will make you think twice when considering cutting your paid search marketing budget. The bottom line is that paid search marketing is a very cost-efficient way to bring in leads and sales to your business, which can easily be targeted and tracked to your target market. With this being said, it is very important that whoever is in charge of your PPC campaign constantly monitors and manages your account.
About the Author: Joe CastroJoe Castro is a Senior Account Executive at Fathom and a departmental priority team lead. He works with many partners, covering everything from home improvement and higher education to e-commerce and technology. He is a Google Adwords Certified Professional.
