What you will learn: How to evaluate the potential for PPC in your company.
Who should read this article: Company and marketing leadership.
PPC is widely used by small and midsize companies to generate leads and online sales revenue. It’s not hard to understand its appeal:
- PPC taps into the enormous Google and Bing search engine volume, which exceeds 18 billion search queries per month.
- PPC allows companies to get immediate and prominent search engine visibility, rather than waiting months or years for SEO campaigns to kick in.
- PPC can be turned on and off, up or down, at a moment’s notice, giving a company tremendous flexibility in managing budgets and making adjustments for good or bad results.
- PPC — when managed professionally — can be continuously improved, sometimes dramatically, to increase click-through rates and reduce cost per lead.
- Branded PPC campaigns (i.e., campaigns that target a company’s branded keywords) prevent competitors from getting leads with searches for those branded keywords, and improves brand visibility and credibility in the process.
However, there are situations when PPC is not an advisable Internet marketing strategy:
- When a company faces stiff competition from big competitors with big budgets, and doesn’t have an adequate budget to support a viable campaign.
- When the company is in a niche that doesn’t have enough search volume for its strategic keywords, and as a result can never achieve a critical mass of click-throughs and conversions.
- When the company has a limited budget and other Internet marketing options that figure to produce more conversions at the same or lower cost per conversion.
When analyzing the potential for PPC, you will find it helpful to start with the big picture — in particular, by assessing keyword volume, the competition’s PPC campaigns and your potential budget.
An ideal situation from a strategic point of view: High volume for keywords highly relevant to your products/services, moderate or weak competition, and a budget able to support a campaign of $2,000 or more per month for at least six months.
Even if these strategic variables don’t add up perfectly, PPC may still be a good fit once you take a closer, tactical look at the facts. For instance, if you face strong competition, there may be a number of under-the-radar, lower-volume keywords with very high conversion potential. Or, if you have a high-priced product/service, a small number of conversions may generate plenty of ROI to offset a situation where overall keyword volume is low.
As you can see, there is a lot to consider. If you need help sorting through the facts, let us know! We will be happy to take a look at your strategic and tactical situation — and make a recommendation.