It seems that small and medium-sized businesses are finally coming around to the fact that they must invest in Internet marketing if they want to stay competitive. But too many of them dedicate most or all of their resources into Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns that fail to lead to inbound sales leads and wind up costing much more than they generate.
They don’t realize that the vast majority of people usually over 75 percent ignore paid ads when they’re using search engines and click organic results instead. If an organic search listing is like having a storefront, a PPC ad is like having a vending machine to the side of it.
Why do they do it? For one, PPC campaigns require a lot less effort than properly optimizing web sites for search engines. Google Adwords has made it quite easy for businesses to run their campaigns in-house. The other main reason: People want immediate results. While PPC ads can be launched in a matter of minutes, SEO requires research, careful implementation and lots of patience. It can take weeks or months to begin seeing the effects of SEO, but, if done right, it’s well worth the wait.
That’s not to say you have to choose one or the other. We never recommend that our clients devote all their resources toward any single advertising platform, but it obviously makes sense to concentrate most on the ones that are proven to be more effective. Showing up in both the organic and the paid section is great for branding and certainly increases the odds of consumers finding their way to your web site. However, that kind of exposure can get quite expensive, especially if your PPC campaign targets highly competitive search phrases. If you’re targeting the most popular phrases, your chances of falling victim to click fraud also increase greatly.
So, if 75 percent of traffic comes from organic listings, wouldn’t it be wise to invest at least 3/4 of your Internet marketing budget toward SEO rather than PPC? While SEO may cost more at first, it’ll pay for itself over and over again if the campaign’s executed properly. And, unlike PPC and other advertising avenues, its benefits won’t disappear if you decide to cut back on spending for a little while.
