When Should You Start A Ppc Campaign?

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Pay per Click is a form of paid online advertising that, in most instances such as in Google Adwords, provides advertisers the ability to bid for ad space on the first page of Search Engine Page Results (SERPs). The chief advantages for the advertiser are:

1. The ads are keyword-based. This means that your ads will only appear if the searcher has entered a keyword search that matches the keyword you have a successful bid for. In addition, there is no cost for the display of the ad; you only pay when the ad is actually clicked.

2. You can control your budget by limiting the number of dollars per day you are willing to spend.

3. All clicks can be tracked and monitored to provide a treasure trove of useful information to fine tune and further improve the performance of the ad campaign.

4. The ads can be displayed immediately and on the first page (the most viewed) of the search results. This is in contrast to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that focuses on organic results that, depending on the keyword, can take from weeks to months to years to reach page 1 visibility and only if the techniques ...
... and processes employed successfully “outpoint” your competitors.

5. Always knowing to the penny exactly what your cost and your Return on Investment (ROI) is.

So, exactly when should you start a PPC campaign? There can never be a blanket answer; however, if you are selling or promoting products and services online and you are not dominant (page 1) in the organic rankings, PPC is a good place to start. So, if you aren’t on page 1 as you read this … get started with PPC … it’s that simple.

However, if your goals are not short term and you have a 6-12 month time horizon to achieve significant visibility leading to measurable business results, Optimum7 recommends SEO as the best long term solution. The reasons are many. The most important ones are (1) Organic clicks are free so getting to page 1 has some real “economy of scale,” (2) 85% of all Google searches do NOT result in a paid click … so it would follow that at least 85% of your Search Engine Marketing
Budget should be directed towards SEO.

There are many clients that come to Optimum7 that are looking for long term results but also want to see online success quickly. By this description, the correct prescription is the execution of a broad strategy that involves the simultaneous implementation of PPC and SEO strategies in tandem. This will get the ball rolling for SEO to achieve long term online marketing objectives while at the same time providing immediate visibility over the short to intermediate term. This strategy has the further advantage of providing analytics data that serves to aid the SEO process mainly in the area of prioritizing keyword strategy based upon online behavior. In addition, over time, as organic SEO results gain significance, PPC budgets can be trimmed and targeted to be in harmony with the overall objectives and budget.

Large Companies with large name brands have additional considerations that make PPC important all of the time. Online branding is no different than offline branding … it’s continuous and is based on coverage and notoriety. For this reason, PPC is a part of the continuous effort of any name-branding strategy. These strategies seek to found multiple times on page 1 of all of the search engines for a broad cross-section of keyword searches. Clearly, success as measured in ROI is based on a much longer time span … measured in years.

PPC campaigns are main stream for internet marketing strategies seeking maximum visibility, immediate leads and business activity and long term name branding strategies.

Are you ready to start your own PPC campaign? Still have questions? Just contact us for a no-obligation initial consultation.