When it comes to setting up marketing channels, owners of small and mid-sized businesses try to use traditional methods to do Internet Marketing. As Karl Ribas wrote on Search Marketing Gurus, this is not effective.
No fixed price tags
One of the traditional approaches to marketing is the idea of fixed costs. If I spend $10,000 on a billboard, I know it’s going to be there for the length of the contract, and there will be an average of “x” traffic to see that billboard.
When it comes to Pay-Per-Click marketing (PPC), this no longer holds true. The idea behind PPC is that advertisers compete against each other for placement and price. The key variables that determine these two items are:
- Quality Score (relevance of ad copy to keyword as well as relevance of landing page to keyword)
- Bid price
Advertisers compete against each other in these two areas. Just because you’re willing to spend more does not indicate you’ll be listed #1 all the time.
The Goal of “The Man” (a.k.a.: Search Engines)
While any search marketer may wish we could independently control or manipulate the Search Engines, the simple truth is we cannot. A Search Engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc) has the goal of serving up the best results for the user (person conducting a search), both in organic as well as paid search results.
To perform best in PPC marketing, the advertiser must know how to compete in quality of ad, as well as continually monitor spending. When impression and/or conversion take a sudden dip during a PPC campaign, immediate action is required by the advertiser to correct the problem and again draw the target market.
If you’re going to engage in PPC Marketing, be sure you have dedicated the resources, either time or money to hire an advertising agency, to properly manage your campaign and achieve the conversion results you’re seeking to achieve.
