Pay-per-click marketing has been one of the most effective marketing strategies for driving conversions and increasing sales. However, some experts say that not all businesses will benefit from pay-per-click advertising. In fact, they added that some businesses should avoid it.
This advertising strategy has become popular because of the reported amazing return on investment which is 300 percent or even higher. That is when it works well for your business. How will you know if pay-per-click marketing is right for your business?
When is PPC Marketing Beneficial for a Business?
Understanding how PPC marketing works is essential so you can decide whether it’s a good strategy to use in advertising. By understanding how it works, you will know if you have a better chance of making a profit and being successful with the campaign. Here is how PPC marketing can work for you:
- It Will Work if You are a Direct-Response Marketer or an Online Retailer
If you are a direct-response marketer, your marketing sends messages directly to your consumers usually to ask them to take a specific call-to-action such as:
- Call a free phone number
- Fill out a request for more information
- Purchase a product online
Examples of businesses that make use of direct marketing include software companies, newspapers and magazines, sellers of information products, and online retailers.
Google ads are a critical part of reaching your revenue goals if you are an online retailer. A robust PPC marketing strategy will help you promote your goods to shoppers online. A huge component of succeeding in retail is being able to effectively advertise on Google using the Search Network, as well as Shopping Ads.
With well-crafted compelling ads, direct-response marketers and online retailers can receive more clicks and hopefully conversions and get their ads placed in the top spots of Search Engine Results Pages.
With pay-per-click marketing, you can access performance statistics like click-through rate, conversion rate, coverage, and more. This will help you target weak points in your campaign and determine better marketing strategies in your campaign.
- It Will Work if You Are a Brand Advertiser
A brand advertiser’s goal is to build a psychological construct or the “brand image” in the minds of their target audience. This is to influence offline or future purchasing behavior. If you belong to this spectrum, you can use pay-per-click marketing as a tool to help increase the significant value that accumulates with brand imaging.
The performance statistics you get from PPC marketing will measure the exposure and perception of the brand in the mind of your target consumers such as:
- Brand awareness
- Brand recognition
- Top-of-mind awareness
These are measured through the share of voice (SOV), which offers an easy way to determine if your ads are being seen more or less frequently than that of your direct competitors.
Here are the incredible advantages of paid search through pay-per-click marketing for brand advertisers:
- Cheaper compared to the seven- and eight-figure advertising budgets for other forms of traditional media like TV or radio commercials.
- Targets specific audiences that have user intent and are actively searching for something either weakly or strongly associated with your brand like:
- Information about your product (ingredients and the like)
- Promotions (coupons, discounts, sale, etc.)
- The deeper but less obvious association
- Unprecedented control over the ad message which allows adjusting or variations to the ad copy based on searcher intent, geography, culture, and so on.
Why PPC Marketing May Not Work For Your Business
The six primary reasons why PPC marketing campaigns may not work for you are:
- If you are unwilling or unable to manage your PPC campaigns properly
- Lack of tracking where you won’t be able to figure out which keyword buys are working and which are not
- If your conversion rate is too low and your profit margin cannot absorb all the other visitors who didn’t buy from you
- Your target customers aren’t looking on the search engines for the types of products you sell
- Your products or services require a high-touch sales process to sell successfully
- Bid prices are so high that you are priced out of the market, especially with high-cost consumer services.
Pay-per-click Marketing: Yes or No?
Pay-per-click marketing can be highly competitive, especially those on major search engines. Consider the ways it can work for you or may not work for you so that you will not waste money, time, and effort. You should be able to identify if it will be the most effective strategy before signing up for it.