Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

First off... If you're getting all the hits you need WITHOUT PPC, why pay for it?

Secondly... Your positioning in search results is directly related to the number of hits your site gets and not necessarily a function of an exact match to the search term. i.e. if Amazon sells "roasted coffee", it will show up in the first few listings regardless, because of all the traffic to the site.

If this doesn't answer your question, please clarify further.

Traffic is nice. Conversion/sales is what you ultimately want, though. So if you're getting conversion/sales numbers that you're satisfied with, then no need for PPC. But if you're not, then either improve the website to better appeal to those who do want to spend money on your website or use PPC to do it.

The specific term you used was "hits". If you mean unique visits and/or visits then you might be in good shape. If you really mean hits, then your stats may not be that acceptable.

One visit to a site by one person may incur 1000 hits. A hit is anytime your browser downloads a element necessary to present a web page - like an image, a script, or some other code. So if one person viewed 20 pages with 50 elements each = 1000 hits yet only one potential customer.

So, assuming your organic traffic is visits and not hits, its great to receive all that free traffic. Another part of the equation is if you're converting this traffic into sales. Organic traffic is fine if it is really from your target market. You sell "red rocks" but a person searching for "Red Rocks" State Park isn't valuable organic traffic.

More traffic from a PPC campaign isn't valuable if people visit your site but you don't make sales (or other desired action). More traffic may be valuable if the are your target market.

But organically ranking for your URL keywords isn't the only game in town. There (may be) are many other keyword phrases (KWP) that would lead persons to your site but your sites don't organically rank to be on the first page or two, yet if a prospect visited your site, they too could equate to more sales. That is where PPC can be effective.

Other less popular uses for PPC are:
- expanded brand awareness advertising of your site / products / services
- even with highly ranked KWP - you typically don't run PPC ads but you could to have 2 places where the searcher sees your product - organically and paid ad

Say you organically rank for the KWP of "new car", however someone searches for "shiny new car" or new red car". You organically appear on page 4 for those KWP but you could make sales to those searchers too.

So - a PPC campaign is very useful for non-core KWP and not doing a PPC campaign can leave money on the table - providing it creates a favorable ROI. A PPC campaign can also expand your reach to other geographic target markets areas such as European countries or Japan where your URL is not likely to rank against local URLs

PPC campaign are also useful for performing rapid, "low-cost" advertising research. You can test KWP and ads and within days zero in on what works and what doesn't. No use wasting $1000s on magazine ads over months testing what ad copy attracts your profitable clients - a PPC campaign can do it inexpensively in a matter of days and test multiple parameters (geography, time of day, KWP, ad copy, language, etc.)

Properly performed PPC is, like everything else, a science when done correctly and the results can be / are often very amazing. Your high performance campaign may make $5 of profit for every $1 of budget. I have a client that spends about $1500/month and brings in about $30,000/month in profit directly attributable to AdWords leads.

Yes - there are many reasons to consider a PPC campaign to complement your organic traffic. Feel free to contact me through the profile if you wish to explore your specific situation or view a PPC account in action.

Sincerely,

Bob

In my humble opinion, and 20 years in Internet marketing, I have never relied or used PPC. I have never seen the need. For my current site, I have relied strictly on organic marketing, and the site is getting over 800,000 page views per month and growing at 20% per month. I have not spent a dime on any paid promotion.

Before I would fall back on PPC, I would work on posting to other peoples blogs, free downloads, article marketing, seo optimization, etc. How about offering a free one page pdf on "brewing the perfect cup of coffee" Also provide that copy as a free article others can post on their sites with your site linked...

CEF4 makes a valid point the working to create a strong organic presence is desireable. Saying that they "haven't spent a dime" is not taking into consideration the time to do their promotion (time is money in business). If you're pinching pennies, then organic methods are the best. I suggest you do both organic efforts and PPC. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your web site is also an good effort to improve organic presence.

For all the reasons presented previously in other posts, organic typically doesn't cover enough / all bases. The endless months of effort (time, content creation, monitoring, reposting, directory postings, etc) it a large burden on any company. Your efforts can be easily pushed to page 2 if another compay works at it harder than you do.

In our immediate gratification society expecting quarterly results, PPC can target your customers within minutes, and if the ROI is there - it has few if any valid contenters. In PPC - proper account construction would dictate that you don't advertise on keywords you already rank on page 1 unless you want more exposure.

Feel free to contact me through the profile if you wish to explore your specific situation or view a PPC account in action.

Sincerely,

Bob