Is PPC Still an Effective Form of Marketing?
PPC has always been a fast and simple way to get a campaign online, it gave rise to the internet marketer and affilliate marketer who could sell or promote digital products with minimal overheads to anyone who surfed the web, and a good number of these marketers made a good, and on face of it, easy living.
As with so many online systems change is fast and continuous, with rising CPC prices affiliates are now moving away from PPC as the risk of paying for clicks and making a lower return increases.
So is PPC an Effective Marketing Tool?
YES, but don’t be mistaken, just creating a campaign and sitting back waiting for sales is not the answer, and could prove very costly. PPC now offers a fantastic array of demographic targeting that it’s critical to know your market and who your customers are, just as it is with any marketing. Would you display at a motoring exhibition if you supply outdoor cooking equipment to the restaurant trade?
What about Organic SEO Marketing?
Though we are concentrating on PPC, it’s worth remembering that SEO is a critical part of your online marketing, however this is a slower, long term process and much more competitive. It’s worth also pointing out that PPC can provide market data which can be applied to your SEO and help capture even more of the market share organically.
What Type of Analytics are There?
The tools for targeting your audience whilst collecting valuable analytics data are ever increasing, it’s now possible to target potential customers according to more metrics, demographics or behaviors than ever before, and this is set to continue. Taking an organised approach will help to quickly identify which campaigns convert, which need tweaking and which ones need a total rethink.
What About Real World Interactions?
During the development of PPC there has been somewhat of a disconnect when it comes to measuring customer actions in the real world. As improvements in collecting relevant data are made traditional metrics such as ad clicks and impressions are being backed up with offline outcomes, such as shop visits, over the counter sales and other customer interactions. This helps to show more tangible activity and therefore real world effectiveness.
What About Building Better Customer Relationships?
There are a variety of channels available to reach customers, such as face to face networking, inbound marketing, organic SEO and of course PPC, these are not channels that should be used exclusive of each other. PPC is a fast way to reach out to customers whilst the data collected can be invaluable to your other marketing methods, it is also worth remembering that by not using PPC your not using all the marketing options available to you…