I recently read a great article on SEOMOZ.org entitled “The Disconnect in PPC vs. SEO Spending”. However, there are several assumptions and misconception that need to be addressed, not necessarily in the article, but in the comments that followed.
A larger portion of “search engine experts”, do not understand pay-per-click marketing. Hopefully, I can help clear the air.
First, let’s start with the EyeTracking Study, provided by Enquiro. The heat map clearly shows that more people look at organic results over paid results. This is an undeniable fact. More eyes and more clicks go to the organic listings.
Excerpt:
“SEO drives 75%+ of all search traffic, yet garners less than 15% of marketing budgets for SEM campaigns. PPC receives less than 25% of all search traffic, yet earns 80%+ of SEM campaign budgets.” - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-disconnect-in-ppc-vs-seo-spending
However, as any online marketer will tell you, it’s not the clicks that matter it’s the conversion. When users are in the purchase state of mind, they will more often go to a paid search ad, over an organic listing. Eye Charts and Heat maps ultimately do not mean anything to a paid search campaign, because these tests can not imitate the buying process.
This same philosophy applies to television commercials. We all say we don’t like commercials. They are a nuisance or we ignore them. That is absolutely true when you are in the middle of watching a quality movie. However, commercials work. How else would you know what products to buy and where to buy them?
Although, I still strongly believe there is a need for SEO. Pay per click marketing is a much better investment. If managed correctly, there is not a better ROI then PPC. If Paid Search Isn’t Working Then You’re Doing Something Wrong.
Not only is it a great investment, but a good SEO campaign is the result of a optimized PPC campaign. The PPC research is often needed before SEO can be executed properly.
Maybe part of the problem is that so many paid search campaigns are poorly optimized. Paid search marketing is deceptively easy. Because Google, and others, make it so easy to get a campaign up and running, marketers make the mistake of not taking the extra steps to optimize a campaign.
Below are a few of the comments from the article:
“SEO better in the long-run …” – “Long-run”, try explaining long run to executives. It’s much easier to explain that 100K returned 500K. The “Long Run” may not exist for many companies. The immediate cash flow is needed now.
“PPC is plug-and-play web marketing that works out of the box” - really? Wow. Again, the misconception that pay-per-click is easy.
There were also some great comments as well:
“A lot of PPC campaigns are run by people (like me) who do not really know what they are doing and so they tend to result in money wasted on phrases that are too broad, misdirected etc.”
“I would disagree that the skill threshold for PPC is low, yes anyone can turn an ad on, but to effectively maximise the revenue and optimise a ppc campaign is a skill set all of it’s own, and takes as much hard work and skill as any other form of marketing. Anyone can write a title tag too, but that doesn’t mean that the skill threshold for SEO is low. I think there is a lack of information and discussion around making the best use of PPC though. “
“SEOs have a spotty reputation with many people.” – Jane Copland
“Companies don’t like or understand PPC more (though they like to think they do), it just gets more money because it’s trackable and the results are immediate.“Kate Morris
November 6th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
John,
As usual you make some good points… and I daresay you are correct.
I do see some pretty wacky PPC budgets among my clients and have noticed a few trends:
1) whether you spend 300 or 30,000 a month with PPC, there is no connection to how well your account is managed. There are a lot of very poorly run campaigns. I would have assumed that the more you spend the better you run it, but, not so!
2) There is a real disconnect between what people say is important and where they spend their money. Most people talk about organic Google for their business as in “ranking high is a top priority.” Yet, when you look at their budget, they are likely to spend more on PPC than SEO… much much more. My theory there is that Google is asking for the money. I think that Google has such a special spot in people’s hearts that they suspend their normal judgement about spending marketing money and just throw it at Google.
November 12th, 2008 at 10:18 am
John,
100% correct….No one knows better than you and I that at many companies a campaign’s time to return is as important as the ROI…especially now when so many businesses are cash strapped.
Also, I always tell my clients that the only easy part about PPC is spending money.
-Walt