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Don’t Waste B2B Marketing Dollars on PPC

by Jennifer Beever

wasted marketing dollarsPay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a waste of marketing dollars. It’s expensive, and it’s so ten years ago. I think the only reason Pay-Per-Click advertising still exists is because there are so many certified PPC re-sellers who convince businesses it works. Go ahead – do a search – such as “Does PPC work?” Most of the answers you will find are from the service-providers who make money on PPC.

Up until as late as 2005, I did think a valid strategy for a company with no presence on the web was to jump start online lead generation with PPC. It meant they might spend more starting out, but they didn’t have to wait three to six months to see results. But today B2B marketers are much better of investing in organic search engine optimization and great content.

Two things conspired in the decline of Pay-Per-Click advertising. In general people are wary of being sold to, and online users avoid sponsored links. In addition, more people turn to friends on social media platforms to get recommendations and learn what they should use. They don’t want to have to narrow down millions of search results (many of which are often irrelevant or spam) to find what they need. They want someone they trust to tell them what to buy.

If you do have PPC campaigns running, make sure that someone is not only monitoring traffic but also measuring conversions (sales). Without metrics you will never have a chance at proving ROI. But given the choice, I would spend my marketing dollars somewhere other than on PPC.

Readers – what do you think? PPC pro? Or con?

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Best of B2B Marketing Zone for March 23, 2012 « Sales and Marketing Jobs
March 24, 2012 at 7:16 am
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March 26, 2012 at 11:32 am

{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

Larry Kim March 26, 2012 at 7:43 am

not sure why you would advocate an “either or” strategy of between PPC vs. Social Media/SEO. Given the recent panda updates which has killed many SEO sites (i know this because every update, i get calls from people who lost half their traffic..), and the increasing prominence of ads in search results, and given exciting new PPC innovations like retargeting on the Google Display Network — i think it’s a big mistake to advocate leaving PPC out of the mix. Not saying that you should ignore Social or SEO either. All are important imho.

Jennifer Beever March 26, 2012 at 10:07 am

Thanks, Larry, for your comment. I did hear that some real sites with original content were affected by Google’s Panda updates. A short term fix might be PPC. But, if someone was using link farms or using other spam tactics to come up high in search results, Google’s Panda updates were designed to reduce those sites ability to perform on search engine results. It just seems that the best approach is great content that is focused on a target audience that people share. People everywhere want their trusted friends to send them information, not advertisers. No tricks, no spam, less advertising.

B2B Marketing March 26, 2012 at 11:49 pm

i feel you are not true on this. PPC makes a lot of difference in promotion of a b2b marketing portal where SEO techniques never works.

Jennifer Beever March 27, 2012 at 7:24 am

Thanks for the comment. We’ve rarely had a situation where organic SEO did not work. Some industries are more competitive than others, so require extra effort. Even in those industries, by blogging and adding other content and developing a social media following we have been able to drive traffic to the site.

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