If you want your online marketing campaign to be successful, you have to be a strong competitor within your industry and be fast and efficient in delivering your advertising strategies. Clients often complain that organic SEO requires too much effort and most importantly too much time to see the right return on investment. SEO requires people to commit to an ongoing investment, which may or may not deliver great results. The fact that search engine algorithms are constantly being changed and the lack of clear rules for optimisation activities puts clients in a position where they have less control over their online marketing activities and ultimately less control over their ROI. That’s why I advocate PPC! Here are 5 reasons why PPC beats SEO.

Reason 1: Slice and Dice Conversion Data with Greater Precision

Adwords advertising is thoroughly measurable, making it easy to determine whether or not you are meeting your advertising goals. Every click is matched with a particular ad and search query, all of which you can track and improve at any time you like. You can modify any portion of your Adwords campaigns within seconds, which means that you can be more responsive and in control of your advertising message when it comes to improving your ROI. With SEO, just the start of a campaign can involve months of planning and research just to get you ready to roll. Clients have to be extremely patient and wait for the results to show gradually.

Reason 2: Reach More Customers and Know What They Want

Adwords offers a greater and faster reach than organic listings. With Adwords, you can instantly target users that are actively searching for services, products, websites and information across the entire Google Network. This involves a large group of websites and a range of Google products, such as email programs and blogs, who have partnered with Google to display AdWords ads. You can easily give your products or services a presence during relevant user searches and make sure that you are visible enough in a crucial point in the customer’s buying cycle.

An even greater feature of Adwords is Keyword Contextual Targeting. Not only will the system match your keywords and display your ads only on pages containing relevant content, the ad will only be triggered every time a user performed a search using one of your terms. This way you can connect with the right customers more effectively and more often. Gaining a crucial link on a highly relevant authority website is also one of the foundations of SEO, but is time consuming to search through a large number of websites and blogs, with Keyword Contextual Targeting; your ad is placed automatically for you only in the most relevant sites!

Reason 3: Get To The Top Of Rankings In Only 15 Minutes!

Adwords makes it easier for advertisers to get to the top of the rankings than with the natural listings. Adwords is an auction model and it requires each advertiser to set up a bid, which then determines your sponsored placement on Google. The higher your bid – the higher your ad position. As long as you structure your paid search campaigns correctly, obtain an amazing quality score and bid at your industry average level or above, you can give your ads great exposure – all within a much shorter period of time! On the other hand, SEO campaigns can involve months of work before your brand is noticed and starts to rank in the natural listings.

Reason 4: Tailor Your Advertising

Adwords delivers the ability to precisely target ads to users based on their interests, as well as a number of other factors like demographic, location and language. For example, a company selling French wine could run an ad to easily reach a highly targeted audience, e.g. 20-30 year old adults who speak french living in the UK. SEO does not allow this sort of targeted audience and your organic listings are shown to every one who types in the right keyword. Targeting certain demographics with the right ad will mean you have a higher likelihood of getting conversions and sales with Adwords. Research shows that the industry average for Adwords conversion is 2.5 – 5%.

Reason 5: Limited Budget? PPC Can Still Work For You!

With Adwords, you can schedule your advertising and only run your ads during the most beneficial times. If you are running a small business and your advertising budget is limited, this is a great way to make the most of your money. E.g. a business selling pizza can trigger their ad to be visible during lunch time (12 – 2pm) and evenings (5 – 7pm) only to capture users searching for lunch or dinner plans. You can rest assured your money is well spent!

Have I convinced you yet?

Online advertising is a marketing war, where only the fastest and strongest players will survive. To succeed you have to be in full control over your advertisement and be responsive when it comes to bidding. However with a bit of time and effort the returns on your investment can be far greater and more satisfying. Furthermore you can easily customise your advertisements in accordance to the needs of your clients to bring the best results, and even clients with limited budgets can benefit.
I feel that Adwords is a dominating online advertising model, it beats waiting for your website to rank organically with SEO and with real and measurable data and trackable return on investment, what more could you ask for?

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Fun, PPC - Google Adwords