Why PPC Marketing Beats SEO Marketing for Quick ROI
Published May 5, 2013 | 
Have you read the marketing data about the ROI power of PPC marketing in comparison to SEO? Marketing Charts.com released an article which states that SEO has the most positive impact on lead generation. Nearly 60% of B2B marketers claim that it makes the biggest dent when it comes to generating leads.
Meanwhile, only 20% of them claimed that PPC marketing was their top performer when it came to lead generation. Is PPC marketing simply not as effective as SEO, or is there something about PPC marketing that a lot of marketers still aren’t getting?
PPC Marketing, SEO and the Customer Buying Cycle
The customer buying cycle is an important factor to consider when deciding how to structure your PPC and SEO strategies. According to an article on MarketingSherpa.com, 43% of marketers claim that SEO brings them the most traffic. But less than 30% of those same marketers claimed that SEO brings them their highest conversion rate.
Why is SEO traffic less effective in driving new sales on the first visit? It’s because of something called the customer buying cycle. Depending on the data that you read, anywhere from 7 to 9 out of ten consumers are researching products and services online before they make a purchase decision.
These customers aren’t clicking on sponsored ads, and if they are, they’re not sticking around long to look at advertisements. They’re looking for websites which are providing the best content. Everyone knows that Google works hard to push the sites with the best content to the top of the organic search results. Sites which focus on direct marketing only usually don’t get high rankings.
This is because customers who are in the information gathering stage aren’t prepared to respond to direct advertisements. This is why they’re more likely to be interested in organic search results than they are in PPC and they’re less likely to buy right away. But if you’re focusing mainly on SEO, you’re likely to miss out on the customers who are done with their information gathering and are ready to make a decision.
Here’s why…
Why You Need PPC to Supplement Your SEO
To succeed online, you need to use SEO and PPC together. But it’s crucial to understand that your approach is going to be for each one. Your expectations also can’t be the same when it comes to quick ROI either. If you want to turn your traffic into immediate sales, you need to use PPC marketing and depend on SEO driving your leads and follow up sales.
Again, it comes back to understanding the customer buying cycle and knowing how to market to customers who are in the information gathering stage but also how to quickly capture the customers who are ready to buy something right now. PPC marketing has a better track record for converting sales on the first visit and it’s because the customers who click those ads are more likely to be in a buying mindset.
So if you’re planning on investing most of your marketing budget into SEO, you’re guaranteed to miss some of the “cash in hand” customers you could be connecting with by using PPC marketing. If you want to grab your share of that traffic, call MSI at the number on this screen.
Of course, you could always manage your PPC in house, but the data suggests that agencies do better. Marketing Charts.com reported that only 15% of the marketers who responded to a survey were happy with the results they got from managing PP in house. Meanwhile, 20% of them were happier with the results they got from using a PPC management agency.
Call MSI now, and let’s talk about getting your company in front of more of those customers who are ready to buy immediately.
PPC Marketing: In House or Outsourced?
Published April 29, 2013 | 
Are you debating whether to handle your PPC Marketing in house or have it outsourced to an agency? There are some advantages to both of course, and if you’re on a shoestring budget it might seem like a no brainer to manage your PPC marketing in house.
But what if you outsourcing your PPC marketing would lead to lower bid rates, higher placements, higher conversion rates, higher profits margins and greater ROI?
Of course, coming from a company that offers PPC management services, you might assume MSI is biased in saying that outsourcing will give you better results.
But let’s look at what the unbiased data says…
The Data Proves that PPC Management Agencies Do Better
Marketing Charts.com reported that 20% of the respondents to a marketing survey on PPC were more satisfied by the results they got from working with a PPC management agency. Meanwhile, only 15% of the respondents stated that they were happy with the performance they were getting from managing their PPC marketing g in house.
Considering that many companies who manage PPC marketing in house have never tried outsourcing, it’s a safe bet that the different in results is quite significant. On top of that, it’s important to consider that being “satisfied with the results,” isn’t exactly an objective answer.
Of those 15% who are satisfied with the results of managing their PPC in house, how many of them would get better results if they took those same PPC campaigns and outsourced them to someone who could further optimize them for better placements, lower costs per click and higher ROI?
Okay, so now we sound bias. But if you’re managing your PPC in house, it’s smart to consider the benefit of outsourcing it, even if you’re satisfied with the results you’re getting in house.
How much more opportunity are you missing? What additional value and insight could a PPC specialist bring to the table? If you’d like to find out, just call us. You might be surprised what some extra experience and expertise can do for your profits.
Not Using PPC Yet? Here’s What You Could Be Missing…
If you’re not using PPC marketing yet, but you’re thinking about it, you’re probably spending a lot of your online marketing budget on SEO and social media. But have you considered how much more visibility you get by using PPC marketing?
According to data from Founder’s Blog, organic search results take up only 20% of the search results while the other 80% is dominated by sponsored ads. Of course, the argument would be that organic search results get a higher response rate, which they do. But a customer is also in a different stage of the buying process when they’re searching the organic results.
Marketing Pilgrim recently published an article which reported the results of a study from Forrester research. As it turns out, PPC is more effective than social media when it comes to gathering new sales. Social media was reported to be a better strategy for building brand awareness and for managing customer relationships.
It also revealed that search engine traffic (organic) was a better source for lead generation and that the sales were made on the follow ups using email marketing. So according to the data, PPC marketing is one of the top online marketing strategies for grabbing immediate sales from the customers who are ready to buy RIGHT NOW.
Considering that, and considering that businesses which use PPC management agencies are statistically more satisfied, maybe it’s time to call MSI to discuss your PPC campaign. You might be surprised at how quickly you can capture new business when you’re targeting the customers who are ready to buy right away.
The Man Who “Knew” too Much About PPC Marketing
Published April 2, 2013 | Is PPC Marketing more of an expense than SEO or Social Media?
If you think so, you’ve got the process of PPC marketing backwards and YOU might be the glass ceiling of your business. PPC marketing can be more cost effective than SEO, by a long shot...especially if you’re just starting out.
This man’s story is an embarrassing example of why this is true…
The Biggest Marketing Expense You’ll Ever Pay?
Last month I struck up a conversation with financial advisor while I was doing some work at Starbucks.
He started telling me about his acarpous practice and lack of progress in securing new customer accounts. The more I listened, the sadder it got. He was working at Walmart during the day and scrambling for clients at night. Apparently, he’s been stuck in this pattern for years.
When I asked him about his marketing, he told me that he had a website but was struggling to post content and work on his search engine rankings for a VERY competitive keyword. He’d been doing this for years and based on what he told me, he’d probably spent hundreds of hours at it.
I asked him why he wasn’t using PPC Marketing and he said that he “couldn’t afford the expense.” I spent about 30 seconds trying to explain how he could easily turn a $500 investment into thousands using PPC marketing. But he was so hung up on my use of the word “investment” that he completely missed my point.
He kept insisting that PPC was an expense, not an investment. We’re talking about a guy who could land one client and make thousands of dollars right away, and tens of thousands more over the years that followed. Yet, he wouldn’t invest $5 to $7 dollars a click to attract more clients because when he sat down with his marketing budget, he wrote PPC marketing in the “expense” column.
Ironically, his expertise as a financial advisor was keeping him from using his expertise as a financial advisor to earn money as a financial advisor. I felt so bad I almost bought him a coffee…almost. This is a perfect example of how the wrong mindset can be the biggest marketing expense you’ll ever pay.
An expense oriented mindset can keep you from using a rock solid marketing strategy like PPC and cause you to instead pursue the illusion of “FREE” traffic. If you’re not using PPC marketing and you’re still trying to “get your business of the ground” using SEO or social media, I challenge you to do this simple calculation…
PPC Marketing, SEO and “FREE” Traffic
Based on what I know about financial advisors, the guy you just read about probably could have been making $250 an hour instead of the $12 he was probably making at Wally world. Yet, he’d probably invested at least 100 hours into “free” SEO strategies. But let’s be super conservative and say he’d only worked 100 hours and let’s use his $12 wage to figure out just how much his expense focused mindset was costing him.
100 hrs X $12 per hour = $1,200.
That’s how much “FREE” SEO was costing him, and that’s not considered the cost of being stuck at Walmart making $12 because he wasn’t building his practice fast enough.
Assuming he’d pay $12 per click, a reasonably good PPC campaign would have earned him one client per 100 visits. If that client only worked with him for 10 hours (which is unheard of, but we’re being conservative), he’d make more than he’d spent. He could have invested that back into his PPC campaign (which would work for him even while he was at his day job) and built up a full time clientele making $250 an hour.
Bottom line, PPC marketing only costs money when you lose money. PPC could have freed this guy from his self-imposed prison of working for $12 an hour.
So let me ask you again…
Is PPC Marketing more of an expense than SEO or Social Media?
Posted in Integrated Marketing | 
financial advisors, PPC marketing, SEO strategies | 
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PPC Marketing & Aesop’s Golden Goose
Published March 13, 2013 | PPC marketing can do a whole lot more than bring you traffic.
It can help you build a passive income stream and increase the financial stability of your business. It all depends on whether you manage your PPC marketing campaigns for short term income or long term equity. So here’s a lesson from the ancient storyteller Aesop and how it applies to the three most essential practices of PPC management.
PPC Marketing and the Golden Goose
One of Aesop’s most famous fables is the story of the farmer and his goose that lays golden eggs. The goose lays one golden egg a day, and the farmer is slowly becoming wealthy. But that’s not enough. The farmer wants more than one egg a day. So he tries feeding the goose more often, exercising it and even rewarding it with premium feed every time it lays a golden egg.
But the goose keeps plodding along at the pace of one egg a day. Blinded by greed, the farmer slaughters the goose, cuts it open and starts clawing at its insides in search of golden eggs. But he finds only guts. The farmer is left with no golden eggs, no goose and no long term wealth…all because he was in a big hurry to speed things up.
Marketers make the same mistake with PPC marketing. They see some sales coming in and they immediately start expanding their PPC campaigns to include more keywords. They assume that by attracting more traffic to a PPC landing page that’s already converting, they’ll make more profits. But the results are rarely positive because they neglect the PPC marketing principles that made them successful in the first place.
Here are a few basic things you should always apply when expanding your PPC marketing campaign…
#1: Keep Small & Relevant Keyword Groups
Your keyword groups should always be built around one primary keyword phrase. ALL keywords in your group should be derivatives of this phrase. For example, assuming that your ad group is based on the primary keyword “PPC Management Services,” your keyword group might look like this:
1. PPC Management Services
2. PPC Management Services for Small Business
3. Small Business PPC Management Services
4. Best PPC Management Services
If this ad group starts converting well, don’t just start adding keywords like “PPC Marketing,” “PPC training” and “PPC coaching” to the list, assuming your conversion rate will stay the same. It won’t. People typing “PPC Marketing” into their search bar might be aspiring (and impoverished) entrepreneurs trying to find out what PPC marketing is while on their lunch break at work.
People looking for PPC Management Services are most likely outsourcers. People looking for PPC Coaching and training are do it yourselfers. You can’t send all these customers to the same landing page and expect to maintain a good conversion rate.
If you want to expand, start a new keyword group for the do it yourselfers, send them to a new landing page and start the campaign on a small budget until you have a good click through rate, a comfortable ad position and a proven conversion rate.
#2: Split Testing
You should always be testing new versions of our landing page, testing your existing PPC ads against new ones and looking for ways to optimize your PPC conversions, your click through rates and your ad position. Even if something is working now, there’s no guarantee that it will keep working in such a competitive marketplace.
Remember that your competitors want to take your customers. If you’re succeeding, they’ll soon show up with an ad that equals or beats yours. If you expand your budget and stop testing, assuming that your current conversion rate won’t change, you could have a rude awakening when a new competitor arrives one the scene and starts taking your clicks.
Split testing is the best way to keep your fingers on the pulse of your market and keep your PPC marketing performing at peak level.
#3: Adding Reviews to Your PPC Landing Page
Relevant keyword groups are essential in PPC marketing, so is split testing, so is a good bidding strategy, good copywriting and an attractive landing page design. But nothing can take the place of rock solid customer approved credibility.
If you want a PPC landing page that consistently outperforms your competition, make a habit of continuously adding customer reviews to your page. You can never have too many, and the more you have, the harder it will be for your competitors to take your market share by imitating your PPC ads and landing pages.
Want to build a passive income stream and increase the financial stability of your business? Take a lesson from old Aesop’s farmer. Don’t be in a hurry to rake in the golden eggs.
Take care of your goose. Take your time expanding your campaigns. Always be testing, keep your keyword groups relevant and keep adding credibility to your landing page.
3 Things You Need to Know Before Outsourcing Your PPC Marketing
Published February 14, 2013 | PPC marketing is a great way to get traffic and sales. But you can also lose your shirt (and probably your pants) if you do it wrong. It all depends on what you know and what you do with what you know. When done right, PPC marketing can increase your profits, automate your marketing and even help your organic search engine rankings.
But you have to learn about bidding strategies, split testing, landing page design, quality score, geographic targeting and a dozen other idiosyncrasies that make or break your success.
A poor quality score can hurt your organic rankings and raise your price per click to three, four or even five times what it would have been with a good quality score. A bad bidding strategy can leave you paying three or four times as much for traffic. Lack of split testing can cost you hundreds or thousands in missed opportunities.
So why not outsource your PPC marketing to an expert and be done with it? If you’re thinking about doing this, there are three things you should know first about PPC marketing…
#1: Know Enough to Make a Good Hiring Decision
To make a smart hire, you need to know PPC marketing well enough to spot a competent PPC manager when you see one. You don’t have to be an expert, but if you want to hire someone who gets results, you should have a sound knowledge of the PPC basics.
Some PPC marketing consultants are better at marketing their services than they are at fulfilling them. If you know nothing about PPC marketing, it could be hard to see through their clever marketing. I will also be harder to measure their progress and decide whether to keep working with them, especially if things get off to a slow start.
So you should learn as much as you can. You’ll find articles on PPC marketing here on our blog. We publish a couple of them a month. We suggest you set aside some time to read one blog a week, or one a day if you can.
Find some other authority sites on direct marketing and learn about the basics of online marketing and PPC marketing. The more you know, the easier it will be to make smart hiring decisions.
#2: Know Enough to Police their Progress
Even if you’ve hired a good PPC marketing consultant who is getting good results, you should keep monitoring their results, making suggestions and working with them as a partner.
Some business owners outsource their marketing so that they can focus on other things. This is good, but smart management should also be one of your ongoing habits. The more you know about what’s happening with your marketing campaigns, the easier it will be for you to plan new products, brainstorm new marketing strategies and refine the strategies you’re already using.
Being involved in your PPC marketing will also keep your PPC marketing consultant from becoming the “owner of the black box.” The “black box” being any system within your business which is being managed so exclusively by someone else, that you can’t change it, take it over or even get your hands on it without creating a bump in your business operations.
So keep working with your PPC manager and hold them accountable to keep pushing the envelope and producing outstanding results.
#3: PPC Marketing Isn’t Always Profitable Right Away
Unless you’re already hitting ROI with your PPC marketing, you should not expect profits right out of the gate. This is especially true if you’re currently losing money with PPC or just breaking even.
Sometimes, you lose a few hundred (or thousands, depending on your market) in costs per click just to refine your strategy and hit profitability. But if you follow a strategy from the start, you’ll make up for those “lost” profits quickly. So sometimes it’s smart to treat your initial losses as an investment instead of cutting the chord early.
When hiring a PPC marketing company, ask them about what the process of becoming profitable might look like. This is where your own knowledge of PPC marketing will help. If they promise things that sound too good to be true, you should proceed with caution or move on to another prospect. Expert PPC marketers who want to build a strong working relationship with you will be honest and reasonable in setting expectations.
If you educate yourself, if you stay involved and if you treat the first few days or weeks as an investment, you’ll enjoy plenty of long term success and profits by outsourcing your PPC marketing.
