With all the hoopla surrounding social media marketing, paid search engine marketing is in danger of falling into the dread class of "traditional" marketing activities. However, if paid search has become an integral component of today's marketing budget, it's because paid search gets results -- and we have
no shortage of statistics to prove it. Here are a few reasons why companies continue to invest heavily in paid search campaigns.
Paid search gets immediate results. Search engine optimization, or SEO, takes time, often quite a bit of time, to have a noticeable effect on search engine rankings. Conversely, paid search provides immediate search engine exposure and with it, Web site traffic.
Paid search drives targeted traffic. No doubt SEO is worthwhile, but how often does your Google search query display sites having nothing to do with your intended search? It's a common problem, and explains why a lot of R &D is going into contextual search engine technology. But a well written and strategically placed pay per click ad will attract site visitors with a qualified interest in your offering.
Paid search requires less labor. While the hard costs of paid search may exceed those of social media marketing (and even there, arguments can be made either way), the internal time commitment to support paid search should be less than what is required to execute a full blown social media program. Writing, brand monitoring, and networking takes time and, except for very large companies, is far more difficult to outsource than a paid search campaign.
Paid search is measurable. What's the ROI on your sales brochures? How about the ROI on your blog? Hard to measure, isn't it? Now, that hardly means those types of marketing activities should be abandoned, but it does mean to have a balanced marketing program you need measurable activities in the mix. Nothing this side of direct mail is more measurable than paid search marketing, which leads to its most important benefit ...
Paid search produces continually improving results. Since paid search is measurable, campaigns can be compared to each other using simple A-B split testing. Sometimes, a single word change can result in high percentage increases in traffic. Careful testing and monitoring allows companies to launch more effective ads with every new campaign. If you think paid search marketing is smoke and mirrors, you may need to investigate further or work with a different search marketing firm.
