Blog Post

4 Signs Your Business Needs PPC Now

Clive Clifford • Apr 05, 2017

Is PPC Right for Your Business?

Pay-Per-Click advertising, also known as PPC, is a quick and effective way to get your business in front of prospective clients when they’re looking for local options. It is a great tool that allows you to figure out specific data, such as what terms people are using in their online searches, and gets you a return on investment that is worthwhile. It puts you at the forefront of their search choices, generating more site visits instantaneously.

When thinking about your online marketing strategy options, it’s easy to wonder, is PPC right for my business? In a world where there is a variety of digital marketing strategies available, is it worth it to pay for online advertising? The answer to that is…it depends.

Not all businesses are the same and not every company has the same goals. For many, PPC provides the results they are looking for. But for some, PPC might be a bit out of reach, or not worth the investment. To determine if PPC is right for your business, ask yourself if the following statements apply to your marketing goals.

You Want Quick Results

Having a website that is search-engine-optimized is certainly important to get organic traffic. However, SEO comes with limitations, including the length of time it takes for everything to kick in. Even if your website is optimized with all the best keywords, it can still take months for your business to rank in a top spot and to actually make money from leads purely using SEO.

PPC, on the other hand, provides instant results. Not only does it put you at the forefront of search options immediately, but it allows you to analyze the success rate of those ads. In the time it would take an SEO campaign to give you accurate results, you could have several months’ worth of data to look at and adjust your campaigns accordingly.

When it comes down to it, SEO is important, but doesn’t necessarily guarantee the results you need in the timeframe you want; PPC is much more likely to get you to where you want to be.

Your Customer Value is High

If you work in an industry where a new customer only gains you around $20, PPC won’t be worth it. However, if you work in an industry where a new customer gains you closer to $2,000, PPC is definitely worth it. This is because it costs you money every time someone clicks on your ad. Not all those clicks turn into a sale (although they’re more likely to with a strategic PPC campaign), so it’s important that spending a higher amount will be worth it when you gain a new customer.

For example: In 2016, the average cost per click (CPC) on an ad was $2.14, with the average click through rate being 1.16%. That put the ad at the average position of 1.6 (between the first and second spot in a Google search). With an average rate of 6.5% of those clicks turning into a sale, the cost per conversion was around $33.00. This means you are spending $33 of your PPC budget to get one customer. So for PPC to be worth it, that one customer better be making you a lot more than $33.00.

More on those statistics here.

You Want to be Seen Locally

you are a business that thrives on local customers, it’s crucial that you target marketing efforts of any kind to your specific location. With a PPC campaign, you can create ads that specifically mention various locations nearby, from the major city you might be located in, to nearby suburbs and towns that you also want to target. For example, if your business is in Cleveland, Ohio, you could use 50% of your budget to target the location “Cleveland,” and the other 50% divided (either evenly or unevenly) among several surrounding suburbs, like Lakewood, Parma or Mentor.

Google will pick up on the searcher’s location and display your ads that are the best match. You can also choose which surrounding towns you want to focus on, and which ones you want to leave out. With SEO, it’s a little bit harder to target specific locations like this, especially if you want to focus your attention on some cities more than others.

You Have Competitors

Even at a local level, you probably have a few competitors in your industry. And there’s a pretty good chance they’re using PPC to boost their local visibility, which puts them ahead of your business if you don’t have a PPC campaign.

On the other hand, if your competitors aren’t using PPC and are relying solely on SEO, paid advertising would immediately put you at the top of the list when people are searching for your services locally. Not to mention, it would move their business down in rankings, edging them out of the competition.

To PPC, or Not to PPC?

 

If the above statements all apply to your business, PPC is definitely worth your efforts. Like most things in life, what you get out of a PPC campaign depends on what you put into it. If you’re prepared to spend money in order to make money, we highly recommend PPC.

 

Of course, running a successful PPC campaign isn’t quite as simple as we may have made it out to be. While it can definitely be done on your own, it’ll require research and time dedicated to managing your Google AdWords account. If you want to get into the PPC game but would rather get help from professionals who know what they’re doing, you can always hire a digital marketing team—like Locallogy—to do the work for you.

 

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