Why pay for clicks when you can get them for free?
This question often comes up when facing relatively inexperienced advertisers deciding between PPC and SEO. While I cannot refute any argument based solely on this logic (organic clicks are free and paid clicks are not), I can make a case for PPC even when SEO is at its best – which certainly is not the case for the majority of sites out there.
There are three distinct advantages that paid listings have over organic listings, and as a result these are the three most compelling arguments for integration of SEM into any marketing scheme:
1. If you don’t use SEM, your competition will poach your traffic. The competition has always been able to bid on your terms, but since AdWords changed its trademark policy to allow competitors to actually use these terms in their ad copy, it has never been more important to claim the real estate that is rightfully yours.
Consider the following query for [iphone]. In the first instance, both AT&T and Apple are in premium positions:
Now imagine if AT&T owned the entire premium position, without Apple:
In both cases, Apple SEO is perfect in placing Apple.com at the top of the organic listing. However, in the second search, where there is no Apple ad, my eye is drawn to the AT&T ad instead of the Apple organic result. If I am specifically looking for the Apple website, I may click on the organic link. However, it’s inevitable that many users will click on the AT&T ad because they will see it first.
1. SEM allows for customized messaging, whereas the text for organic links is determined by the search engine. While several factors can help to control the text in the organic link (including but not limited to the page description, title and header tags) it’s a significant process and requires some technical knowledge. Ad copy can be changed almost instantly using paid ads, allowing marketers to create and rotate in unique messaging for sales, promotions, product launches, and so on. Furthermore, marketers can test which ads work best, optimizing for CTR and conversion rates by optimizing landing pages.
Consider the following query for a Sony Bravia TV:
While the organic link is relevant, Sony is running a promotional offering of a PS3 or Blu-Ray player with a TV purchase. This efficient and enticing offer might sway a consumer who was intending on purchasing the TV from Best Buy to click on the Sony ad and purchase directly.
Of course, ads can be tailored for more than just promotional purposes…
3. SEM can be optimized for the consumer buying cycle. In their highly regarded book, Search Engine Marketing Inc, Mike Moran and Bill Hunt conclude that all search terms can be classified as: informational, navigational, or transactional. Informational queries are for research [best flat screen tv], navigational queries are for getting to a specific website [sony.com], and transactional queries show user intent to purchase [buy bravia xbr8 hdtv]. How is this relevant to SEM? Because ads can be customized for different types of queries, SEMs can create ads that are tailored to users in different stages of the buying cycle.
A consumer typing in an informational query is researching a product, idea, service, etc. Calling out this notion in the ad copy and driving traffic to an informational page where the consumer can learn about the product(s) in question will build trust and allow them to make their own way down the sales funnel. Consider the query [plasma or LCD TV?]. This query indicates the consumer does not know which kind of television to purchase. Driving the consumer to a product page for a particular TB will not yield a sale, whereas driving the consumer to a page describing the benefits and drawbacks of plasma versus LCD may yield a sale. Whether or not the sale is made in that session, the consumer is likely to trust the source of unbiased information when moving forward and purchasing the TV.
Following the same logic, building ads that are relevant for navigational and transactional queries will have positive ramifications. Understanding and classifying various keywords as informational, navigational or transactional is a significant step to understanding consumer behavior. Studying post-click consumer behavior using an analytics package (such as Google Analytics) will give insight into how effectively consumers can work their way through the sales funnel within your website – channeling those informational clicks into transactions.
Benny Blum
