Paid search is one of the oldest online marketing strategies, debuting in the mid nineties. And while that pales in comparison to traditional media like radio, television and outdoor, it makes it one of the oldest marketing strategies on the web.
You might take that to mean that it’s out of date, or old school. Surely it’s not as cool as social media or whatever new tech is available today.
Well, we love paid search. Like a Coca Cola, it’s a classic. It has endured for over two decades because… well… it’s still awesome.
You can rank at the top of Google (or other search engines) for any keyword(s) you like.
The only thing that limits how high you rank and for what keywords is your budget. If you have the money and the will, you can rank number one for any keyword on the planet. Unlike Search Engine Optimization strategies, that rely on compliance with Google’s ranking algorithms, you have near total control of where and when you rank. We like this control. As for paying for the clicks…
You only pay for the ads if someone clicks.
And not just any someone, BTW. Someone in the geographical area that you determine you want to target. Someone who takes the time to type a search phrase that you decide is relevant to your business. Someone who reads your ad and likes it enough to click it. That’s a pretty darn good lead, wouldn’t you agree? They are looking for you. They are looking for what you sell. Isn’t it worth a few dollars to place your business directly in the path of someone on a purchase journey for what you offer? As for the cost of those clicks…
Cost is determined by the market.
Google doesn’t set the price of the keywords or the clicks. You and your competitors do that. The reason that the keyword mesothelioma costs upwards of $80 per click is because attorneys have determined that there is a positive ROI for that expense. They may only close one in a hundred site visitors (That’s $800 for a good lead), but based on what they make on that client… Well, you get the idea. Of course, if you sell pizza, you’re probably not going to want to pay $80 per click. And you won’t have to. No pizza place would bid that high for pizza-related keywords. The keywords in your industry are priced in a way that makes sense because for twenty years the value of those clicks have been established by the market.
Paid search ads are always at the very top.
Maybe your business already ranks well in the maps or the organic section of Google. That’s fantastic! I mean that. But guess what; anyone who wants to outrank you can do so with paid search. Maybe you’ve spent hundreds of hours on SEO, content creation, optimizing local directories and even creating social signals that improve your organic rankings. That’s all fine and dandy until your competition decides she wants to bid on your most profitable keywords and she suddenly outranks you.
Now you might be thinking, “No one clicks the paid links. They scroll right by those ads to my organic link because it is more trustworthy.” While there is some truth in that statement – especially the perception of trust – you should know that paid ads account for over 64% of clicks for keyword searches of high commercial intent. In other words, most people don’t care if they are clicking on an ad or a free link if it appears to be the answer to their query.
Did you know?
Paid search is how Google built its fortune. In other words, somebody be clickin’ them paid ads!
Did you know?
Google recently added a fourth paid ad to the top of the search engine for many keywords. That means that nearly every result above the fold is a paid ad.
Did you know?
Paid ads are even more prominent on mobile. You have to do some serious scrolling on a mobile device to get to the organic results. Because mobile usage is outpacing desktop usage, paid becomes that much more dominant on those smaller devices.
Why do we love paid search? Proof of performance.
Unlike traditional media or even social media or targeted display, there’s some pretty substantial reporting when it comes to paid search. Not to say those other strategies don’t work – they do. They’re just harder to measure and harder to prove. But with paid search, you have a budget that you set each month. You can see how many prospects come to your site. And then you can calculate your customer value and your website conversion rate. In other words, you can see if there is value in your investment.
If you’re not currently using paid search to rank on Google, it might be time to revisit this classic internet marketing strategy. Contact us today for a free consultation. We’re happy to let you know how many people are looking for what you offer in the geographic area that you service. We can even provide you an estimation of how much it would cost to target them, and how many clicks you could expect to receive.
That leads us to the final reason we love paid search:
We can estimating projected web traffic before even running a campaign.
Contact us today for your paid search traffic estimate and proposal.
