By 2015, more than a fourth of the total advertising market will be done online, with search marketing or pay per click marketing advertising playing a major role in how products and services are marketed in this arena.
91% of marketing experts believe paid search marketing as an effective lead generation tool next only to SEO, and can be more effective than social media, email marketing or even traditional print marketing. 48% of them use paid search marketing as their mainstream advertising tool.
With many „free“ marketing channels available online, many business owners are still hesitant in going for the paid marketing route. The following text aims to explore the merits of using paid search marketing for your business and how it can be a most effective tool that you can have in your marketing arsenal.
Paid search marketing is delivering favourable results
From a business perspective, digital marketers will soon realize that more than 64,6% of clicks are generated by paid search marketing such as Google AdWords. This is the main reason why up to $12 billion are spent on paid search each year by advertisers in the United States. $8 million per month of which are invested advertising through Google AdWords. These marketers are getting their results up to 72% increased their budgets allocated for PPC this year and will continue to do so in the coming periods.
It is delivering highly targeted traffic
The term „broadcast“ is usually used for traditional advertising for that’s exactly what it is – massive broadcasting of promotional messages to a general and very wide audience of all sorts. Paid search marketing forgoes this shotgun approach to marketing, utilizing highly targeted advertising using specific search terms and targeted audience profiles.
Business owners and digital marketers can fine tune the targeting capabilities of the paid ads according to certain targeting criteria. This criteria can include:
• Location: You can set your ads to be shown only to people from a specific geographic location such as country, city or even a specific geographical radius. Specifying your location is important particularly if you maintain a physical store or office. 59% of consumers do search for reputable businesses based on their locality.
• Mobile users: Set ads to specifically target mobile users who view your ads through their mobile devices. Location details also play an important part here as more than 50% of mobile searches are geared towards finding local results, 61% of the time these searches will end up with a purchase. Mobile users will play a mayor role for paid search advertising as they are projected to constitute up to 50% of clicks on paid ads by the end of the year 2015.
• Language: You can choose from more than 40 language options to target search users based on their language.
• Time: Pinpoint targeting based on the time of the search users go online can be specified with your paid ads.
• Auto-Tagging: Analytics tracking can be easier with AdWords as you can automatically set tagging of destination URLs for each paid ad.
It provides greater control over your advertising
Unlike free online channels where you have no control as to when you can make contact points with targeted audiences, paid search marketing allow you to have full control over vital aspects of your advertisements.
• Keyword search triggers: An added option is the ability to specify negative keywords, terms which you think are irrelevant for your purposes and should be prevented from triggering your ads.
• Geotargeted Location: You can control the reach of your ads by geotargeting the physical location of your targeted user, whether they’re from a certain radius from your zip code or whether they’re in another country halfway across the globe.
• Time: You can control reach based on season, day of the week or even time of the day.
• Device type: You can specify target device whether computer or mobile device, even specifying which type of phone your targeted audiences might be using.
• Network: Specify whether you are targeting for Search or Display Networks.
• Ad position and more: A great thing about having full control of your paid search marketing is transparency, allowing you to really maximize your marketing dollars to the fullest. Paid search marketing is fully measurable, from choice of keywords to conversion rates, allowing you to identify which campaigns are performing and which needs adjustments or improvements.
Paid search marketing delivers fast and measurable results
Paid search marketing ads can immediately generate results the moment ads are rolled out. Such as getting 64% of the share of clicks on high commercial intent keywords. Paid search marketing allows immediate and real time monitoring of performance and results. This can help them gain better insights from consumer behaviour which allows them to further improve their ads for even better results.
It is very cost-effective
The cost for paid search marketing is significantly a lot cheaper and more cost-effective than the thousands or even hundred thousands spent on traditional media channels – and with better results particularly in terms of conversion. Advertisers using paid searh marketing have full control of their ad spending on a daily basis depending on their budgets and performance.
It is delivering better ROI
Paid search marketing can also deliver better ROI for all your marketing investments. Since you pay only when a particular ad is clicked, you can easily compute and project your ROI depending on conversion rates you are targeting. By knowing the conversion rates, you can now project or even set how much sales you can generate by simply increasing your daily ad budget.
Paid search marketing allows you to harness the power of remarketing
Studies show that only 2% of traffic generated from clicks are likely to convert as sales. With retargeting, you can increase conversion by up to 70% by remarketing your ads to people who have already visited you site and initially saw your offers.
Traditional marketing techniques that worked 5 years ago may not have the same impact now as it did before. How effective you are in assimilating online advertising techniques like paid search marketing may spell the difference between success and failure – as well as the future of your business.