What’s wrong with PPC advertising?
September 29th, 2007
On the surface, the PPC (or Pay-Per-Click) advertising model seems to be perfect. You get to show your ad to a targeted audience an unlimited number of times, and you’re only charged when someone takes action by clicking on your ad to visit your web site. You can even start with a budget as low as fifty dollars. Once you dig a bit deeper into the real-world mechanics of a PPC campaign, you quickly realize just how ineffective it can be.
Many people don’t even pay attention to the sponsored (PPC) ads, whether they are displayed on the search results or on the millions of MFA web sites because they know that they paid to be there. Another thing to consider is that your competitors are usually more than happy to click away on your ads, whittling your budget away. This practice is known as click fraud, and according to industry estimates, ranges between 12-20%.
A more effective approach is to combine an organic SEO campaign with an online advertising campaign (utilizing video advertising). This lets you reach your prospects on the web sites that they know and trust, such as forums, blogs or portals that they frequent, as well as through the major search engines. When you tie this to an effective offline advertising campaign, you can quickly become a dominate force in your industry.
