SEO Scoop had a brilliant analysis of the current SEO scene back in April. The author included this little bit of insight on PPC in his analysis and I’ll have to say it makes a lot of sense:
Hitting my numbers. THAT is what is important to me as a marketer. I must always keep my eye on the margin because it is not about what you make. It is about what you keep.
Search engines are merely a means to an end. No real marketer wants search engine traffic. They want conversions. Organic placement is time consuming, difficult and expensive. THAT is why PPC makes so much money. Not because it works so well, but because it works better than nothing and it is far easier and usually cheaper.
Pay per click is misunderstood by those who don’t use it. It isn’t just another advertising medium through which you toss away unwanted money. It is a traffic driving tool. The whole point to PPC advertising is to drive traffic to your high value landing pages so that you can convert that traffic to sales. The manner in which you do that determines, to a great deal, how successful you are. The key is in your keyword research, landing page optimization, and the sales message. Do they work in tandem or do they work against each other?
If you see PPC as just another advertising medium then you don’t really understand it. Not until you treat it as a tool for driving targeted traffic to your pages that you want to make the highest sales will you ever make the most of it as a business tool. How you manage the tool depends on your goals, your business, and your message.
