The internet has become the primary media outlet to find, research and buy products and services today.  Media buyers and planners are constantly debating on what is the most effective way to target these audiences with digital advertising that will result in the highest conversions maximizing the return on advertising spend (ROAS) for their advertising clients. A few digital advertising agencies have the opinion that search advertising is the most effective means of  targeting audiences based on consumer intent resulting in conversions while some are of the belief that search engine optimization is the most cost effective sales channel.

However, performance marketing must mix both strategies to achieve desired results. Large and Small businesses should use  a combination of pay per click advertising and search engine optimization to drive conversions across the entire sales funnel.

The long tail

The great recession has compelled large and small businesses to operate within tight budgets and cut costs. Though pay per click ads help increase traffic to the website and have demonstrated a return on investment for most businesses, they have become expensive. One way businesses can get higher returns from PPC ads is by focusing on the long tail and determing user intent.  Long tail keywords cost less as there are fewer competitiors bidding on them and they can also help in determining user intent so the advertiser can reflect it in their dynamic ad copys and landing pages resulting in higher conversions at lower cost per clicks.

Augmenting pay per click with SEO

 Any digital advertising strategy should be augmented with relevant keyword rich website content. This strategy automatically improves the seo ranking of the website. This enables large and small businesses to appear for relevant search terms in the organic search engine results pages thereby increasing the exposure to potential target customers.

Many new age, online advertising agencies recognize the value of this combined approach and offer a combination of search engine optimization and keyword selection services to clients.

All clicks are not customers

All PPC clicks are not the same. Large and small businesses must recognize this fact and keep it in mind when building and managing search marketing campaigns. Digital advertising companies help businesses in building online campaigns by educating them on the different  tactics based on the clients objectives. For example, if an antiques business bids on the phrase that includes the location of the store + ”antiques”  to target local area traffic only, the ad copy can still appear and generate clicks that are related to users looking for antiques information or jobs but are not buyers of antiques products. Digital advertising companies can track the keyword phrases used by majority of the users searching on the antiques related keywords and help identify the buyers based on the keyword  intent so the client can maximize its return on advertising spend. 

Smart businesses look to continuously trim their advertising waste by improving their profit margins by incorporating data to evlove their digital advertising strategies.

Tags: pay per click, SEO

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