Companies and their C-level/Directors/Managers in Marketing have a love/hate relationship with pay-per-click (PPC). Those who love it are usually highly analytical and have keyword ROI and complex bidding rules (i.e., spreadsheets of numbers validating the marketing spend). Those who do not like PPC do not understand the spend when compared to SEO, which is “free.” Additionally, I have heard, “I ignore those ads,” as a reason not to invest in PPC. (However, with the advent of DVR, this argument is becoming easier to defend.)
All of this being said, The New York Times is running a two-part series on Master Google AdWords where they explore a party entertaining business that has grown their business “significantly” using AdWords. I love hearing real-world examples of how PPC helps make people successful.
If you have not tried PPC before, or you have in the past and it did not work out, I would recommend now is the time to do so. Google and Bing/Yahoo! have made tremendous strides to make PPC a valuable marketing channel for advertisers. Google’s product offerings are such that you can commandeer double the space of a traditional PPC ad. And, in some cases, you can deliver product images within the ad.
2010 has been the year of paid search…and it shows.