By Pamela Nelson
I recently met with the CEO of one of our new clients. He was very focused on ROI for Pay Per Click (PPC), as he should be, but almost to the point where it was prohibitive. I’ve seen this hesitancy time and time again. The leap from traditional advertising to online advertising seems to be a difficult one. This client placed a full page ad in a recent spring catalog for a very well known department store. How does one measure the ROI of that ad? How much does an ad like this cost? A full page ad in a catalog levels the playing field – each advertiser has the same amount of space to promote their product. Not being from the traditional advertising world, I can only assume that the ad space costs everyone the same and that perhaps positioning within the catalog (i.e. front/back cover, first page) may result in additional cost. It seems the norm to spend so much money on non-trackable advertising.
Yet, how does one measure how many sales were a direct result of this ad? How many people are already customers or know the brand, and how many just happened to walk by the counter in the store? There’s no way to know the impact the catalog ad had on sales. I am in no way suggesting that traditional advertising be replaced by online advertising. What I am suggesting is to keep an open mind to new ways of reaching your target audience through paid search in addition to traditional advertising.
PPC is extremely trackable and measurable. So why is there fear in spending the money to perform a reasonable test? How do we level the playing field so that we can truly see the impact of online advertising? In order to compete on the same level as other online competitors, not only does a new brand have to spend money on brand awareness in addition to driving direct sales, but they have to have a budget large enough to at least have a presence throughout the day. A well known brand has the advantage of not spending money on brand awareness and has the benefit of people going directly to their website, regardless of their daily budget. Think of it as a ramp-up period where a new advertiser has to “catch up” in terms of brand awareness.
So why are some clients so afraid to take the plunge into the world of online advertising? The benefit is that we can optimize on the fly to insure positive results based upon real data that is actionable. Optimization includes testing of ad creatives, images, keywords and landing pages to find the winning combination of elements based upon real data that is actionable. So if the premise of advertising remains the same and PPC is another medium to use, then keeping an open mind to the benefits of online adverting, of which PPC is just one facet, is crucial to the success of any business who wants to have an online presence.
