St. Louis Globe-Democrat

After outlining the basics of both organic search engine optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, the question is: Which model is right for your business?

A general rule of thumb is to try and balance both organic and paid search efforts. Yet, like all great marketing plans, that simple theory doesn’t always work. There are cases in which PPC efforts are better than SEO and vice versa.

PPC advertising often is the right avenue when you have a brand new domain. Often new websites have few or no links. The search engines haven’t indexed your site. You don’t have an online presence yet.

For instance, St. Louis author, Sally Rains recently released her book on the true story of Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With The Wind.” In an effort to draw awareness to the book, she purchased a new domain and had a website developed. As Rains continues having her website developed and ideally would initiate SEO tactics, it may be beneficial to run a PPC program. This would generate instant online presence. By creating an account through Google, Yahoo!, or Bing, she would be able to have PPC ads running in about an hour. Since the effects are immediate, Rains would be able to see return on investment (ROI) relatively quickly as well.

Another scenario that PPC advertising may be a better choice than SEO comes from a traditional marketing idea – testing. Traditional marketing teaches us that testing marketing messages or new products is often wise. By choosing to run a PPC program, you would be able to track the effectiveness of your message or in fact test how the marketplace reacts to a new product.

There are numerous ways in which this scenario may be beneficial to a company. McKendree University, for example, when launching a new academic program, could develop a PPC campaign in and around this new program offering. By proper keyword research and developing a tightly knit campaign with specific messaging, McKendree could roll out this new program to potential students. It would be critical to monitor the leads and track if these leads actually convert (in this case become students). Utilizing the data in hand, McKendree would be able to determine if this program is worth investing in full time.

Other instances when PPC may be a good choice for your company:

• Targeting purposes – This is ideal if you are running any regional marketing campaigns.
• Immediacy –As mentioned earlier, PPC offers immediate results, which may be an ideal solution if you are looking for fast ROI.
• Regulation – One of the great benefits of PPC is the ability to regulate traffic volume. By setting a limited budget, running the campaign only at certain times of the day or on certain days even, or saturating the marketing, you have the ability to regulate the amount of traffic you wish to have at any given time.

Finally, one of the biggest benefits of running PPC programs is control. Unlike other marketing and media efforts, it is simple to control PPC efforts including who is viewing your ad, the message of your ad copy and landing pages, the duration of your program, your budget, and even geographical targeting.

Brandy Woolford is an Internet consultant at SteadyRain. A graduate of Saint Louis University, her communications background includes work in primetime news, public relations, media relations and online marketing. For questions or comments, contact her through www.SteadyRain.com or globe-democrat@steadyrain.com.

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