Small Businesses waste up to 25 Percent of their PPC Budget; Why?

 Pay per click marketing channels such as Google AdWords are an amazing way to advertise. PPC can help a website spread the word fast across search engine rankings and more. While a site is waiting the months required in order to build organic web traffic, in the meantime, PPC provides instantaneous results.

There is a dark side to PPC however that not so many marketers enjoy talking about. According to some estimates, as much as 25 percent of a site’s PPC budget ends up wasted. How this happens can largely be attributed to where the money is purposed. Due to errors in strategy, it is easy to put money towards an AdWords campaign that is doomed from the get-go. In large part, this is from small businesses who are going at it alone without the guidance of a marketing expert at their side.

Even on basic PPC best practices, many small businesses end up investing in the wrong places. Improving ad relevancy and managing accounts should be a priority however to too many investors, they see a program like AdWords as an opportunity to invest and reap the rewards without having to follow any rulebook. By taking on PPC without the hands of an online marketing company to guide the wheel, this can result in lost leads and increased costs.

So what we recommend to ensure that every dollar is being put towards the right areas is to hire an online marketing expert or PPC marketing company to assist. Any experienced marketer should be able to sit down with you and, first, establish some end goals. This is an important part to the strategizing process and will determine whether an AdWords campaign is designed to generate leads, promote specific product sales, drive traffic, or something else.

After a goal has been established for a PPC campaign, the next step is to take the time to research how to move forward according to budget and keywords. No small business has an endless budget to work through. Thus, a budget needs to be established on specific keywords. By knowing what keywords to target for traffic, this is what will ultimately guide the most relevant traffic to your site. Using a PPC online marketing company, many small businesses find they are able to stretch their dollar further using keywords that are less pricy, more specific, and that provide more relevant consumer traffic.

The last step towards managing an effective PPC marketing campaign is to monitor it in detail and to know what metrics to pay attention to. As an example, conversions will tell you whether a PPC campaign is working or not.

PPC campaigns hold a lot of potential however a small business must do two things to make it work – they must hire some sort of marketing expert or company to provide guidance on how to maximize their financial investment and they must invest the time. Just setting up a PPC campaign does not entitle anyone to see it work. A PPC campaign needs to be monitored and managed, with changes made on the go as the latest data comes in.

For small business owners, that might mean investing an hour a week to go through campaigns, test, and adjust. Needless to say, speaking with an online marketing company should provide some insight on how to get the most from a PPC marketing campaign.