Are You One of the Small Businesses Currently Wasting 25% of their PPC Budget?

A study just released by WordStream Inc. shows that many small businesses are wasting up to one-quarter of their PPC budgets because they don’t have the time, money or know-how to properly manage their PPC campaigns. While PPC continues to grow as a search engine marketing tactic employed by small businesses everywhere, the findings of this latest study are cause for alarm.

Just like marketing offline, the tactics you employ on the web to move your site up the search rankings require time and money, and PPC campaigns that don’t deliver results are a waste of both.

The study reviewed the accounts of 500 web marketing clients (who were in charge of their own PPC campaigns) and showed that through simple managerial errors or a lack of management all together, they were wasting their marketing budgets. WordStream found that the following were the types of mistakes many of their small business clients were making:

• Web pages where conversion tracking wasn’t set up
• Many of those marketing via PPC were doing so to get more phone enquiries and yet they hadn’t set-up call extensions

These mistakes, along with a slew of other search engine marketing mistakes web owners make on a regular basis, occur in large part because they don’t know enough about the tools to properly direct or manage their campaigns. When used properly, Google AdWords can be a very valuable web marketing tool that’s capable of delivering the traffic, leads and conversions your business needs. Just like with regular search, if you aren’t properly tracking or reviewing the number of people who land on your web page from the click of an ad, you will never know what works and what doesn’t, where your marketing strategy needs improvement or what to continue.

Lost Marketing Investments

If you’ve taken the initiative to begin a search marketing or PPC campaign, and more importantly invested the money, you want it to pay off, right? Well, the average web owner surveyed had a PPC campaign budget of $1200 a month. This means that $300 of the total they spend each month in order to market their business through PPC is going straight down the toilet.

And if dollar figures don’t quite drive home the magnitude of this web marketing disaster, WordStream even translated the AdWords money that’s wasted each month into the number of leads their clients are losing. Does the prospect of losing 569 product or service sales make you want to re-think your PPC approach?! It should!

This WordStream study is proof that the average business owner whose forte is not marketing on the web should trust their online marketing needs, including the management of their PPC campaigns, to people in the know.

If the thought of wasting so much valuable marketing money each month scares you, or some of those commonly made mistakes mentioned in the study are ringing bells, get in touch with us. The SEO Company can perform all the set-up, management and analysis your campaign requires to be successful. 

Get in touch with The SEO Company on 1300 885 557 or email us here