Why Paid Search Rocks and Email Lists Do Not
Once in awhile someone throws down the gauntlet and you just have to accept. In this case, a former Portentite went on to MarketFish, an email marketing list company in Seattle, claiming that in comparison, paid search is a lesser beast. While I would never throw away a marketing opportunity (we are a full service internet marketing firm after all), I can’t stand idle while content like “Why list marketing trounces paid search marketing” is out there unanswered.
Please enjoy the fishing theme as well. Since they’re all about fishing after all…
Test the waters with PPC and bring in the catch of the day every time.
- Availability and accessibility: Paid search is open to anyone and everyone with a website and $5. Start a new account and start on your own, no experts, renting, or contracts required. Not sure what to do? Try one of the hundreds of online tutorials, blogs or forums filled with paid search experts that can not only point you in the right direction, but help you make the biggest splash.
- It’s fiscally sound: Whether your budget is $50 per week or $5000, you can test and troll your way to more leads and revenue with a smartly managed account for a lot less than the cost of a list.
- Instant gratification: While no marketing method is guaranteed to elicit your hopeful response of millions of dollars and leads, paid search will offer you the dexterity of immediate edits, pausing, deleting and an on/off switch that an email can’t.
- It’s all about the volume: There are 34,000 searches on average performed on Google every second of every day. That’s 2,937,600,000 in 24hrs. People perform searches a lot more than they have email inboxes to check.
- It’s targeted: Unlike an email to your inbox which you may or may not remember to look at later, a paid search visitor comes to you. They’ve set aside the time to think up the search query, open a browser, type it in and start looking. They want to find you, there you are and now you’re pulling in the day’s haul, hook, line and sinker.
If you need help with PPC advertising management, we can do that. Click here!
Elizabeth Marsten / ebkendo
Director of Search Marketing
Director of Search Marketing
Elizabeth leads Portent’s SEO, PPC, Copy, Social and Link Building teams through their daily trials and triumphs.
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Agreed. I still think the average search results page on Google is still less crowded than the average person’s email inbox.
Plus, with an email campaign, there’s more margin for error. You have to devise a whole bunch of content. Whereas with paid search, you can distill your message to 70 characters.
Elizabeth, once again a great post. I have been working an account for a year now that sells used diesel engines. These sell for $15K to $300K. There is no way we could find an email list to help us do that. Using PPC we get leads everyday and one month we were able to generate over $300K in sales, some to countries other than the USA.
On the other hand, another client sells to boutique owners and had a good email list of clients. We use email to generate sales for her. The end result has been a viable business generating good sales each week. So, like all things, the situation dictates the tool. That being said, I do believe PPC is a great tool.
HH