The BIG d.i.y. pay per click Opportunity Cost

One of the somewhat universally attractive aspects of PPC advertising is its relative lack of complexity. In my humble view, this is at once very appealing and, equally, so very easy to underestimate.

A lack of complexity does necessarily equate to being easy, nor successful.

Unfortunately, given that you don't have a physical conversation with the prospect who's eyeballing your ppc ad you also don't get the opportunity to gauge their rationale for dis-engaging. After all, if we assume for instance a 3% click through rate, does that not mean 97% of that in-the-market traffic was lost to a competitor?

Ask yourself, if this was your salesperson would you accept that number (clearly, yes I'm generalising, industries differ and so do their conversion rates etc).

The positive is that the 3% number is a fairly normal expectation for a direct mail piece, so it may very well be that your PPC campaign was delivered at a lower cost than direct mail, and I bet with far greater reach and richness.

However, economists will argue that the major cost for any given investment is the opportunity cost associated with that choice.

My view is that search marketing is advantageous for a complex multitude of reasons. One of which is simply that you aren't engaging in a process of interruption (of varying levels) to engage the prospect - you are engaging in an attempted dialogue with a soon-to-be consumer currently determining brand values and product/service attributes.

I've seen campaigns double in performance with sometimes very small changes. I've yet to really see a site owner ponder profusely about the eyes that wonder past their site every day.

*The major assumption here is that a PPC specialist will outperform that of the originator. Not always so, but there is something to be said for the knowledge and experiences that can be shared across industries, products and services by someone/a team that does this for a living.

$1Million Dollars or a clean office?

Ok, let me be upfront here - it's not an "either/or" proposition and it probably says as much about my communication as it does the clients view of the world. Nonetheless, I'm sure I'm not alone, so humour me?

I've just spent a solid hour with a potential client discussing the disconnect between their business goals and the search marketability and communication/experiential qualities of their website. I'm still trying to rationalise how;

a) somehow there exists in the clients mind, on the one hand, the notion that the marketplace of the physical world is inextricably linked to that of the online world i.e "our business is much bigger than theirs so why are we not on page one of Google like they are!! C'mon you're the expert tell me..." And yet..

b) on the other hand there is no urgency, strategy, resources allocated to the only communication channel that they have running 24/7, the only channel not bound by geography, the channel most rich in information etc etc - their website.

Are they linked, or are they not? If so, who lasts in business by getting an IT girl/guy to hang out their shingle, set their pricing, put the stock on the shelves, open the doors, and come back in a year to see how its all going?? You wouldn't do it offline, so why do it online? If your mind is grabbing all the justifications why - such as not knowing, potential pitfalls, cost involved, where do I start and so on, just STOP for a moment and simply answer the question - why do you hang on to "no strategy is a good strategy"?

Ok, you're probably wanting to jump in here with two things; why am I being disparaging toward the "IT girl/guy" and what the hell does this have to do with a clean office!?

Firstly my reference to IT is simply due to the breadth of people who view online marketing and communication as a function of IT as opposed to something facilitated and supported by technology. Not everyone, possibly not even a majority, but still many.

As for the clean office - let me explain. After my hour with the client in question we've successfully moved through the various levels of defining the needs and processes of marketing online, and the value creation possibilities. The client themselves has even brought to their own, and my awareness, the success of one of his main competitors who buys wholesale from the client, operates from a house with zero stock (all drop shipped direct from wholesalers), and who "must be making at least 1 million in sales" a year. Great! Clear indication that you see the value in nurturing this channel, so let's move on to my fees....

Without the details, let me just say that after proposing a solution to the client (that I would guess would be less costly than their office cleaning expenses every year) I was met with a "whoa I didn't think it would be that much!"

hmmm let's re-visit the notion of value, and so on it went.

Yes, you're right, it's up to me to communicate effectively so these objections fade into distant thinking however I see it often, business people, the influencers of society, people who take responsibility for their own learning, simply seeing online as kind of, sort of part of the real world, but not really.

Now, where's my mop..