Is Search Marketing Always the Best Lead Generation Tactic?
Perry Marshall, long thought of as THE guru for Adwords (Google pay-per-click) marketing, has an interesting post on his blog titled “Sometimes Google AdWords is the least effective way to reach your target customer.” In it he mentions four situations in which other marketing tactics (email being one) can be more effective than search.
These four non-search marketing situations are:
Situation #1: When you’re a manufacturer selling parts in large lots to other manufacturers.
As an example, when running a campaign for just such a client, Perry found that a Google Adwords campaign produced mostly consumers wanting to buy the part in single or very low quantities. Not surprisingly the campaign didn’t pay off.
Situation #2: When you’re selling high-end equipment, software or services to high level executives and low level people are a waste of time.
I’d like to add an emphasis on the last half of that sentence: and low level people are a waste of time.
Often said low-level people are assigned initial research duty and it pays to be visible to them to get your name on the long list. We advise clients to be sure this isn’t the case with their product or service before completely abandoning the idea of finding value in search marketing.
Situation #3: When you sell a product or service that solves a problem people don’t even realize they have.
This is bsolutely true. If people aren’t looking for you online, you’re going to have to generate awareness and demand for the overall solution first.
Situation #4: When your buyers are beyond the intro phase, know where they want to go online and are spending time on subject-specific websites instead of searching.
I think this is more of keyword issue than anything else. The more specific your keywords, the closer to purchase your buyers will be. At that point maybe they have left search behind and are more easily found on an industry website. This is where the Google content network – handled correctly – can pay off.
A little testing will answer that question for you.
Over the past half-decade of helping clients attract more leads and customers with search marketing, I’ve occasionally spoken to people for whom pay per click or search engine optimization just isn’t the best approach. The most important question to ask and answer is a fairly obvious one: are my prospects searching for my solution online?
If the answer is yes, go with it.
Technorati Tags: search, seo, search engine optimization, ppc, pay per click, email marketing