subject: When To Use Ppc As Opposed To Seo In B2b Search Marketing [print this page] In B2B search marketing, there are so many internet marketing methods you can use that it can be confusing to know when to use pay per click (PPC), when to focus on search engine optimization (SEO), or when to use a combination of both.
Here we'll discuss two scenarios where it might be more prudent to use pay per click marketing than SEO - with a caveat. Every business is different ie. size of budget, type of product/service, customer demographics, etc. Hence, ingest the scenarios discussed here, but make sure you proceed according to what works best for your business.
B2B Search Marketing Tip: Use PPC When You're Testing a New Product/Service
Pay per click marketing is ideal for testing how well a new product or service is going to be received by your customers. The reason is, you can set up your campaigns within a matter of minutes and have quantifiable data in front of you in a few hours.
Over a few days, you can start to glean what it is customers like about your new offering, what they don't like, changes they want, etc. All of this can save you time and money if you use the data correctly.
Before sinking more money into an ad campaign, for example, maybe you need to go back and make some changes. Or if the product is a hit, then you can piggyback off this success by offering complementary products and services, or bundling this popular new offering with others that don't perform as well.
Using SEO as a B2B search marketing strategy won't give you data this quickly.
Another advantage of using PPC instead of SEO when testing a new product or service is that you can use the findings from your pay per click campaign to put together more effective SEO campaigns.
B2B Search Marketing: When Time Is of the Essence
PPC is an excellent way to quickly jump into a market. Whether it's to capitalize on a holiday season, or beat the competition's launch date, pay per click allows you to start getting traffic immediately.
Caution: While PPC is ideal in many situations, make sure to take the time to do everything you can to make your campaign effective, eg, construct an action-oriented landing page, a way to capture leads, a way to track sales, etc.
Just because PPC can give you immediate results does not mean that you don't have to put measures in place to capitalize on this very effective B2B search marketing tactic.
