Is Paid Search Marketing Recession Proof?

We’re often asked how our clients are reacting to the economic climate.

It’s true that clients are paying more attention to their daily budgets, their cost per click and to their conversion rates. Our strategies remain relatively unchanged as a result of the economic climate because great PPC optimisation has always been about getting the best results from the lowest spend.

Paid search marketing spend is increasing at a time when most other forms of marketing are in decline. One of the reasons behind this phenomenon is “risk avoidance”. When times are good and marketing budgets are high, advertisers are prepared to take risks with their marketing spend. When budgets are tight the opposite is true and budgets are focused on strategies that advertisers know work well.

If you run an ad in a newspaper or on radio you may have a “gut feeling” that the campaign has been effective. You may notice a general rise in sales or more enquiries but it’s difficult to pin down exactly which advert generated which sale. If you have a varied marketing programme, how do you know if the rush of sales you have experienced is as a result of your poster campaign, your radio ads or your newspaper ads.

One of the most significant benefits of PPC marketing is that tracking allows you to know which campaigns, adverts and keywords generate which sales and affords you the control to make improvements in the right areas. In short, PPC allows you to make evidence based decisions about where and when you should focus your marketing spend.

When times are difficult there are certain strategies you can employ to ensure a limited budget is spent wisely.

• “Ad Scheduling” allows you to reduce the amount you spend or even to pause spend completely at specific times of the day or specific days of the week. If you’re not open for business on Sunday why spend money advertising when you’re less likely to generate a sale?
  
  
• Spend more time researching the less obvious keywords, they’re cheaper and often convert much better.
  
  
• Set your bid price at level that you can afford and forget about average position. If 25p a click is your limit then stick to it. If you don’t know what your optimum cost per click is... find out and find out quickly.
  
  
• If you have reliable conversion tracking in place, only bid on keywords that are directly contributing to the sale. If you don’t have reliable tracking, prioritise your keywords into groups of high, medium and low according to their commercial value. You can then bid more for the high priority and less for the low.
  
  
• PPC allows you to target customers very precisely. If people in Wales are more likely to buy your product than people in Scotland then pay for more clicks from Wales and less for clicks from Scotland. If people from England are unlikely to buy from you then don’t advertise in England at all.
  
  
• You can also target according to age and gender. Only 38% of the people who search for “Britney Spears CD” are male but males make up 75% of the people who search for “Britney Spears Video”. If you were selling Britney Videos, who would you be better off targeting your adverts towards?