I came across an interesting situation a couple of days ago where I spotted something that interested me in a PPC ad and followed the link. It took me, not to the businesses web page, but to their blog. What do you think, is it worth shelling out good money on a PPC campaign that targets a blog rather than your web site?

From my perspective, at the time, I thought what a waste of a click. Whilst the blog had information that interested me along with links to the relevant web site, it didn’t compel me to want to buy. Out of interest I followed the link to the web site which looked quite flashy, followed a second link to a sales page which then required a further link to start the sale process. That’s four clicks and I am only just starting the purchase process! I know many people would not have left the blog.

I have no idea what the rationale was behind the PPC for the blog. Perhaps they were just trying to increase the blog’s exposure, any sales a bonus. If their PPC campaign was part of a sales strategy then it would most likely fail.

A good PPC campaign has a focus with outcomes that can be measured. A simple rule in business is that you have to spend money to make money. In this case they appeared to be spending money with little likelyhood of making money – surely a road to financial ruin.

PPC advertising can be very rewarding if your keyword selection is good and your landing page is great. Your landing page should be compelling enough that a good proportion of visitors will take the next step. Those next steps by the way should be along the shortest path possible. The longer the path, the more likely your customer is to change their mind.

For blogs, rely on generic traffic. Keep your PPC budget to get interested buyers to your sales page and make that sale a quick sale. After all, this is the age of the internet where everyone wants everything yesterday. PPC for blogs? I think not!

Recent Entries

• Why A Search Engine Googopoly Is Bad For The Internet
• Blogging For The Sake Of Blogging Is Not Blogging
• How To Create An Effective Social Marketing Tweet
• Internal Linking – Don’t Be Afraid Of The Long Tail
• Adding Your Scotland Based Local Business To AOL
• Don’t Be Too Quick To Dismiss Google Buzz
• Are Guest Posts A Bad Link Building Strategy?
• Can You Overdo SEO?
• Review Sites And SEO For Scotland Local Businesses
• What Effect Will HTML5 Have On Web Design And SEO

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 at 4:00 am and is filed under Blogging, PPC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.