Never attempt to sell using PPC. Agree?

[gooooooders]

That's the advice from the book "one page marketing plan" which I'm currently enjoying

The theory goes as follows
If you spend $100 buying 100 clicks and only 2% of those people are in a buying mood then you've wasted $98.

Instead you should be targeting:

1. the 2% who are ready to buy AND...
2. the 8% who might buy in the next few days AND...
3. the 30% who might buy in the next few weeks AND...
4. the 30% who might buy in the next few months.

The remaining 30% will never be in the buying mood.

And the way to target the 70% is to offer them a PDF download or brochure etc and then nurture a relationship over the coming days, weeks and months so that when they finally do get into a buying frame of mind they will have you at the top of their list.

Thoughts?

[justpassing]

Thoughts?

Spam works great to sell, and it is free...

[gooooooders]

You think I'm trying to sell more copies of that book?
No I'm just someone who bought it. I'll edit out the book name now so that others don't get the same impression as you.

Update: I can't edit the original post as too much time has passed

[mrblond]

I use PPC to sell all day long. If the 2 that clicked spend more than 98.00 I'm even, and I've been exposed to 98 other for free. Luckily my sales dollars per click is decent, and my sales ratio is better than 2%

[gooooooders]

I have been throwing £2000 per month at it without accurately tracking or measuring conversions because we don’t have a basket or an order confirmation page.

So I’m hiring a guy to help me setup a watertight conversion tracking system and then if my £2k can be shown to bring £3k back in then I can throw £10k at it instead.

But until then I’m now restricting my adverts to offering my buyers guide pdf.

[RhinoFish]

PDF thing is nearly always a bad idea (depends on product).
And the downstream conversion rate is rarely as good as one hopes for.

Sell a good product or service, at a good price, attack every channel you can, where Paid Search is just one part of the puzzle.
In Paid Search, adjust your bids so it makes sense for your biz plan, spend nothing more there, the expense is high.
Be smart about being narrow and specific in your paid search.

Don't depend on Paid Search to float your boat.
Add other channels, Organic, Affiliate, Social Media, etc.

[gooooooders]

Thanks RhinoFish.
You don't mention tracking conversions. Do you manage to do that accurately?

"spend nothing more there, the expense is high"

But if you spend $100 and get $130 back you'd be a fool not to double, triple, quadruple your ad spend right? Then you spend $400 and get $520 back.

[buckworks]

>> you'd be a fool not to double, triple, quadruple your ad spend right

Maybe. PPC doesn't always scale up smoothly, so you have to test, monitor and test some more until you find your sweet spot.

For example, if you increased your spend just by bidding higher, you might double your spend but not double your results. If you spent $200 and made $240, you'd still be ahead but the increase isn't proportional.

If you increased your bids even more, you might spend $300 and make $340. In that case you might as well scale back, and use the extra $100 to experiment someplace else.

The quality of your targeting will make a big difference to productive PPC advertising. Start by monitoring the queries where your ads have appeared, and watch for off-target words that you could add to your negative keywords.

[RhinoFish]

buckworks nailed it, it's an auction, and is not linear.

And the risk of being single faceted in marketing, is very high.
Specialization is important today, for sure.
But the changes that come along, vary so quickly, diversity of approach can save you from a knock out blow.

"You don't mention tracking conversions. Do you manage to do that accurately?"
Nothing is perfect, but yes, we go for accuracy, AND, where we know there are imperfections, we look to consistently know and understand them.
You don't need perfect vision to drive a car, learn to cope with the few bugs on your windshield, keep it from getting worse than that.

[quiver]

If you are finding you are attracting buyers and potential buyers who are still in the early stages of browsing, then I find using Audiences to increase bids for past visitors who are searching on Google again, to work quite well. Word of warning for this to work you must make sure your initial click is relevant or you will throwing good money away twice.

[ogletree]

I'm not sure why anyone would consider this an either-or situation. As long as you are making a profit do all things that get sales.