B2B Web Strategy Blog - eMagine

Beyond conversion: PPC can do more than “just” generate leads

November 18th, 2009 Posted by: Matt Roche

B2Bs have become so accustomed to the usual pay per click (PPC) scenario…

Searcher views ad |  searcher clicks on ad  |  hits landing page  |  registers for offer

…that it tends to become all that we measure.  We tend to think only in terms of:

• # of registrants
• conversion rate (registrations / clicks to page)
• cost/click, cost/registration
• registrant quality (how many become prospects and ultimately customers)

It’s a great example of the well-known psychological phenomenon of seeing only what you’re looking for.  PPC is so awesomely competent at generating leads that… we tend to forget its other potential uses, and thus may fail to measure for them.

In particular, we forget that its full name is “PPC advertising” …which should remind us that advertising has traditionally served worthy goals other than lead generation:  things like branding and market positioning/conditioning.

In her excellent post for SearchEngineLand, Patricia Hursh says that an excessive focus on leadgen results in a scenario that probably plays out every day in one B2B or another…

A senior executive or Board member does a search on some keywords that all common sense says are associated with her company’s product …but no ad for her company appears!  Does this mean the Marketing Department has gone on permanent holiday? …not necessarily.  It probably means that those responsible marketers are thinking of PPC solely as a leadgen vehicle, which conditions the metrics they use;  and those metrics probably show our exec’s keywords to be inefficient in terms of conversion, and hence un-worthy of bidding on.

Our executive could be forgiven for saying, “Excuse me, but don’t we simply have to be visible on the major words that people will search on when they think about our type of product …whether they’re ready to fill out our bloody form today or not?” …and in fact she’d be spot-on right.  (This is why we have Board members;  it’s so there’s someone around who’s not afraid to ask those innocent questions that end up pointing out the blinders that end up afflicting all of us who get too close to what we do every day.)

So go ahead:  buy some of those phrases that your market will use, even though they don’t convert well.  Rest assured that you’re planting a seed that has a good chance of flowering when that searcher gets serious about buying down the road.  To feel better about this use of PPC, try using some metrics from the Dark Ages of print advertising, such as:

• number of ad impressions
• share of total market impressions
• cost-per-impression (CPM)
• click-through rate
• volume of visitors
• cost-per-visitor

It’s best if possible to run separate campaigns for each goal – lead generation and market visibility – focusing on the proper metrics for each.  In Patricia’s words:

“Do continue to track registrations, inquires, and leads for all of your campaigns, but don’t ignore the additional value search can deliver in terms of brand building, market positioning, and reaching prospects early and throughout the entire buying process.”

Entry Filed under: B2B Web Strategy, PPC