Will a 2% difference in business performance break your business? Probably not,
but this is the way that many people think without realizing it. Case in point:
when discussing an SEO campaign regarding a particularly competitive term in the
construction industry, one potential client disclosed that he was buying a few new
dump trucks to ease the load (no pun intended) on his business.
Later when it came to discussing the price for his campaign for this competitive
term, the $5000 a month fee made him stagger. He said “but that’s $60,000 a year.”
He was ready to end the conversation until we pointed out that the potential profit
of ranking for this term was in the millions. So we asked him how much of an
increase in his business would this represent? He said it would triple his business,
at which point we pointed out that he said he would be willing to buy a new dump
truck to increase his productivity by 2%, a truck that costs over a $100,000 while
not being willing to purchase a service that cost less than the truck but would
improve his business by 300%.
This same phenomenon of “not seeing the forest for the trees” occurs when marketing
managers become extremely comfortable with using large PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns
as the one and only marketing strategy for the web. This is the type of strategy
that can lead a company to bankruptcy!
When using a PPC campaign as your sole strategy, you will need to have either the
lowest price or the very best quality or both to survive against your competitors.
Otherwise, you will always be in a position of spending an incredible amount on PPC
to get only modest gains. If your product is slightly weak or your price is at all
inflated, you will be counting on the pure saturation of your ads to attract only the
laziest consumer who won’t search further to realize that they can do better than your
product or service.
With Natural Search Engine Optimization, the amount you need to spend will decrease over
time as you gain a natural ranking that won’t disappear the way that PPC does when you
stop spending. Now, let’s imagine that for one reason or another a few of the big players
begin to seriously up their bids at a point in your PPC campaign where you are just barely
making a margin. This is a recipe for disaster! Without a Natural Search Engine Optimization
campaign in place your product is dead for a while from the lack of visibility. Let this go
on for too long and you could see the destruction of your company. Don’t let this happen.
Think ahead! Think SEO!
