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Should I pay for keywords when they already produce my product as the top organic result?

by midford
4 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hello Warrior World,

I am a Masters student at Curtin University in Perth, Australia and am new to Internet marketing and new to Warrior Forums as well. The major project for our class is to run an Google ad words campaign for three weeks, promoting a particular company. In this case, we are being given cash from the University to promote particular departments of the school. In researching Keywords to use for our campaign, we have discovered two things:

1) It's a competitive market and a lot of the keywords are expensive
2) For some of the keywords we originally targeted, the school we are trying to promote ALREADY comes up as the top result in the organic search from Google.

This has led me to wonder... if your company/product is already the top organic result for certain keywords, why pay for those keywords? Is there any point in paying for an add when that keyword will already put you in the prime position as far as the organic search goes? In my experience, I will always click an organic result over an advertisement.. so why pay to be in the ad list (for those particular keywords)?

I understand not everyone will agree and so I am looking for feedback and any advice anyone could offer. I am new to this.. so I am looking to learn.

thanks in advance to anyone who can offer some advice.
#adwords #google #keywords #organic #organic results #pay #produce #product #result #top
  • Profile picture of the author Andyhenry
    Hi Midford,

    Yes you should definitely still consider PPC.

    Why - Simple - because you have control over it.

    You said your project was to promote particular departments.

    The organic result will probably be for the main domain with sub-results for various sections of the site.

    With your paid ads you can target exactly the searchers you are after, give them exactly the message you want, give them a call to action, or set a specific expectation in them, and send them to exactly where you want them to land in order to have the effect you would like.

    It's like the difference between a sniper rifle and a shot gun.

    Andy
    p.s welcome to the forum.
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    • Profile picture of the author midford
      Hi Andy,

      Thanks for the helpful response. Let me clarify a few things, but I am guessing that your answer is not going to change much.

      Because we are obviously beginner online marketers, we have only been given $250 to work with for a 3-week period. As I already mentioned, the CPC's of some of the keywords we want to use are simply too expensive for our budget, in the range of $3-5 per keyword even when we target our location for Western Australia. I know we can possibly bring down those charges if we have a good quality score on our landing pages, but with a roughly $12 per day budget.. I am concerned we are going to run out of money very quickly each day and not get many clicks to our site.

      As a result.. do you think it would make more sense to purchase some expensive but highly targeted keywords with highly targeted ads, but end up with fewer clicks? Or.. try to attract more unlikely visitors to our website by targeting more obscure keywords?

      thanks again...
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  • Profile picture of the author Andyhenry
    Hi Midford,

    I hear you - it's a bit of a dilema.

    I guess you're probably not aware of what you actual customer value is? otherwise you could do some reverse engineering on the numbers and know that if you get 1 customer they're worth $1000, and if it takes 100 well targeted visitors to make one conversion into a customer then you need to know you'll get at least 100 visitors for your money. If the numbers don't work then PPC would not make sense.

    However, since you've been given a challenge and have to use Google Adwords - it's much better to look for ways to make it work rather than worry about why it might not.

    Therefore I'd suggest you spend most of your time researching your keywords.

    Get creative and really focus down on hot prospects and ensure you use negative keywords to remove any possible searchers that might click on your ad but not be who you're after.

    I'm guessing you know how to check for search volume, competition etc. so I think it'll come down to how creative you are in thinking about your keywords and how they relate to the end result you want.

    Do you didn't say what you want them to do - is it submit their email? book a course? make an enquiry? etc...

    Depending on your end result that will make a big difference in the specifics of how you target your keywords.

    Andy
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    • Profile picture of the author midford
      Hi Andy, I definitely have no idea what our customer value is? I am not sure I have learned what that is yet.

      Another problem for us is that Curtin cannot even provide us with an end result because the "Apply Now" button does not lead somewhere that can be tracked. As a result, I believe traffic and how long people stay on the site will determine how successful they think we have become.

      Ultimately the end result I am sure they want is more applications for Curtin's Marketing Degree, but with this campaign there will be no way to tell how successful we are in doing that! Frustrating..

      We are working on targeting our keywords as much as we can, but adding in the negative keywords is a good idea.

      thanks again for the help!
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