Paid traffic, or pay-per-click advertising (PPC), can be an effective way of driving visitors to your blog. Used correctly, you can expect to gain new paying customers.
If you are not aware of the potential drawbacks of PPC and how to minimize them, you may end up incurring significant financial losses.
PPC is a complex process that you can’t just go into blindly. Below are some drawbacks that you might encounter with this marketing method:
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Quality of Blog Visits
In any kind of endeavor, you always want to focus on quality over quantity. This is especially true in the world of blogging.
No matter how much blog traffic you get from your paid ads, it’s not going to be any good if those visitors don’t turn into loyal subscribers and customers.
Even if you manage to get 500+ new leads from PPC advertising, the money you paid to drive them to your blog will be all for naught if they aren’t interested in your content.
A high conversion rate (turning visitors into customers) is necessary if you want your blog to thrive. PPC won’t work if you don’t prioritize your target audience and the quality of your content.
Rising Prices of Paid Traffic
Google has become one of the most popular search engines in recent years. Because of that, placing a paid ad with them has gotten more expensive.
Even cheaper options like Facebook and Bing have increased their rates as well.
Unless you have a substantially large marketing budget, it may not be cost-effective for your blog to go into PPC advertising. You may even have trouble hitting a positive ROI if you can’t manage to get quality traffic.
Hassles of Optimizing Blog Ads
Optimizing your ads for search engines takes considerable time and effort. It takes thorough research to figure out what makes your audience tick as well as the proper placement for ads.
PPC advertising is not as simple as paying for exposure. It can be a tedious, complex process that can be fulfilled only by a trained expert.
Without their research and knowledge, your ads will just likely remain ineffective.
Annoying or Ignorable Ad Placements
People use search engines and other websites for various purposes. Most of the time, they just want to get what they need as quickly as possible.
However, if your ads are too glaring, there’s a huge chance that people would get annoyed when they see your brand.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are ads that can be too ignorable for users. They just feel like there’s nothing in it for them. Or perhaps, they ignore the ads because it’s trying too hard to get users to click.
Incompetent PPC Companies
The Internet now has a much larger role in people’s lives because of its increased accessibility.
Because of this, the Internet marketing industry has boomed to cater to the growing demand of various online businesses.
Choosing a reputable PPC company can certainly be a challenge.
Surely, many of them will be able to create a seemingly reliable PPC marketing strategy for you. The problem is, even if their plans look great on paper, when it comes to execution they may not be able to deliver what they had promised.
If you really want to venture into PPC advertising, make sure that you choose an Internet marketing company that has a good reputation, preferably one that is recommended by someone you trust.
Avoid shady companies that have a lot of promises but do not deliver results. Come up with realistic expectations when choosing a PPC firm and conduct thorough research to get the ideal one.
Most online users are hesitant when it comes to advertising
For a long time, people have been sceptical about different forms of advertising including PPC. Sometimes, people may look down upon your marketing efforts as you try to promote your product through your blog.
They may not be down to the idea that you are trying to sell them a product or service that they may not even need.
Most people hate it when online business owners slam ads on them when they are busy surfing the web for certain information.
Controversial statements have even come up to claim that PR is replacing advertising and that strategies such as SEO are more effective than PPC.
You may, therefore, receive some negative reaction from the public if you only use Paid traffic as your primary marketing strategy.
It is advisable that you complement SEO with PPC to generate more traffic to your blog.
It is a short term solution
Though paid traffic can boost your search engine optimization, it is more temporary compared to other marketing strategies.
When your budget runs out, you can easily lose your listing and affect the traffic on your blog. As soon as you stop spending money to pay for traffic, the PPC ads suddenly disappear.
If the ads get discontinued, there is a high likelihood that the sales and traffic go down.
It is therefore hard to maintain a PPC campaign without enough money. PPC also triggers fewer clicks compared to organic listings.
Try to manage your campaign closely to gauge if the ads are reaching your target audience and generating conversions.
Avoid getting caught up in a battle over keywords with other competitors since this can make you overspend on your PPC campaign.
The possibility of click fraud
Most PPC platforms fail to discuss click fraud openly. Some of the PPC advertisers try to barrage ads from competitors with fake clicks from multiple IP addresses.
They do this through the use of damaging software which can stimulate human clicks from anywhere. This leads to expensive bills due to the presence of ghost traffic.
Though Google sometimes detects some click fraud, some experts can evade without being noticed.
There is no certainty of getting sales from using PPC
Many online business owners assume that PPC must translate to sales. Just because you invest your money to pay for traffic, it does not mean that it is a must you get conversions.
Online marketing companies tend to exaggerate this, but it may not be a reality. You should know that different factors affect conversion.
Such factors include your keywords, quality of the ad as well as the product or service you have to offer.
PPC is more of a gamble than a sure fire way of getting sales. It is taking a risk with your money with the hope of generating sales.
Be open to the possibility of losing your money if the campaign backfires.
It is completely up to you if you want to go for PPC advertising. If you are already working on your other Internet marketing strategies (SEO, social media campaigns, etc.), PPC may be a worthwhile addition to the mix.
