“Worldwide social network ad revenues are still going strong and set to grow nearly 50% this year, according to eMarketer estimates.” by Emarketer.com
The revenue spending on social networks are increasing this is a fact. More and more businesses discover that social networks are a great communication tool to get in touch with their audience.
B2C and B2B have realized that the business decision makes are active in the social web and try to reach them by paid advertising.
It is a good approach to be visible where your audience is around. But the way how you are visible is more important than a big ad budget.
Moreover a big ad budget does not mean you will be successful with your lead generation campaign. The opposite is more likely the result.
Smart marketers use PPC only for short campaigns, and not as a substitute of a holistic strategy.
Why? Because PPC has no log term value for marketing, when you stop your PPC your lead flow also stops. Another point is that you do not earn any trust in the market with PPC. Anybody can bid for the highest keywords. You can buy trust and reputation by bidding the highest price per click!
When it comes to led generation than “nothing beats the inbound marketing strategy”!
Studies from the past five years revealed that a seriously executed inbound marketing strategy results in up to 62% lower cost per lead an in an up to 55% higher lead conversion rate.
Inbound marketing consists of content creation, content distribution, content marketing, Social Media communication, Lead generation, Lead Nurturing, Lead Conversion, and Closed-Loop Analysis to refine and improve the activities.
Furthermore companies who execute an inbound marketing seriously build trust, their brand and are recognized as a reputable source on the web. They get found on the web when future customers are looking, instead of pushing them with dump old fashioned sales pitches.
Infographic: Inbound Marketing on the rise
Companies who utilize inbound marketing simply leave their competition behind them in the dust. Inbound marketing is brain versus budget, and in the long term the brain always wins!
What do you think? Did I miss anything?
Search ads take up most of the space above the fold and Google has declared war on SEO. I have spoken to many companies that relied on SEO for years and now are in big trouble from Panda, etc. I think it’s nuts to exclude PPC marketing from the mix.