Time and time again, we see desperate business owners frantically sign up for online advertising services as a last resort to save their companies. Their logic is that a quick advertising push will generate the leads they need to get their business back on track. Unfortunately, no form of advertising is going to turn your company around in one month. Here’s why.
Online Advertising Is Not a Life Raft
Online advertising can be the vessel that carries you to your destination, but it isn’t going to be what saves you once you’ve capsized. “If running an SEO or PPC campaign is a do-or-die situation, then there are probably many more pressing business issues that should take precedence over online marketing,” says Nathan Pabich, director of paid search and expert blogger at Digital Third Coast. We couldn’t agree more. Using online advertising as a last-ditch effort to generate more leads before your business downsizes is, frankly, a poor idea. If the state of your company is that critical, then the last thing you need to do is divert precious resources toward advertising that will take months to produce results. Instead, SEO and PPC should be viewed from the start as necessary business expenses on the same level as new equipment for your technicians or certification courses to boost your trade skills. You should use online advertising as a way to generate a steady stream of customers on a consistent, long-term basis in order to gradually grow your company and reach your revenue goals. Plus, utilizing an Internet marketer while your business is still strong will put you in a much better position to field the eventual influx of customer calls and handle the increased demand on your staff.
Online Advertising: Slow and Steady
So why, exactly, are SEO and PPC suited for long-term solutions rather than short-term bandages? As we’ve explained in previous posts, SEO can take up to three months to have a significant impact on your advertising campaign. While signs of progress may arise before those three months are up, those few, early results won’t be significant enough to bring your company back from the brink. The same goes for PPC. While it may work more quickly than SEO, PPC still demands a great deal of monitoring, experimenting, and analyzing in order to reach its full potential for success. Plus, most Internet marketing professionals agree that PPC is most effective after SEO has already taken effect. (We talk about this extensively in our post, “Optimize Your Site Before You Bid on AdWords.”) That means you can’t go from having zero online presence to being flooded with leads just by using PPC for a couple of weeks.
Climb Aboard While There’s Still Time
Effective advertising takes time, expertise, and money, which are commodities you don’t necessarily have in abundance if your business is floundering. The solution is to sign up for an Internet marketing campaign before your company reaches its low point. If you can sense that your company isn’t necessarily nose-diving but it is losing a little bit of steam at a time, jump on board with SS Prospect Genius before it’s too late!