when you first look at this you think Dave most be crazy, he is losing money by running PPC , but you start looking a little closer you see a pattern.
the next 2 screen shots show me the times and what happen in a organic sale.
and
You can see this visitor can to the Site at 7:40 for a model number keyword listed in the organic serps, later in the day he came back twice again via organic serps this time the keyword was the url of the site but this time he purchased.
but you see the yellow box that say supported, well that means that the customer originally came from a PPC click, but what I found interesting was:
Customer in the Research Mode
Searches for single keywords example “laptops” or “Mobile PCs” ( in fact I did that today lol ), I was looking at buying an eeePC change my mind and started my research with “ultra light laptop”.
once in the research mode I start collecting a list of Model Numbers or manufacturers.
Customer in Purchase Mode
I start searching for model numbers, Like so many other users I guess because a site I found originally advertising on PPC with Mobile PCs, when I saw them listed organically for the model number I wanted to by, I clicked the listing and purchased.
DaveN
29 Comments
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8th January 2008 @ 14:52
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good post, what you were selling?
8th January 2008 @ 21:52
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you will find people viewing companies that invest in ppc as higher authority. usimilar to the credibility you get from TV spend. people will check the PPC ads, against the serp results. to see if the organic results are also in PPC. and vice versa. there is a strong interrelationship.
8th January 2008 @ 23:45
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Dave the conversion rate, was that from people who clicked on the site or the impressions from google stats.
eg you say 0.24% on ppc, does that mean that from 1000 clicks you converted 24 sales?8th January 2008 @ 23:58
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sorry 2.4 sales
9th January 2008 @ 00:01
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Dave very interesting to see the actions of the user. From initial search to follow through. thanks for sharing!
9th January 2008 @ 09:03
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Very informative post. I guess there is no reason to stop the PPC once you are at the top.
9th January 2008 @ 13:27
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I have seen similiar results in my own marketing and are confident that most will see similiar results in a competitive ppc market.
A couple things that are not shown here (that could sway results for people) are the competency of the PPC campaign (I’m assumming its good and CTR is moderate) - as well as the opportunity cost of NOT doing the PPC - such as loosing market share. Lastly - we are assuming that the PPC landing page and the organic traffic hit the same page.
So all in all - subsidize traffic with PPC, but organic is where the real gains are.
9th January 2008 @ 14:16
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[...] read more | digg story [...]
9th January 2008 @ 16:16
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[...] DaveN wrote a great post on the value of PPC versus organic search. I think what a lot of small business PPC advertisers don’t realize when it comes to PPC is that the benefit is more than just your monetary ROI. There is more to measuring ROI than merely crunching numbers. There is also a credibility factor. [...]
9th January 2008 @ 16:39
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[...] PPC v Organic but you see the yellow box that say supported, well that means that the customer originally came from a PPC click, but what I found interesting was: (tags: Google PPC Search SEO) [...]
10th January 2008 @ 02:29
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Hi Dave, are you able to share what package you use that allows you to identify which organic sales are supported by a previous PPC visit?
Ta, Gary.
10th January 2008 @ 13:12
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Hi Dave,
so we sell a version of the eeepc which we call the RM minibook. We are page 1 Google for ‘minibook’ but not for eeepc. What a shame i turned the PPC campaign for generic keywords off last week! Doh…
10th January 2008 @ 13:26
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Gary, it a inhouse tool we are looking at opening it up..
will blog here if we do
DaveN
10th January 2008 @ 14:47
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That’s good information regarding PPC and organic correlation. After seeing the ads on PPC, users are more likely to recognize the organic results and buy directly.
10th January 2008 @ 15:27
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[...] well known for SEO, published stats about how PPC ads aided organic conversions. Andrew Goodman’s firm, well known to focus on paid search, now does SEO too. It seems the [...]
11th January 2008 @ 00:12
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[...] The best posts on this were those describing how they work well together rather than one being better than the other but maybe I’m biased. Here’s a recent post from Dave Naylor with an example of organic and ppc working well together. [...]
11th January 2008 @ 06:11
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Nice post. What about for branded keywords? It really seems like I am wasting money if I use PPC for my brand name when I have the top organic listing as well. If my PPC ad wasn’t there, I can’t imagine I would lose much volume as most searchers would simply click on the organic listing. Do you agree?
11th January 2008 @ 20:35
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I am a bit unsure : you said the person first time came from an organic search or PPC ad?
U said organic but in the second pic he is coming from PPC…Am I missing something?
This pattern is true for larger sets of data I guess right?11th January 2008 @ 22:13
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I wonder how broad this strategy can be applied. I know most people seem to buy stuff without a lot of real research/care like this.
More importantly, if I can rank in the top 10 for single word phrases (which i do in some cases :), then I still gain the benefits of this strategy, without spending on PPC?
In short this is a claim that: PPC establishes credibility and awareness–short term branding in essence.
~E~
12th January 2008 @ 09:11
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Interesting post Dave. We have actually seen this type of behavior with our own client’s campaigns. Unfortunately our blog is still under way, so you beat us to making sphinn news
Cheers,
Adam12th January 2008 @ 10:50
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good post, what you were selling?
16th January 2008 @ 11:21
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Nice stats package. I guess we need something like that. If you open it up would like to look.
18th January 2008 @ 09:22
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Great post, if our clients have money for both organic and PPC we always recommend both to increase CTRs and ROI
1st February 2008 @ 07:29
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Just started the PPC for this site and this post gave me confidence where I was lacking on my commitment to PPC! Thanks
11th May 2008 @ 21:00
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[...] there are SEOs who understand that organic SEO and PPC can complement each other, I have talked to quite a few SEOs who are very [...]
22nd June 2008 @ 20:44
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Very informative post. there is no reason to stop the PPC once you are at the foot of the mountian.
28th October 2008 @ 20:58
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We always recommend using both natural and ppc, two bites at the cherry I suppose
8th March 2009 @ 08:19
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[...] once and for all. Over the years, there have been multiple studies on traffic and conversions. Some have been comparing ppc vs. organic, some have been comparing social media, press releases, ppc, [...]
15th May 2009 @ 07:01
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Very informative post.
Frequently I have small business owners telling me that they need to rank so they can quit spending all of that money on PPC. I tell them that if they are converting at the optimal rate and are profitable, PPC is just more exposure and allows for the testing of many variables that can later be implemented into organic results.