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
31 Comments
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- 2
good post, what you were selling?
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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.
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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? - 5
sorry 2.4 sales
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Dave very interesting to see the actions of the user. From initial search to follow through. thanks for sharing!
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Very informative post. I guess there is no reason to stop the PPC once you are at the top.
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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.
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[...] read more | digg story [...]
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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. [...]
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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) [...]
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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.
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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…
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Gary, it a inhouse tool we are looking at opening it up..
will blog here if we do
DaveN
- 15
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.
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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 [...]
- 17
[...] 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. [...]
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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?
- 19
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? - 20
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~
- 21
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,
Adam - 22
good post, what you were selling?
- 23
Nice stats package. I guess we need something like that. If you open it up would like to look.
- 24
Great post, if our clients have money for both organic and PPC we always recommend both to increase CTRs and ROI
- 25
Just started the PPC for this site and this post gave me confidence where I was lacking on my commitment to PPC! Thanks
- 26
[...] 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 [...]
- 27
Very informative post. there is no reason to stop the PPC once you are at the foot of the mountian.
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We always recommend using both natural and ppc, two bites at the cherry I suppose
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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, [...]
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Nice post. Usually a user that looking for keyword “laptop” will not buy very soon. He just surf the web looking for information, but a user that search for model number it is the one of the possible customers.
- 31
Interesting post. You make a very good point about not always trusting your web analytics at first glance due to multiple visits clicking through different avenues. I have never really thought of it in that way.
BUT, there would have been way to many variables in the test which makes the results void, unless you can prove otherwise.
E.g. Were both organic and ppc campaigns optimised for the same keywords? Some keywords would obviously convert better than others.
Ultimately you would want to do a test where a site is ranked no.1 in both organic and ppc for a specified keyword with both the same title and description. This would be a true Organic vs PPC showdown. Then for each sale, investigate as to what the visitor first clicked on to find your page. Neither organic or PPC would have an advantage with link copy, keyword phrase or ranking.
I have seen many case studies where PPC converts better than Organic but who really cares when organic gets 8 times more click through and doesnt cost you a cent after the initial time it took to rank the page. Organic search all the way.
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.