Okay, that title was a bit harsh!  Not ALL PR companies have their head stuck in the sand…quite a few are evolving and growing.  We’ve seen this lately through business closures.  Several PR firms are closing their doors because they didn’t adapt to a changing market – even though they thought they had.

One big gap that still remains is PR companies focusing solely on Adwords and sponsored links (pay-per-click) without any On-page SEO or Inbound Marketing initiatives – this is an expensive recipe for failure.

How does pay-per-click work?

Let’s think about how Adwords and Sponsored links work.  Essentially, you are bidding on specific keywords.  As long as you bid high enough, your ad and web site link will show up wherever the Search Engine is serving ads (SERP or Ad delivery networks).  Each time a user clicks on your ad, you pay your bid amount.  The Search Engine decides when to show your ad, how often, and in what order.

There are a few inherent problems with basing your whole marketing strategy on this:

1. You don’t control the Search Engine.  They choose when and were your ad will show up and how much you will pay for the click or impression.  Yes, you choose a limit, but ultimately the Search Engine still has control.

2. You can estimate how much to bid, but you can’t be 100% sure how high you need to bid to take the top spot.

3. If your business plan is based on Pay-Per-Click, then any competitor old or new just has to out bid you in order to take your spot. You can be de-throned and lose a lot of traffic if you are relying just on sponsored links.  This is assuming your web site and product are mediocre.

4. If you did not spend enough time figuring out what keywords to target, then you  may just be throwing all of your money down the toilet.  Pay-per-click assumes you know your market and you know what keywords to target.  If you are targeting the wrong words, you may be wasting your marketing dollars because you  may get traffic, but no conversions or sales.

5. Even worse is letting the Search Engine decide what keywords best suite you.  With Google this is called Broad Match. It takes your list of keywords and then makes an assumption to related terms.  If you targeted the keywords “dog biscuits” and you used broad match, then Google may also show your ad for someone searching for “dog kennel cough” – they both deal with dogs, but someone looking up kennel cough may not be looking for dog biscuits and those marketing dollars were most likely just wasted.

So, what’s the missing key?

Do use pay-per-click, it’s a good way to supplement gaps in Search Engine Coverage, get visibility for new product launches, or even help you with keyword discovery.

Don’t plan your whole marketing campaign on pay-per-click.  Make sure you are looking at on-page SEO and off-page SEO – that’s what you’ll need for long-term sustained growth.