Technology has enabled the automation of the many manually-performed and laborious tasks including pay-per-click management. And through technology, the science of performance becomes more precise. This is exceptional for pay-per-click marketing where measurable and controllable performance metrics like cost per click, cost per action and conversion rate drive campaign success. By automating your paid search activities, you can comfortably leave your campaigns run and allow the technology to produce satisfactory results for you, right?
Wrong! PPC Marketing is as much (if not more) an art as it is a science. Marketing intuition on word choice for ads, keyword selection, target segmentation and landing page conversion are essential to the art of developing and optimizing a successful paid search campaign.
Unfortunately, many businesses use automation to guiltlessly take a “setup and walk away” approach with their PPC campaigns. And like the outcomes realized prior to automation, this approach produces less effective and even poor results. It’s the art of managing a campaign, earned through experience, awareness and trail & error that build significant results.
For example, the brilliant science behind the algorithms driving Google’s search engine is calibrated to generate relevant keyword-driven results. The purpose is for the search engine’s “science” to help the average user find what they are looking for. We like to think that the science would always produce relevant results yet it is not the case. A skilled searcher, understanding the “art” of entering an effective search query and applying intuitive keyword usage (or just testing a bunch of keyword phrases), is guaranteed to retrieve better and more relevant results from Google.
So while pay-per-click automation provides a level of assistance with budgeting and bid management (especially with large keyword volumes and multiple search engine campaigns), the applied art of PPC marketing is what ultimately delivers superior ROI.
As technology becomes more “human” (e.g. artificial intelligence - checkout what Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm is working on as showcased in Wired Magazine) then maybe PPC marketing will not require human intervention at all. But for today and the near future, the art of PPC marketing is a critical component to achieving high performance.
Have any questions? Do you disagree? Let me know!
Posted on April 23, 2007
