Where should I invest my marketing budget?

Ever asked yourself, “Where should I invest my marketing budget?” What about this followup question? “How much do companies spend on marketing that doesn’t work?” Because, let’s be real – Are you seeing results from your PPC (pay-per-click) ads on Google? How about your Facebook ads? If you’re like most ad buyers, the answer is almost always a shrug, a sigh, and a reluctant, “Well… no.” That’s no coincidence. The ROI of PPC alone is lower than low. (Sadly low. Ridiculously, hopelessly low.) How low is it? That’s what we’ll discuss today: Why PPC ads and similar avenues aren’t worth it, why there are better options, and exactly where you should invest your marketing budget. (Hint: It starts with an “i” and ends with “-nbound.”) ? Where Should You Invest Your Marketing Budget? The Truth About PPC vs. Inbound ROI 1. Marketing Budget Breakdown: What’s the Real Cost of PPC? 2. Marketing Budget Reality: The Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) for PPC Ads vs. the ROI of Inbound Content Marketing 3. The Inbound Marketing Difference 3 MORE Reasons PPC Ads Don’t Pay Off People Distrust Ads in General PPC Has a Steep Learning Curve Many PPC Experts Prioritize Numbers over Human Readers Where Should I Invest My Marketing Budget? Inbound Is the Answer [bctt tweet=”? Been throwing out loads of cash for PPC ads? And was it worth it? ? If the ads in 2018 brought only 0.66x return on ad spend, then it’s a 100% NO ?‍♂️?‍♀️. Where should you invest your marketing budget then? A: Inbound Content ?” username=”ExpWriters”] Where Should You Invest Your Marketing Budget? The Truth About PPC vs. Inbound ROI If you looked at a chart of marketing budgets by industry for 2018 or 2019, you would probably see a fair amount spent a chunk of money on PPC ads. Many probably prioritized PPC above building their organic search rankings. This is a big mistake, and I want to show you exactly why. 1. Marketing Budget Breakdown: What’s the Real Cost of PPC? The cost of PPC is easy to break down in surface terms. You bid for the specific keyword you’re targeting – the maximum amount you’re willing to pay every time someone clicks your ad. If your bid is the highest (and your Ad Rank is equally up to snuff), you’ll appear at the top of search results. Here’s a visual of that from Wordstream: However, for many highly competitive keywords, bidding can get insane. For example, to rank at the top of Google with a paid search ad for a competitive keyword like “content marketing,” you would need to shell out $18 per click. However, before you decide that would be totally worth the cost, look more closely at the click data in Ahrefs. Clicks are currently going to only 4% of paid “content marketing” search results. Meanwhile, almost all the clicks (96%!) are going to organic search. Let’s put that into perspective. “Content marketing” has a search volume of 31K. 48% of searches for this keyword ended in clicks (searchers clicked on one or more of the results). That means about 14,880 people clicked a result in this SERP. Only 4% clicked a paid search ad. That means PPC ads are only getting about 595 clicks per month in this SERP. The lion’s share of the clicks (14,284!!) are going to organic search. Very, very few people are clicking ads in search results like this one. [bctt tweet=”What’s the real cost of PPC? So here’s how it goes: you bid for your target keyword aka the max amount you’ll pay per ad click. The highest bid gets to the top of search results. Easy. ? BUT, its low ROI will shock you. ??” username=”ExpWriters”] To drive the point home, let’s look at another example of the low ROI of PPC ads. A colleague recently sent me a case study from one of their clients with declining sales. Without naming names, my colleague looked at the client’s search data and conversion rates and found: About 26% of their traffic was coming from paid search. Roughly 17% was coming from organic search. Their conversion rate for traffic from paid search was 0.27%. Their conversion rate for organic search traffic was 51% – nearly 6x higher than paid search. Imagine the ROI if this client switched gears and started focusing on improving their organic search rankings! 2. Marketing Budget Reality: The Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) for PPC Ads vs. the ROI of Inbound Content Marketing The return on investment for paid search isn’t looking good. But wait: There’s more. According to The Ad Strategist, the ROAS for Facebook ads (as part of a cold ad funnel, where cold leads are served ads based on their interests, etc.) has drastically dropped within the past 1-2 years. In 2016, ROAS hovered at a decent 11.88x. In 2018, ROAS dipped to a dismal 0.66x. Display ad conversion rates have plummeted. Across industries, the average is 0.72% on mobile. That means, if you spend, say, $450 on ads, you’d only get back 0.0066% of what you put into your campaign. With a 0.72% conversion rate, you would actually lose money. Your small business marketing budget statistics would look horrible. That’s why inbound and content marketing are incredible in comparison. [bctt tweet=”Return on ad spend (ROAS) went from 11.8x in 2016 sliding down to 0.66x in 2018. ? The average ad conversion rate for mobile is 0.72%. ? These are the signs that you should change where you invest your marketing budget RIGHT NOW. ??” username=”ExpWriters”] 3. The Inbound Marketing Difference On average, across industries, organic traffic from search converts at a rate of 16%. Thus, when you target organic traffic with inbound marketing, the ROI speaks for itself. When you create content of amazing quality consistently, the stuff that speaks deeply to your target reader’s pains and problems (and solves them!), you can’t help but win. I came up with a formula for predicting content marketing … Read more