Pay-per-click advertising has been an important aspect of many business’s marketing campaigns over the years, but lately, some companies have been choosing to step away from PPC and focus on driving lead generation in other ways, such as social media marketing and blogging.

There’s nothing wrong with those inbound marketing tools — we recommend them as strong components of any modern marketing campaign — but it’s also important to remember why PPC has been so popular and why it continues to be effective. Here are a few benefits to PPC that long-term organic strategies can’t match:

Fast return on investment
Organic marketing methods take time to be effective. PPC gets cranking immediately. For example, a Google AdWords campaign can be launched in a matter of hours, and it’s easy to quickly adjust bids to improve your AdRank (and thus your results). If you’re in a position of needing new leads and conversions now, it’s hard to beat PPC.

Improve your Local Search presence
A PPC tool such as AdWords lets you advertise for a very specific location. Bidding on keywords such as “Fort Lauderdale auto repair shop,” for example, will drive traffic for a specific audience to a specific area. You can choose to have ads shown only in a very specific location if desired. You can also choose to “exclude location,” making PPC ads perfect for local businesses who don’t want to waste money on people who are nowhere near them.

PPC ads are the best way to market through social media
Gigantic networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are best leveraged by advertising that’s directed toward particular connections (and the word of mouth they can provide to their connections). Because the connections of your followers/friends/connections are prequalified to likely be interested in your services or products, PPC ads on these platforms can be highly effective.