Here at Ring Ring Marketing, we tailor every partner’s Internet marketing campaign to exactly what that particular company needs. A one-size-fits-all approach simply isn’t effective. We only make money when you make money, so it’s in everyone’s best interests to get the best possible return on investment.

That said, the vast majority of our clients benefit from employing pay-per-click advertising — one of the biggest components of paid search — as part of an online marketing campaign. While organic SEO improvements can elevate your site’s ranking and drive traffic over time, PPC ads provide a virtually immediate ROI and bridge the gap while the SEO kicks in.

PPC ads also provide immediate brand awareness and have the virtue of being incredibly flexible, allowing you to fine-tune your ads in real time, along with the ability to schedule them exactly when and where you want them to run. There’s no point to wasting money on ads your target audience will never see.

Some industry observers were taken aback when eBay brought the utility of paid search into question in a study. The company determined that its keyword ads didn’t have the kind of ROI that was especially beneficial — for eBay. Those last two words are particularly critical, because eBay’s study was isolated to one particular business: eBay. And eBay is about as far from a small, local business as you can get.

When reviewing the study, top marketing analysts noted that eBay already has such widespread name recognition and out-of-this-world SEO that paid keywords ads by their very nature can’t add much to it ROI. Additionally, eBay’s keyword-based ads are historically low-quality and highly generic. That’s a recipe for disaster in the paid search field.

To do paid search right, keyword ads need to be highly targeted and regularly tested. Paid search ads help you control your brand’s message and own the most valuable real estate on Google’s SERPs, an incredibly powerful tool in driving conversions.

Another key consideration: If you’re not bidding on the top local keywords for your brand, the competition in your industry will be. If your competitor has a great PPC ad when someone searches for what you provide, it’s just like pointing that potential customer to your rival.

Paid search is a dominant revenue driver when it’s done correctly, which is why we carefully design a PPC marketing campaign for each of our partners and tweak it regularly for maximum results. Don’t let eBay’s experience scare you off of paid search. We know it makes money for our clients, because we’re a pay-for-results company, and PPC delivers results.