In 1920, John Wanamaker is famous for having made the statement: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” John Wanamaker knew the value of marketing but no real way to track it. He just put it out there. If internet advertising had existed in the 1920s, he could have easily determined where he was losing money.
A hundred years later and many businesses are still advertising the way Wanamaker did. 90% of those advertising on Google Adwords are doing it wrong… the overall philosophy being: drive as many keywords as possible to your home page and hope for the best.
A well thought out Pay-Per-Click (Google Adwords) campaign is a hand-full of keywords (4 or 5) sending clients to a well-crafted landing page and a scientific approach to determining what works and what doesn’t. The net result is a campaign that costs less, generates more leads and actually delivers trackable results and most importantly, clients!
As a rule, businesses focus too much on rank and not enough on results. Page 1 in Google is only worth the business it generates. Pay-per-click is a great way to test your strategy. Let's face it, if you think writing a three line ad sending 100 visitors a month to your home page at a cost of between $400 and $1000 is worth it, then do it. It's not rocket science. In fact, Google will help you. They love worthless clicks! You will be using Google Adwords like John Wanamaker used print ads.
We recommend a different philosophy. Every Google search is effectively a question. If you take the time to consider what the potential visitor is asking, and facilitate that same visitor's access to the answer - you will generate a lead. The testing that you do on your landing page will determine which avenue the typical visitor is more likely to take. Is that visitor more likely to pick up the phone or download a datasheet for example (depends on the urgency right?). The value in advertising on the web is knowing. Businesses too often forget that.