Why CRM and email might be better for your B2B organisation than PPC

When it comes to marketing channels, Performance Marketing is often seen as the rock star. Many companies see it as the easiest method for driving revenue, demand and brand awareness… and in some cases that’s true. However it can also be a slippery slope to financial stress and ruin.

That’s because once you start it’s almost impossible to break the cycle. Here’s why:

It’s obscenely expensive

As most marketers will know from experience, PPC is expensive. We mean Gucci bag expensive. It’s a luxury that only a small cluster of companies can afford at the best of times, and one that will drain your bank account quicker than buying all the latest Lego sets for your kids.

Because Google operates AdWords through an auction process – where the highest bidder achieves top spot on Google – it takes a huge amount of funds to achieve any relevant position. Not to mention the costs of keeping it from your competitors once acquired.

It’s worth noting that PPC for B2C businesses can be a great revenue tool when used right. That’s because there’s usually a shorter purchase lead time. But for B2B companies, where the average lead time can stretch across months, PPC can prove unsustainably expensive.

It’s difficult to prove its effectiveness

Exactly because of the lengthy lead times, PPC for a B2B business can be very difficult to attribute success to. By the time a marketing team can present back significant data to their nervous CFO, it’s often several months down the line, and Google has already swallowed up eye-watering sums.

For smaller businesses and start-ups, who aren’t sitting on a tidy stockpile of cash, this can be devastating to the marketing budget, especially when cheaper alternatives are available such as email and social media.

You can’t just switch it on and off

Unlike other marketing channels, when it comes to PPC you can’t just switch your campaigns on and off whenever you feel like it.

Well, you technically can. But as Google’s AI relies on an always-on approach in order to increase its machine learning capabilities, switching your campaigns on and off all the time will almost certainly render your activity useless.

There’s always a bigger fish

As with any industry, there’s always a bigger fish in the pond with more money to spend on PPC advertising. So relevant top spots become near impossible to achieve without some series wonga being chucked at your campaign and keywords.

So why am I bothering with PPC at all?

It might seem like we’ve just torn PPC apart, but we want to be clear that the performance channel can, and does, work. But the big caveat is that is has to be expertly optimised alongside other channels, such as email.

This is especially true if you’re a specialist company as you may be paying twice for your Prospects if they’re already on your database.

So for smaller companies and start-ups, we’d always recommend building out your CRM, email marketing and social channels before you even considering pumping precious coin into PPC activity.

And that’s where a specialist CRM agency like us can step in to help, by keeping your costs down and driving a more sustainable ROI.

Ready to find out more? Get in contact with us. We’d love to chat.