This week, I have a story to share from a prospective client meeting. We recently presented a proposal and recommendations to a professional services firm on the West Coast. Over a series of meetings, we learned quite a bit about the company and its target audiences. That information, combined with additional research, led us to a phased approach to digital advertising that does not include Google search.
Toward the end of the presentation, the prospective client CEO said, “Tom, I don’t see Google search as one of your recommendations. Why not? All of the other proposals included Google search.”
The reason was simple. It would be a waste of money.
There’s an old adage in sales, “Fish where the fish are.” For this prospect, a very small percentage of their target audience is likely to be actively searching for a solution to their pain points. And those who are searching are not the decision makers.
More likely, the ads would be served up to job hunters, people doing research on the potential client’s industry, people with little influence on decisions, and those wanting to sell to that industry.
If they run a paid search campaign, I have no doubt it will look great on paper. They’ll get lots of impressions, a high click-through rate, and probably a solid conversion rate, too. The client meetings would be great for the first four or five months, “look at these numbers!” But actual viable leads would be negligible. The cost per quality lead would be unsustainable.
I shared the reasoning against paid search and why we recommended a different digital ad strategy.
Here’s how the prospective client responded: “That’s refreshing to hear. The other firms we’re talking with are pushing paid search, and it feels like they want us to throw money at the wall and hope something will stick.”
By the time you read this, we may have another new client at R2R Marketing – one who will benefit from our decades of experience and expertise designing and implementing effective marketing campaigns. If they’ve gone in a different direction, that’s okay, because we know we prepared a strategy that will look good on paper AND deliver real-world results.
