Is Pay Per Click (PPC) Being Replaced by Social Media?

So, is PPC really being replaced by Social Media?

The short answer is YES! Google has been losing ground for several years, and it is now apparent that social media is TAKING OVER! This is due primarily to people using sites like Twitter and Digg as well as FaceBook and LinkedIn. Businesses are getting traffic to their websites DIRECTLY from these social media sites - the search engines are being BYPASSING.

What is this nightmare called PPC?

In case you are not familiar with it, you bid on keywords and phrases, then you get leads or not based on your bid. For each click you receive, you gain a single targeted visitor and for popular keywords, you pay $10 or more for this one visitor to your website. Now that we have cleared that up, let me just remind you that once that $10 or more is spent, there are absolutely NO MORE visitors coming.... That money is gone forever.

How is social media different?

Well, the most important thing is that once you get recognition, your traffic grows as targeted traffic finds you because of the "New Word of Mouth"! Social media works like this: you find a web page and like it or not. If you like it, you may share it with your friends. When people share your website page with their friends, they call this BUZZ! When the friends of those that share your content see this buzz, they review the content, and if they like it, they share it with their friends. This is what they call the "Viral Effect". Associated with this "most important thing" is that this buzz stays in place for as long as the social media members that gave it to you keep their accounts - YEARS! It's not at all like PPC where you pay once and get once targeted visitor - you get targeted visitors for YEARS after a campaign is run, and not just from a few people, but 100's!

How does this translate into NEW Customers for me?

There are two main factors to getting new customers on the Internet. The first is to get your conversion rate UP. What is your conversion rate per targeted visitor session? For example: If you have 1,000 targeted visitors per month and are getting 10 new customers per month, you have a 1% conversion rate. Once you are converting, at any rate, the next step is to increase your visitors. (Note that you should also be striving to increase your conversion rate - always!) The second factor is generating more targeted visitors. If you are converting, then more targeted visitors will generate more sales!

Does getting targeted leads from social media sites cost anything?

Let me just say that you can do it all yourself at no cost, if you can put your business on hold and focus about 10-40 hours per week learning how to participate and then actually participating on all of the most important social media sites. Another option is to train your staff on how to participate on social media sites, but if this is done in the wrong way, the effort could be labeled as a spamming effort. We do offer an advisory service on how to do this correctly, but we don't recommend this approach. Our recommended option is to outsource most, or all of your social media efforts. Only work with organizations that offer a guaranteed return on investment. Note that on social media sites, this means votes, or BUZZ. On your website, this translates into traffic.

What companies specialize in social media advertising?

Well, we are the first to focus on the idea of social media advertising. At the moment, every other company on the internet is promoting social media "marketing", which means by definition that it is a testing process and there is most likely no return on investment (ZERO ROI). Our service guarantees a definite amount of BUZZ and targeted traffic per campaign. We are currently getting a HUGE amount of BUZZ through our own social media submission service, which is unique in the industry, and we are the only ones that have it!

What does it cost to run a social media advertising campaign?

It really depends on how much informational content you are willing to produce each month. We are looking for companies that are producing 1 to 4 new content releases each month. If you are currently producing regular information content on the web and currently are converting this content to sales, we have a program that will generate more sales by bringing regular and new targeted leads each month at a FRACTION of the cost of PPC! AND, we have a no cost trial plan that provides absolutely NO RISK!

These programs are now only available to Internet Business Certification graduates. See the IBC website for details.