4 Reasons You Should Diversify Your PPC Advertising Reach Today: Part 1

I’ve been in the PPC biz for a few years now and still find myself amazed at the rampant amount of tunnel vision amongst pay-per-click advertisers. What do I mean by tunnel vision? On one hand, this is the inability to see PPC opportunities beyond Google AdWords as the PPC search engine of choice. As is more often the case, I’ve found that this tunnel vision applies to seeing past “the big 3″ to find potential ROI goldmines in vertical search with a niche search engine. Over the next few days I plan to share with you 4 reasons you should diversify your PPC reach, concluding with a hefty list of PPC search engines by category. So without further ado, let’s get into the first 2 points:

1.  Different People Use Different Search Engines

Different strokes for different folks, as some might say. This is officially the obvious statement of the day. But it’s true! Not everyone uses Google. And dare I say it, the entire US population (and especially international searchers) aren’t 100% accounted for between Google, Yahoo! and Bing/MSN either.  Yes, Google has dominant market share.  But when you’re talking about millions of monthly searches, there are plenty – I repeat – plenty of opportunities for finding PPC success with other PPC search engines.

Aside from the obvious, there is a fundamental driving force behind the idea of diversification in PPC: user intent.  When the user types in their search query, what are they really looking for? Do customers come to Google to find products/services like yours? Or does their intent take them someplace else due to niche specialization?

An easy example of this is for ecommerce advertisers. Sure, there are a tremendous amount of product based searches, and yes, people buy products when they search on Google, Yahoo! and Bing. But you know what? There are also a tremendous amount of sales happening on shopping search engines like Yahoo! Shopping (separate from primary site), PriceGrabber and Shopzilla – to name but a few.  Those sites have a special focus, they cater to a niche. Because of that simple fact, there will be potentially less advertiser competition and the individuals who search on those sites are already in the mode of buying (user intent, remember?). You can apply this to any niche/vertical you like from B2B, job search to finance, etc..

2. Remain Competitive in Your Market

I think I can best explain this point through story telling.  Imagine Advertiser A, a purveyor of fine women’s shoes. He has been advertising on Google AdWords for a few years and knows that he’s getting a great ROI. However, something is nagging at his sole (misspelled on purpose): his arch enemy, Advertiser B, always seems to be posting better profits and claims that it’s all from PPC.  Advertiser B has campaigns at the main PPC search engines Google, Yahoo! and Bing. And a few months back he also submitted product feeds of his stock of women’s shoes to Yahoo! Shopping, PriceGrabber and Shopzilla and began bidding. All of this remains a mystery to Advertiser A who is suffering from extreme AdWords-tunnel-vision.

The point of this silly story is that if you assume your competition is only as smart as you, there’s a damn good chance you’re in trouble.  Make it a point to know on which PPC search engines your competition is advertising and stand up and meet the challenge by advertising there yourself. Otherwise you might as well be giving them a free pass to Club Med. On the other hand, you yourself may be like Advertiser B. You already have diversified your PPC reach and are laughing cynically at the sad-excuse of a PPC campaign Advertiser A is putting up. Don’t let your holier-than-though attitude push you to laziness. New vertical search engines and advertising opportunities pop up all the time – so keep actively looking for other ways to reach your potential customers. Do that, and you may always stay one step ahead of poor-old Advertiser A.

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Alright, 2 reasons down.  I know you’ve been waiting for it – the moral of the story is, “don’t put all of your eggs into one basket.” All joking aside, hopefully you’re starting to see the light as those proverbial PPC blinders begin sliding off your face. Duh – different people use different search engines, right? Actionable item: open a Yahoo! and Bing/adCenter account. Better yet, research your niche and find a relevant PPC search engine and give it a test run. And don’t let your competition get the upper hand. Keep an eye on their PPC activities and ensure that you remain competitive by diversifying your PPC reach!

Check back in tomorrow when I’ll discuss the next 2 reasons for diversifying your PPC: lower CPCs; higher ROI and be flexible for the changing search landscape. Of course, I’ll wrap all of this up on Thursday with a sweet list of niche/vertical search engines listed by category.

(photo courtesy of Librarian Avenger)

Have a question or think I’m full of it? Leave me a comment and let me know!