There’s been a lot of focus and money thrown around in Google and Overture pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns over the past few years. For marketers, PPC strategies are a painless activity to drive online traffic.
Doing so creates an easy way for marketing managers and Webmasters to proclaim that they indeed have a search engine strategy to their bosses. However, for many organizations, the battle for PPC placement is becoming progressively more competitive, and in return more expensive. (And how many are actually tracking results?)
That said, how much traffic are sites getting from PPC campaigns when compared to organic / natural search results?
MarketingSherpa recently did a study trying to answer that question. The research asked a focus group of B-to-B buyers to perform searches for specific terms as their click actions were tracked.
Here are the stats from the study:
- 62% Section C – Above the fold Organic
- 20.1% Section B – Alt & Feature Listing
- 14.2% Section A – Top Sponsored
- 3.7% Section D – Side Sponsored
Conclusion: Organic search rules. It garners more than 80 percent of user click-thrus. If your competitors are outranking you via natural listings, then they’re kicking your butt in the battle for eyeballs … regardless of your PPC budget.
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