Search Marketing is Dangerous

Search Marketing is the largest and fastest growing form of online advertising. Search Marketing allows you to communicate directly with your target customers, wherever they may be, when they are in the market and close to buying your product and service. Search Marketing can eliminate a lot of wasted activity, communication and spend on promoting your products or services to people who don’t want, can’t or won’t buy them and is thus a highly effective and cost-effective form of advertising. So how can it be dangerous?


I like to draw the analogy of search marketing with a highly accurate, highly sophisticated rifle. If you know what your target is, are trained to use your weapon, suitably experienced and take careful aim you can hit anything you want with the minimum of expenditure. But, if you don’t know where or what your target is and/or don’t know what you’re doing, you could be lethal, for all the wrong reasons.


If search marketing is like using a rifle, blanket advertising is like using a machine gun. You’ve got a vague idea where you’re aiming and hopefully some of your bullets should hit the mark. A lot of your bullets will be wasted or hit the wrong targets but, heh, provided you’ve got a big enough budget and aren’t too worried about effectiveness, then it’s great.


Now think of a sniper, he’s only got a handful of bullets. He’s spent years training, is experienced in his profession and with his weapon. He spends a huge amount of time carefully selecting his target, taking pinpoint aim then wallop! He get’s exactly what he wanted for the minimum expenditure of bullets.


Most small to medium sized businesses haven’t got huge sums of money to waste on ineffective advertising and can’t afford huge blanket advertising campaigns. Consequently search marketing offers huge potential for most small to medium sized businesses. But using search marketing without correctly identifying your target market or not using an experienced, trained search marketing professionals to undertake and aim your campaign accordingly is like handing a deadly rifle to an untrained novice.


Put it in the right hands, however, and the only danger you’ll have with search marketing is the unexploded potential of your business.



Peter van Zelst is the Principle of Inovative Internet Marketing, a practical online marketing company. If you want practical help to make your business or e-commerce venture fly visit http://www.innovative-internet-marketing.com/