Love it/hate it—but most merchants use PPC marketing

According to a survey of 100 e-commerce executives by The e-Tailing Group, 66% have been investing in pay-per-click marketing for more than two years. On a scale of 1-10, with 10 the most sophisticated, 54% of marketers surveyed rate their organizations at 7 or higher in PPC marketing sophistication. Yet many continue to find managing PPC programs challenging.

“With 44% of those surveyed currently allocating more than one-fifth of their advertising budgets to PPC campaigns and 40% of them managing over 5,000 keywords, it is clear that merchants see value in this marketing method,” says Lauren Freedman, president of The e-Tailing Group. “However, resource constraints plus limited time availability and skilled personnel to dedicate to PPC were also frustrations clearly expressed by these merchants.”

The study found that staffing for PPC management was a mix of 59% internal, 18% outsourced and 23% a combination of the two. The time spent on managing the programs ranged from less than five hours per week, reported by 32%; to 21 or more hours per week, reported by 33%. “Of those surveyed, 99% have just three or fewer people working on these campaigns in-house,” notes Freedman.

ROI is the primary measure of success for PPC campaigns but 27% of those responding said they did not know how their cost of conversion compared with the total dollar value of each sale. Benchmarking metrics gathered in the survey include the fact that 47% of merchants report average cost-per-click of less than 50 cents and 49% report that 20% of visitors or fewer come into their sites as the result of PPC campaigns.

The survey was conducted by The e-tailing Group in conjunction with PPC marketing management services provider NetElixir Inc.