Pay for Performance

Brand Preservation

Internet Branding

Pay for Performance Search Engine Optimisation also known as PFP

One of the real difficulties Marketing Executives and Directors have always found with regard to organic search positioning is a traceable ‘Return on Investment’.

We all know that with paid search there is a defined ability to track where the money has been spent and therefore the potential return in visitors for that marketing buck. However with organic search we can only see returns in server stats from search engines rather than a real defined pay against results service.

The real information required by organisations is the conversion rate of any service, in other words for a particular spend what was the return. If this information is forth coming then that shows the real ‘Return on Investment’.

Obviously this is not the ideal model for all however for those organisations that have a valuable revenue resource through their website then a pay for performance organic SEO model could be the answer to your prayers.

PPC Reliance

The inability to gain such a model with organic search is why many Marketing Directors push their digital marketing budget into sectors such as PPC where ROI can be far more accurately tracked but more importantly more accurately predicted.

Marketing Managers and Directors are desperate for some form of comfort or insurance in that their priceless marketing budget wont be swallowed with no return. In many cases this potential leaves them at risk and so they take the ‘safe’ options.

Some apply a much smaller budget to natural positioning that in real terms cannot do the job, this means failure and leaves the marketing executive thinking they made the right decision not to invest a larger budget; however most will put the lions share into PPC and convince themselves that this is the way forward.

Pay For Performance – is this the answer?

The real answer to this problem that allows the Marketing Executive the comfort factor is ‘Pay for Performance’, this is where organic SEO is paid in direct correlation to the results that are achieved. This approach separates the men from the boys with most large SEO companies unsure of their skill set for credible generic listings and therefore unwilling to invest their time knowing they will get little return.

High Positions approach to this is from a position of strength; having cut our teeth in the formidable SME market where most websites start out with total anonymity it makes Corporate SEO a walk in the park.

Credible, natural, generic, relevant, all terms associated with a successful organic search strategy and any website achieving these will get significant volumes of visitors. Of course these need to convert but the conversion ration will be at least in line will most PPC forecasts but in most cases the ratio will be a lot higher.

The higher return will be based on the fact that the lions share of the visitors will come from natural and relevant search, much PPC traffic comes from third party sources and poorly structured advertising very often factored with less relevancy.

The low quality directory type sites that drive much of the paid search traffic are familiar with web users and, to their credit, Google for example are waging war against poor quality landing pages to try and improve the quality of both the user experience and the quality of the content that feeds the advertising traffic.

Natural search does not have this problem, if somebody searches for a Ferrari T shirt and your website not only sells Ferrari T shirts but the actual shop page carrying that product is featured on page one in Google your likely conversion ratio will be at its highest.

High Position’s Confidence in PFP

This then brings us back to Pay for Performance. High Position have the confidence to work on a client site and, rather than charge an ongoing management fee, to share in the success of our service therefore sharing the rise in revenue our service has created. This immediately gives any Marketing Director or Manager the comfort blanket that makes them feel safe.

This, combined with the knowledge that if it starts costing serious money then the programme is getting seriously successful, gives a ‘win’ ‘win’ situation that will force the intuitive and market savvy Director to grab the concept with both hands.

Is PFP for Everyone?

Is there a downside, well yes, the moral here is that this approach is not for every website, there are still websites that will have to go down the time honored consultancy/retainer route. There are also websites that have a need for profile but are not selling services or products. In some of these sectors the ‘Pay for Performance’ model could be based on visitors alone with appropriate benchmarks selected on visitor thresholds, this still offers a good level of comfort for the marketing people.

With ANY product or paid service website this must now be the only route to take.“If company A is taking 25k per month through its online sales and organic SEO can turn that into 50k with a no risk solution then it has to be done!” If that results ultimately in less budget being applied to PPC then have the comfort that the conversion ratio is likely to be much higher and by the time you have to take that decision you will have already qualified it.

Pay for performance is here to stay any marketing executive who is switched on will be looking at this solution because those that get established first will reap the best rewards. For more information or to discuss this in more detail please call 01206 544677 or mail info@highposition.net