Paul Woods

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I have been interested for a while now whether or not Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising (for example Google AdWords) has a place in the B2B world.  Sure, it is great for B2C markets, where you have short sales cycles, and even shorter attention spans - you can get a quick lead, quick conversion and quick sale.  But in the B2B world (and especially in Information Technology where I play) it is normal to have sales efforts go beyond six months from positioning of the offering through to a purchase order.  In some instances I have seen sales cycles than span years! 

With lengthy sales cycles, can a PPC advertisement on Google, Yahoo, nineMSN or <insert your flavour of MSN here!> actually help increase the pipe for your sales force?  Does PPC accelerate the sales cycle? Does PPC accelerate a customers time to value?

That is what I am about to find out.  Time to test!  Time to experiment!

To start with, I will be experimenting using Google AdWords.  Why?  Well they have a significant share of the search market both globally and in Australia.  Why is that important?  If I plan to be use niche, targeted keywords (like any good B2B marketer should), and restrict the display of advertisements to users located only in Australia (the only market I can effectively deliver services to), I will need a big pipeline of searchers to click through.  Basically the more people that are searching, the more chance I have of Australian’s looking for these keywords, and the more chance I have of getting some meaningful test results. 

Once the test is complete (and assuming I can find some quantifiable value of PPC) I am sure I will use PPC on other search engines as well.

It will be interesting to see the results - are you a B2B marketer that has played around with PPC?  What are your thoughts?  Any success stories of nightmarish tales?