Pros and Cons of Paid Search

This article is focused on smaller (less than ~100 employees) B2B tech services companies, but a good portion of these thoughts apply more broadly as well.

Paid search (text-based) is basically a mechanism to pay an advertising platform to show up alongside (sometimes above, sometimes below) search engine search results the moment when someone wants to learn about something, or wants help with something.

The most interesting part of this is showing up the moment when someone wants help in some way shape or form, as opposed to interrupting/bugging them when they aren’t looking.

That’s pretty cool. But, it’s not all cool.

There are pros and cons to paid search.

We’ll cover some biggies here…..

Cons of paid search

You’ll have to bend… a lot

Feeling bendy? I hope so.

You’re at the mercy of the whims of a behemoth advertising platform. They make changes frequently:

• bidding strategy,
• ad formats,
• extensions,
• automations,
• even the definition of what it really means to match a keyword are all on the table.

You have to keep paying the piper

By definition.

You’re hopping on a machine, and it’s pay to play.

It keeps getting more expensive

The general trend seems to be heading in the direction of increased costs. That doesn’t mean everything or everywhere, but the costs for some searches and some companies is becoming an impediment.

You’ll likely end up relinquishing control over time without even knowing it

The platform wants to take control out of your hands, automating things and creating ad copy dynamically. While this can be helpful in some cases, it’s also sometimes wildly off base.

Worse yet, while some of them are opt-in, others are opt-out, and just get enabled on you if you don’t actively reject.

Platform recommendations can lead you astray

These recommendations can often lead you astray.

You’ll get a lot of recommendations, but you’ll likely only want to act on a small portion of them. Deciphering which to accept and which to reject can be tricky for sure. The most challenging recommendations to work with are often the ones that on first blush seem like a good idea.

Platform account managers will probably pester you for an upsell regularly

It’s common to be pestered by people representing the advertising platform that seem like they’re more there to get you to spend more $ than they are to help you.

It’s not that they won’t sometimes try to also help you, it’s just that it feels like their motivations are often a bit too skewed for my liking.

Platform software can be overwhelming at first

The tools aren’t awful, but they’re also not wildly user-friendly.

A lot of this is because you’re dealing with an inherently complex system. There are a LOT of knobs to turn.

Of course, to “resolve” this, there are non-expert modes. However, utilizing non-expert mode removes a lot of the knobs and switches. You’ve relinquished even more control.

Pros of paid search

Good way to test the market

Paid search can help you figure out where you want to focus as a business.

It can be a relatively quick way to test the market, as opposed to trying to show up organically, which can take significantly longer even after you’ve got a reasonably structured, proof-point oriented site.

There’s an on/off switch

Just as easily as you enable ads, you can generally turn them off; either parts of them, or all of them.

They can be throttled (at least at a high level)

You can throttle (approximately) by setting ad spend targets on a monthly basis.

You can throttle in a scheduled fashion by days of the week, and times of the day.

You can target geographically

While this doesn’t seem to be perfect, it’s generally pretty good.

Expand your reach

Paid search can help you expand your reach beyond where or what you might be able to target through other methods.