If you’re a small company trying to compete against the big dogs in the PPC space in a competitive market, you’re probably either spending a huge chunk per month to reach the top positions or about to quit and choose other avenues.
We’ve all heard using other PPC search choices besides Google, Yahoo, and MSN barley work. Guess what? Sometimes they do, and as a marketer, the worse option you can choose is not to try.
The best advice I can offer is try everything but most importantly if you decide to give these engines a shot, TRACK EVERYTHING.
Superpages– Personally, I’ve had a pretty good experience with Superpages. I have to say though, I’m very not impressed with the functionalities of the engine itself with some of wait time in order to get a campaign going and other factors (not being able to delete campaigns!), but if you’ve haven’t tried Superpages in your campaign, you need to get on it fast and see what results it can give you. Its cost per click depending on your market can be relatively expensive, but it’s good qualified traffic. Some consider Superpages to be more of a directory, which I guess I would classify it as such as well, but nevertheless, I included it here and first on the list cause I truly believe part of your allocation should go towards SP.
7Search– 7Search is good alternative but one I really haven’t really used myself. I do see this company out there marketing their product to advertisers and has some impressive stats. Over 1.5 billion search per month…that’s pretty impressive. Bids start at 1 cent. Its interface is simple, easy, and quick to use.
GoClick– Another engine I’ve still yet to try myself but heard some good stats about it. GoClick delivers 6 billion targeted monthly searches. Minimum bids start at 1 cent with a $10.
Kanoodle– Kanoodle can be a tricky one. I’ve tried a couple of campaigns with Kanoodle and had all sorts of experience…like any campaigns, of course some worked, and some didn’t…but it did deliver traffic for a very low cost. Kanoodle is not an engine big advertisers go for so it’s a good engine to get very low bids for competitive markets.
SearchFeed– Growing online property (as it looks now). If you’re running international campaigns, SearchFeed would be a great place to run some trial campaigns and see how they work out for you. SearchFeed allows you to geo-target 11 different countries. If you’re also looking for more traffic, this would be a decent source to try and acquire that extra traffic with low bids.
If you have tried any of these engines for PPC, would love to hear about your experience and results and any other suggestions you would make that have worked for you!
Pablo Palatnik is Managing Partner of eTrend Media Group, which specializes in Pay-Per-Click Management & Social Media Optimization.
