Facebook Ad Prices Up Almost 40%

In a recent report, first quarter 2011 online marketing is on the rise. Search engine marketing grew about 17% year for year, which is close to a new record.
Facebook advertising is also becoming extremely competitive and growing at an astounding rate. Cost per click (CPC) Facebook ads increased about 40% quarter for quarter. But with all this competition and demand comes a huge negative–higher prices. There are only so many ads that can be displayed on Facebook or any website for that matter, and as more and more companies jump on the internet marketing bandwagon, costs for internet marketing are going to continue to rise.
On the search engine side of things, Bing has surpassed Google in ROI–their ROI increased about 10% year for year while Google’s has decreased about 12%. The main reason behind this is that Bing is growing in popularity, although Google still has an estimated 70% of all search traffic. However, Bing offers lower CPC costs than Google, which is attracting to new online marketers.
The near outlook for Facebook and search engine ads is continued increase. As the economy recovers and as businesses expand to incorporate internet advertising into their current marketing plans, the demand will simply continue to increase. There is one huge solution to this problem, however, and that is organic search engine marketing.
Many small businesses are scared off by the costs associated with organic search engine marketing. However, in most cases, well managed SEO campaigns actually end up being dramatically less expensive over time than pay per click ads. As an example, one website we manage spent on average about $110 on pay per click ads before they acquired one new client. However since this company started with search engine optimization, they now average about $50 spent per new client, and since their website is already ranked for their search terms, this number will continue to decrease over time.
So before you get scared off by the costs associated with small business SEO, consider the compounding costs of the alternatives and reconsider your decision. I can’t think of a single situation I have come across where pay per click ads would end up being less expensive than search engine optimization.
To learn more about search engine optimization, how much traffic is out there in your niche, or to learn more about where your website currently stacks up against your competition, simple fill out the form directly to the right and one of our SEO specialists will deliver a custom 30 page website analysis.