Smart marketers understand how to leverage Google Ads and SEO to drive traffic and increase sales.

This is important because traffic comes first, even if you’re going to use marketing automation to drive sales and revenue for your business.

Although SEO and PPC are two different marketing channels. However, they both work for search engines.

Fortunately, Google is the largest source of organic search and also the largest platform for digital advertising with 37.2% of the market share.

The Most Obvious Choice Might Not Be the Best One

Google Adwords is normally the first name that comes to mind when most people think of Pay-Per-Click advertising or online display networks.

This is more than understandable. Google is the undisputed king of the internet (especially in terms of search volume and users).

Most established small businesses looking to “branch out” into online advertising look to advertise on Google first. However, their “search” usually begins and ends there once they hit their ad budget (and usually doing so very quickly) and are confused as to the next best option.

In terms of reaching the most eyeballs, Google is still #1 by far. There are other very effective display networks other than the Silicon Valley giant out there though. When determining which one is actually the best choice for your business, Google isn’t always the default choice.

Below are some of the pros and cons of the three biggest display networks you can advertise on:

Google Adwords

Pros:

• Most popular search engine (by far) accounting for 67% of all online searches
• Younger, savvier internet users (in general)
• Biggest content network & more ad extension (for adding business contact details, etc.)
• More intuitive interface and easier to set up

Cons:

• Most expensive (also by far)
• Less affluent searchers (when compared to Bing / Yahoo)
• Slightly lower conversion rates (also when compared to Bing / Yahoo)
• Very unforgiving if your account gets suspended
• Lower quality scores for sites with affiliate links

Curiosity.

To sum it all up in one word, the #1 thing that drives people to click on an ad is curiosity. Not benefits. Not a unique or original feature. Curiosity.

You cannot sell a product in 40 characters. You cannot even differentiate your company from the rest of the pack in that short window. You can, however, spark curiosity in that brief of an instant.

Curiosity is a fundamental human emotion. It burrows way deeper than any logic-based purchasing emotion. In your prospect’s mind, it no longer is a question of how this product can benefit me. They forget they are even trying to buy something and the issue becomes: “I need to know the answer to this or it will eat at me for the rest of eternity.”

It’s funny when you put it that way but it’s true. Everybody has ADD online. You really only waste 2 seconds of your life if you land on a page that doesn’t fit your fancy, so people are pretty open to clicking on something if it looks even mildly interesting.