Is PPC a Money Wasting Exercise?

Pay per click marketing can be an extremely successful tool for some enterprises while for others it maybe a route to the failure.
PPC as a new way to target an audience has been on a market for quite a while and it's surprising how many companies still can't adequately use its advantages for their commercial success.
Not long ago I came across a pay per click campaign that left me stunned - the company was spending tens of thousands of pound a day without even bothering to monitor if there was any return on investment: there were no negatives, no structure, no targeted ads and the same keywords were copied and pasted to different campaigns and, of course, conversions nor analytics tracking were implemented. And it’s all within highly competitive narrow industry with low profit margins and high volumes of online traffic.
There were three mistakes which the advertiser could have avoided. First, a choice of SEO strategy would be more appropriate as it preserves the budget from being wasted on high volume keywords. Secondary, professional advice had to be taken in order to determine what the best approach is and based on necessary return on investment the right joint strategy to be selected.
Before starting a PPC campaign always give a critical look to your site- is it up to date, navigable and has a simple and secure check out? If your site is lagging behind neither SEO or PPC will deliver desirable results.
Estimate what is the level of competition in your industry. If your core business is online then it’s crucial to invest in your site together with SEO and a PPC as a first step to get you on a first page.
If you have a physical facility and keep a site as a reference to your business- invest in PPC campaign with your brand name and SEO with keywords describing the core of your business.
An established and profitable business can undertake a wider spec PPC campaign by integrating more products and services as well as higher budgets.
At the end of the day- developing a business is costly but, by doing it carefully, the costs can be significantly reduced.