Can PPC Affect Offline Sales?

The primary purpose of PPC (or Pay-Per-Click) is to boost online traffic which in turn also boosts online sales. But can this digital marketing technique also be used to enhance offline sales? We take a look.

Firstly, to understand how online marketing can affect offline sales we must take a quick look at how people shop. The majority of shoppers, women especially, do pre-shopping research online to help them source the most appropriate or affordable products or services. So whilst natural search results that rank higher in Google may take more online sales than paid-for PPC ads, PPC ads have been proven to direct customers in their offline direction.

RevTrax is an American retail market research firm that carried out over two years. The data they collected showed that PPC ads encourage six times more revenue than online sales through the same PPC adverts. This piece of information is very important to companies that trade both off and online at is shows that whilst they may not see a vast increase in online sales through their PPC campaign, the company could be "undervaluing the paid search channel by as much as 85 percent" by forgetting the power it has on offline sales.

The effect of PPC ads could also work on a more subconscious level. We all know how advertising works; drilling their brand name and message into our brains whilst we go about our every day. PPC does the same, appearing on the side of natural search engine results that we casually glance over, with the brand name fixed into our minds to draw us back at a later date.

The results found from RevTrax's 2-year research may be comforting to some businesses who trade both online and offline. Traders who perhaps want to boost offline sales without spending vast sums on offline advertising (television, print, radio etc) may find that PPC could enhance not only on- and offline sales, but also their general brand identity.

Speak to a leading PPC Manchester agency today.