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text is dark on my lcd that I can't see it

Organic > PPC!

Small business are not just dropping out of AdWords, they are being crushed by larger companies that have bigger bugdets and bigger weapons. I wrote an entire 46 page exclusive report on this trend and what small businesses need to do to survive that I am giving away for free at www.TheComingAdWordsWar.com.

Mike

@Mike I still see a LOT of small business' running adwords campaigns. Most small business owners are not educated about adwords and just figure that it's a marketing cost... just like a Yellow pages ad... When most of them would get more value by submitting to Google Local...

.02

My company, Convos (http://www.convos.com), just started using Adwords this year. I am fairly tech savvy and learned to use it well. I think the drop in usage is relevant to certain industries and keywords. You get an advantage with creativity, but there is also an advantage with good optimization and metric analysis. Perhaps it is those 3 things that really put pressure on small businesses because they take a lot of time. I really don't think advanced features have anything to do with getting started. You will get started right away and Google will help you spend your money. It's your job to make sure it's spent wisely and that takes practice.

Perhaps business owners are starting to get wise in that they realize they need a more integrated approach in relation to how they spend their online marketing dollars. SEO + PPC = Conversions.

The people in our niche who no longer advertise have either went out of business or their business is really hurting due to the economy.
I bet you will be suprised to see that some of the sites that used to advertise, are no longer in business.

I agree with David Brown, most small businesses are just not educated enough. Heck even larger traditional agencies think you can just take the five minutes to set up an Adwords campaign right a few ads and add those 20 keywords Google recommends. Just like traditional marketing tactics and branding strategies, I feel that online marketing is also a trade. Just because you own a small business is not excuse to try and manage a PPC campaign on your own. As a small business owner, seek a professional PPC management company and you will get ROI. 90% of campaigns fail due to poor keyword selection and ad group organization. The bottom line is, you will just throw money down the drain if you are not tracking ROI OR know how to manage your account correctly.

I know more than a few small businesses that Adwords for themselves, and saw a very poor return on investment - and decided to stop..

I'm more than well versed in PPC and struggled with promoting my own small business on AdWords. What it came down to was the money, I just didn't have the budget to pay for all the clicks that didn't convert. Even with geo-targeting, ad scheduling, google and search networks, it wasn't enough.

minimum bids seem to be getting higher and higher. perhaps that is partially caused by having a crowded marketplace of both large and small businesses, and this is merely a pendulum swing.