Spending more money doesn’t always make you the best
Filed under: In-House, PPC, SEO on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 by Simon Heseltine
This is no truer than in the world of sport. The most expensive team in baseball, the New York Yankees, are sitting in their mansions watching the rest of the world series with a pained expression on their faces… again. Chelsea FC, funded by a billionaire, spending money like it’s going out of fashion, have yet to win the European Champions League, and last season didn’t even win the English Premier League. For years, the New York Rangers had the biggest payroll in Ice Hockey, yet each year (apart from 1994) they saw teams with lower payrolls, and lesser known players take home the prize.
So what’s this got to do with this blog? Nope, we’re not changing to a talk sports format. What I want to talk about here is the concept that throwing money at a situation will make a company the best in the marketplace. If that were true then the big companies with all the money would control everything, and the little companies would never have a chance. Smaller companies have the natural advantages of being nimble, quick to adapt, and less encumbered by bureaucracy. All of which are ideal traits in the fast moving world of the internet, traits that can mean more than having full coffers.
As far as SEO, having more money just means that you can throw more people at your site, which is when you will at one point or another run into the law of diminishing returns. In other words, nine women can’t produce a baby in a month. Sure, they may have more clout in the market with their name, which may provide some benefit for them, but maybe they have to pass everything through ‘corporate’ before it’s approved? Maybe they have conservative corporate guidelines that prohibit using social media sites & tools? Maybe they’re stretched in so many different ways that they are not able to concentrate on search marketing as effectively as the small company? Maybe the area where the smaller company operates is such a small piece of the overall strategy of the larger company, that it’s not seen as a high priority to concentrate resources.
True, with PPC (pay per click), the company with the deeper pockets can spend more than the smaller company. However, if the smaller company is smart, and uses their analytics wisely, they can maximize their ROI to generate much more business for every dollar of ad spend than the larger company. Plus, the way that the PPC engines work, they don’t allow any one company to buy up all the spots, in fact each domain / account combination is limited to one slot at a time, so even if they’re willing to spend the money to be at the top, that still may not be the best for them if their ad copy isn’t great / their landing page isn’t optimal / their quality scores are lower.
Whatever the reason, the playing field on the internet represents the best, and fastest way for a small company to compete with the big companies even with their huge financial advantage, just so long as you make the right moves, remain open to new ideas, and flexible enough to implement when the situation requires that you do so.
