Is It A Good Idea To Buy Web Traffic? Find Out The Pros And Cons

Digital Marketing is an ever-growing challenge that becomes more complex every day. 

While it can bring great results in building brand awareness and generating leads, it can also be a challenging task. 

Especially if you only use organic strategies.

That is why many companies rely on paid advertising to do their bidding, with varying degrees of success. 

Each year, more than seven million advertisers around the world choose paid traffic to ensure they reach the right audience. 

But is it a good idea? Should you buy web traffic? In this article, you will understand:

Ready to figure out if paid traffic is the route to go?

Let’s get started by defining what it is and how it works.

What Is Paid Traffic?

In simple terms, paid traffic can be defined as the traffic from your website, landing page, or app that leads to generating revenue. 

It is the traffic that comes through ads that are promoted on social media or search engines. 

The ads are created by your company, using platforms like Google AdWords, and turned into results when certain keywords are looked up online.

Unlike organic traffic, which is a long-term investment in keyword and content building, paid traffic is only generated during a specific period of time.  

So, if you run out of ads, you will run out of paid traffic altogether.

There are advantages in buying web traffic, but a long-term investment in organic traffic is usually the best investment a company can make. 

Evergreen content, such as long-form blog posts, for example, can increase the benefits for your company over an extended period of time.

However, it’s important to realize that paid traffic has many perks. 

For instance, in the context of a single campaign that is having trouble converting, paid traffic can be targeted to a specific audience. 

So, how do you know if establishing paid traffic is a good option for your strategy?

Keep reading and you’ll learn how to differentiate the opportunities and take advantage of paid traffic to grow your brand. 

So, It’s Ok To Buy Web Traffic?

There’s plenty of discussion in social media circles about buying traffic. 

While some marketers do it naturally, others frown upon this type of advertising. 

In reality, paid traffic can be a big step towards building an audience and there’s no reason to be scared of it.

Just remember that we are not talking about black hat techniques such as buying followers or pumping up your numbers with plenty of clicks. 

We’re specifically referring to ads that can convert your target audience into visitors and leads. 

Black hat techniques, while used by some marketers, can be heavily punished by search engines.

Plus, they only inflate the numbers without generating the results a company is expecting.

The Pros Of Buying Web Traffic

Paying for traffic can be a considerable investment. 

Therefore, it’s essential that there are numerous benefits so your brand receives a ROI. 

Since companies like Google and Facebook generate most of their money through paid advertising, they offer tools and resources to make sure that you are successful in your campaigns. 

In the following topics, we explore other benefits of paid advertising and understand what is good about buying traffic. 

Using a platform like AdWords is faster than doing SEO work

SEO work is a complicated process that takes into consideration that time is of the essence when building your brand online. 

But, sometimes, you need fast results, especially in a limited campaign. 

Using a platform like AdWords is a sure way to get the clicks you need just in time.

Increase your brand awareness with paid traffic

Paid traffic is an excellent opportunity to build your brand awareness and to grow your audience quickly. 

Using competitive keyword analysis, you can make sure your brand appears on top of the search results even when customers are looking for a competitor’s product. 

Learn about what works within your paid campaigns

There’s a bonus to creating online advertising: it helps you understand your audience better.

With tools like Google Analytics combined with advertising campaigns, you can see information about your prospective customer such as who they are and what challenges they are facing. 

That practically guarantees better, more efficient campaigns for your brand in the future.

Retarget visitors that did not turn into leads

Having trouble with plenty of visitors that never turn into leads? 

Paid traffic will be one of your great allies. 

You can use platforms such as Google AdWords to specifically retarget those visitors as they navigate the web, and make sure they convert.

Measure performance consistently

Last, but not least, paid traffic is a great way to measure performance. 

Paid traffic tools usually include comprehensive information on the success of your campaign.

And, you can adapt or change the campaign’s settings at any time, according to newfound knowledge of your customers.

The Cons Of Buying Web Traffic

You can see that buying web traffic isn’t such a bad thing, right? 

There are plenty of benefits in the list above that prove this is the right choice for companies willing to make an investment. 

But there are challenges in the online advertising world.

Competition for big keywords, for example, can make you feel defeated.

Also, a strategy that only contemplates paid traffic is deemed to fail because no matter how much money you put into it, it will never be enough to make sure you have long-term campaigns online.

But there can be other problems with paid advertising. Here is a list of the most common issues for marketers utilizing paid traffic.

Paid traffic has a big learning curve

While using a platform like Google AdWords is a quick way to gain traffic, things are not that simple.

There’s a huge learning curve when it comes to creating good advertising campaigns for pay-per-click platforms. 

If things were easy, everybody would get rich, reverting their investments to paid traffic.

Finding the right keywords can be tricky. 

Setting up the campaigns with the right amount of money, so they won’t run out of it in a day, is the work of pros. 

Therefore, it might take you some time to master paid advertising.

The bill can add up pretty quickly

Let’s face it: you pay for each click made on your ads, no matter if the user converts into a lead or not.

Those clicks can generate a big bill at the end of the cycle.

Inexperienced advertisers might get into the paid traffic business looking for big results and run out of money before the end of the week if they don’t dominate the perks of each platform.

Your landing pages need to be the best to convert

Paid traffic is only part of the equation. 

To get the best results, your company will also need good landing pages that offer quality, efficiency, and a good design ready to turn visitors into leads. 

That might be a challenge in and of itself, so just paying for traffic will never be a sure way to convert.

The ROI might not be what you’re expecting

Paying-per-click seems like a fair trade, but what you want in most of your campaigns is not just visitors, but leads. 

People who will follow through and get close to buying the product are your ideal leads. 

You might look into paid traffic to generate leads quickly, and in turn, be surprised and disappointed at the results.

Paid Traffic vs. Organic Traffic 

Now that you know all the key points about paid traffic, let’s have a closer look at the other option. 

Organic traffic is the holy grail of web advertising because, for the most part, it is free. 

Once your brand invests in building a content team and publishing material online, all it has to do is sit back and wait for the results.

This is what makes organic traffic a sought-after prize. With little investment, it’s possible to reap benefits for years to come, as we did with a single blog post. 

Organic traffic also has a lot of benefits you can’t compare to paid advertising. 

In a nutshell, with organic traffic you can:

• Increase your brand’s credibility and awareness.
• Keep costs down whilst still growing your audience.
• Reap into competitors’ keywords and make your content stand out.

At the end of the day, organic and paid traffic are not mutually exclusive. 

They’re just two different approaches to growing an audience online.

A company can greatly benefit from using both in their advertising scheme in order to convert more and create larger brand awareness. This is a technique used by most successful marketers.

You don’t have to swear off paid traffic in order to be successful, nor depend on it to grow. 

Look deeper into your strategy to find out the best way to use readily-available resources so that you obtain the intended results. Don’t forget to use all the tools at your disposal to ensure your brand soars.

Want to make sure of that? 

Download our Search Engine Optimization guide to learn how to use organic traffic to your benefit!