Less than a fifth (18 per cent) of SMEs using Google AdWords recoup the cost of their investment, according to research published on SMEWEB. The remaining 82 per cent are either not recouping their cost in terms of online sales, or simply don’t know if they are, or not.

I see two major problems with the numbers.

1. SMEs might don’t know how to optimise their PPC campaigns to achieve the postive ROI on PPC campaigns.
2. SEMS might not know how to set up proper e-commerce tracking on their PPC campaigns so that they cannot get a clear view on the ROI.

Indeed, hiring someone to manage the PPC campaigns could be expensive while learning it may be hard too for most of the SME owners.