Although it might seem that way, I can assure you no matter how competitive there is always value. Its just alot more work.

Where I used to work our landing pages for our search engine marketing service in my opinion needed much work, but working through the corporate red tape / restrictions of the CMS in place and trying to get changes to the site prioritized above other projects was difficult to say the least.

In my opinion I would not buy the product or service from us based on the overall lack of call to action. There was 0 incentive or urgency to make an enquiry. Of course not everyone in the organisation saw things the same way I did.

Also we did not have effective A/B testing in place to measure the impact of landing pages changes. (I know we were an SEO firm) It all used to drive me nuts infact its half the reason I left. The other half was to travel and see the world.

Where I used to work however we used to get leads through phone calls, email newsletters, b2b relationships and upselling. We were in a comfy position and influencing change was difficult (We are making money, why should we change attitude).

So to summarise, bidding on competitive terms relating to SEO involves a substantial amount of work and can cost alot of money. Measuring is of key importance and continual improvement and refinement is important.

Natural or organic listings tend to get "more traffic" and often appear more credible to those "in the know". Therefore they generate leads.

Does that help?