Launching and running a business is not an easy task. You need to consider a lot of things, such as your business plan, competition and market, finances, and staffing. You should also make sure that you are reaching and catching the attention of your target audience. After all, your business will not be successful if you do not have any customers or clients.
There are various ways that you can advertise your products or services to your ideal customers. You can opt to go with traditional marketing strategies and attract them through print ads in newspapers and magazines and other mediums.
You can also choose to go digital. Doing this can provide you with various benefits, considering that almost every individual uses the internet nowadays.
However, you should be aware of the competition in the digital arena. Since most businesses are also going online, you might have to beat more companies to catch the attention of your target audience. To make the job easier, you should come up with a digital marketing strategy.
Your digital marketing strategy should be based on how your target audience behaves on the internet. Determining this will allow you to choose the right approach to reaching them, which can be either SEO or PPC.
What is the Difference Between SEO and PPC?
Digital marketing can be a tricky field to get into. You have to learn about various strategies and choose which ones best suit your business model and goals.
While trying to figure out a digital marketing strategy for your business, you might have heard about SEO and PPC. Continue reading to learn about the differences between these two strategies.
What is SEO?
SEO or search engine optimization refers to the practice of optimizing a website to improve its visibility and ranking in search engine results pages. This strategy is also used to help websites gain organic traffic from search engines, such as Google.
You can benefit from SEO basics without spending money on any platform. All you have to ensure is that you are optimizing your website regularly and publishing content that will improve your visibility to search engines and your target users.
Pros
Investing in SEO services allows you to enjoy several advantages:
Stability
With an effective SEO strategy, you can rank highly in SERPs for your target keywords. When this happens, you can ensure consistent traffic to your website as long as you keep your pages optimized.
Cheaper
One of the greatest differences between SEO and PPC is their cost. Compared to PPC, using SEO strategies is cheaper in the long run.
Yes, you might still have to spend time, money, and effort when you choose SEO. However, the costs you will incur will still be cheaper than PPC.
After creating and publishing relevant content for your website, you do not have to keep spending money to target your ideal audience. You also do not have to shell out money when a user clicks on your website, unlike with PPC campaigns where you pay per click.
Trust and Website Authority
Optimizing your website regularly for keywords relevant to your products or services will allow you to rank higher in SERPs. If your target audience constantly sees your website whenever they search for the keywords you rank for, they will have more reasons to trust your company. You will also have more chances of establishing your brand authority.
Cons
Although SEO is a useful strategy, it still has some disadvantages:
It Takes Time
You would not see immediate results after investing in SEO services. You would have to wait months before you even see some of your keywords ranking in the top 10 of SERPs.
Algorithm Changes
You might think that SEO is simple because you only need to make sure your website is optimized. However, that is not entirely true. This is because the algorithm that search engines use in ranking websites constantly changes.
This means that if you are using SEO strategies for your website, you should also be updated regarding industry news. You also have to keep a close eye on your organic results to see if anything changes. This is important because some algorithm changes are not announced by search engines.
Regular Optimization
Although SEO seems simple because you only need to optimize your website regularly to enjoy its benefits, it is not always easy. Optimizing a website requires time and effort, and this task does not end once you rank for your target keyword.
You have to start monitoring your web pages from day one and ensure your content is relevant. Accomplishing these might mean having to refresh previous blogs and remove old and expired links regularly.
Requires High-Level Skills and Expertise
Your SEO success partly relies on your ability to create and publish high-quality articles that are relevant to your products or services. To accomplish this, you would need to have expertise in the industry and high-level writing skills.
If you do not think that you can write articles that your target audience will willingly read, you should consider hiring a writer. Working with someone who has the knowledge and experience in content writing will do wonders for your SEO strategy.
What is PPC?
PPC stands for pay-per-click, a type of advertising solution where you can bid on the opportunity to display ads on different platforms. You only have to pay when a user clicks on the ad that leads to your website.
Pros
Although using PPC on your digital marketing campaign can cost you money, choosing this strategy will allow you to enjoy the following benefits:
Speed
Unlike SEO, PPC is not momentum-driven. This means that you do not have to wait long just to see the results of your efforts.
Once you finish setting up your PPC campaign, you will immediately see your ads on SERPs after a few hours or on the next day.
Precision
PPC allows you to use your ads in targeting a specific group of people. You can choose to target individuals based on their:
- Geographic area
- Age
- Marital status
- Interest
You can also target a specific behavior in the customer journey. Whether you want to focus on the top- or bottom-funnel, PPC is the way to go.
Appear Above Organic Search Results
Another benefit to investing in PPC services in Ireland is that your ads will appear above organic search results. This means that users will see your website first whenever they search for a keyword that you bid on.
Persistence
PPC allows you to reach your target audience outside search engines. You can advertise your products or services on other platforms, such as Facebook and YouTube, and help users recall your brand even if they are not actively searching for it.
Cons
You can read a guide to PPC to learn more about how to maximize the benefits of this strategy. However, no matter how much you try, there are still some cons that you may encounter with PPC. Here are some of them:
Expensive
You need a considerable amount of money to successfully launch a PPC campaign. This is because if you want people to click on your ads to go to your website, you must be willing to pay for those clicks. When you run out of budget, the traffic to your site also dries up.
PPC campaigns may also be more expensive if you are in a competitive industry. Fields such as law and insurance will have various companies bidding on the same keywords. The only way you can get ahead of your competitors is to bid higher.
Limited Effectiveness
When users see the same ad from you all the time, they will get tired of it eventually and start ignoring your paid ad. To avoid this, you have to make sure that you are constantly refreshing your ads. You can do this by regularly creating new content and using different images for your paid ads.
Lower Profit Margins
As you continue running your ads, your customer acquisition costs may get higher without any increase in the price of your products or services. This means that you may be spending more money to acquire a single lead than you did before. This makes PPC an unsustainable option in the long run.
SEO or PPC?
Now that you have learned about the pros and cons of SEO and PPC, you might be thinking about which one of them to use to advertise your brand. The answer to this question is hard to determine without taking your business’s unique situation into account.
Some of the factors you might have to consider when choosing between SEO and PPC are the following:
- How many leads you are trying to gain
- When you need the leads
- Your short- and long-term goals
Considering these aspects will allow you to decide which strategy works best for your organization.
Take Advantage of Both Strategies
Ideally, you should use both options to improve your brand’s visibility and promote your products or services. Using PPC and SEO side by side will allow you to cancel out their disadvantages. Additionally, combining them will allow you to reap benefits of SEO and PPC that will help you become a successful digital marketer and business owner.
