There are many traffic channels for digital marketing to capitalize. The most frequently asked question is whether SEO or PPC is better for me. Let’s get to know the two, and see which is best for you.

Uplist to follow when deciding on the best investment right for you:

  • What do you want from your marketing campaign? What are your marketing goals?
  • Are you in a rush to get the phone to ring or want to build your business for the long-haul? (time frame)

First off, let’s take a look at what makes the two traffic channels we can campaign on different from each other.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Short for search engine optimization, the goal of SEO is to earn organic search traffic and increase visibility on search engines (showing up for more search queries). Benefits of SEO include:

  • Success building on itself over time
  • A more permanent solution (with less upkeep than PPC)
  • Fantastic for brand building and increasing brand awareness
  • Highest return on investment (ROI)

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing

Short for pay per click marketing, the goal of PPC is to advertise by buy traffic and generate attention to your business immediately. Benefits of PPC include:

  • Instantaneous results with phones ringing today
  • Ad spend budget control
  • Actionable data and experimentation with marketing angles
  • Laser-targeted visibility with the audience of your choice

Both have their pros and cons. Time-wise, SEO may take anywhere between 3 to 9 months to see results whereas PPC is within 2 to 4 weeks. With upfront costs, SEO’s labor-intensive work costs significantly higher than PPC campaign setup. However, SEO is the long-term growth with minimal upkeep and potential for expotential results whereas PPC requires consistent ad spend to generate conversions.

How to Decide?

Now that we have a better understanding of the two forms of marketing, deciding on your marketing goal is the next important step. It can help you lean on one channel over another. The ultimate goal is to increase revenue, of course. How we do so is the critical question. Here are 3 example business goals:

  • Grow brand awareness
  • Generate more leads
  • Increasing sales

For newer businesses or businesses that are in need of revenue, PPC can be the way to go for acquiring new leads and increasing sales. You can get your phone ringing immediately with potential leads and sales by advertising on Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. For businesses that are looking to expand and capture new market shares, SEO tends to be the way to go. The expotential growth with SEO can be capitalized on with businesses looking to open new stores, expand to new regions, and even new countries and continent.

The funny thing is, SEO and PPC can do both. Cutthroat competitors can run PPC ads on their competitor search queries or audience group to generate brand awareness. They can also target traffic channels that SEO otherwise may take time to build towards. A good example would be advertising dental care, servicing both adults and children. SEO is also used to generate more leads and increase sales, with the advent of local SEO to capitalize on local search results of regions, cities, and high-traffic/converting neighborhoods. Since SEO and PPC can do everything, the next consideration is time.

If your sales team is in need of leads and prospects, PPC can help get the phones ringing immediately. Setting up a campaign targeting a radius area of interest can help you serve your ads with laser precision to people who would come to you. It can also allow you to begin experimenting with different keyword channels and marketing angles to see which can convert the best. This is all done within weeks. On the other hand, SEO can take months as content production is done to create digital assets that work for you day and night, and backlinks building campaigns to generate popularity votes so that search engines know you are the most relevant and top choice for searchers. As months go by, your website authority grows and your business visibility increases in the search results of multiple search engines.

Taking Advantage of Both Channels

Both digital marketing channels are plausible choices. At The Search Architects, we pride ourselves on SEO because it allows businesses to create assets that will work for them 24/7 in a scalable way. One of the positive impacts of SEO is that it can increase the value and networth of your business, if you ever choose to sell it. If you’re looking to scale, SEO builds authority with search engines in a way that allow you to enter new markets and new regions without paying a significantly higher cost per customer acquisition.

In an ideal world, both SEO and PPC can work hand in hand as they both provide new avenues for acquiring leads and generating sales. When it comes to the long-term growth of your business, SEO has always been and will be the way to go!

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