Increasing brand awareness, perception, web traffic and sales. Pretty essential stuff. But which digital marketing route will you be taking to make it happen: organic or paid? Well, before we come to any decisions, let’s take a closer look at what our two options even mean.

Organic Advertising

Essentially, anything that isn’t paid for can be considered organic. If you have a strong grasp of the needs and concerns of your buyer personas, it’s time to get creative and utilise social media to raise your brand awareness amongst your likely target audience.

All clicks generated from the likes of Google without paying for them can be considered organic search traffic. Likely? Well, making sure your site works well on all devices, has all the relevant content and lots of quality inbound links from other trusted websites will go a very long way to ensuring this is the case.

Paid Advertising

As the name suggests, this is when your content appears as a result of paying a publisher such as Facebook, Google etc. Having specified your desired associated search terms and pay-per-click amount, your posts are ready to go, soon to be sitting alongside and looking deliberately like organic results.

Certain ads appear on your social media channels due to the advertiser considering you their target audience, whether that be due to your age, occupation etc.

Organic Pros and Cons

Let’s now take a closer look at our two available routes, by weighing up the pros and cons of each in order to help us make a decision.

Sometimes being as simple as setting up and using a Twitter account, organic marketing is available to all companies no matter their size. However, though you’d think most of the world’s marketing budgets could afford this, what is far more costly is the time required to make it worthwhile. Time on social media, writing blogs, SEO and email marketing unfortunately do all add up. And that’s not even taking into account time spent analysing data from Google analytics, Google search console, your social media scheduling tool, email marketing platform… do we need to go on?

Paid Pros and Cons

With paid advertising comes great control. Whether it be the actual message published, the people who see it, or the time at which they do, paid advertising is far more targeted than its seemingly inferior alternative. Another tick in the pro box for paid advertising concerns its instant results. Once the payment has gone through, paid results sit at the top of users’ search feed.

As you have no doubt guessed though, this doesn’t come cheap and marketing budgets of smaller businesses of course create natural barriers. Perhaps even worse are those companies with the necessary marketing financial stretch, but without the required knowledge of the likes of Google Adwords or Facebook Ads to utilise them properly.

So, if you’ve got a bit of cash to spare, how about a combination of the two? Start organic and then start running the two side-by-side?

Let’s now take a look at when might be considered a good time to use each.

When is Good Organic Timing?

It’s never a bad time to go organic! Of course, for businesses in the real starter stages, waiting up to a year for real leads to open up from social media or organic rankings is pretty unappealing to say the least. However, enough time and persistency can certainly help to snowball things down the line.

When is a Good Time to Pay?

If you have products you want to get rid of quickly, such as during sales periods, then the likes of Google Ads could be a great option. Similarly, new product and brand launches can benefit hugely through paid advertising. Social media ads bring with them brand exposure, which can run concurrently with the Google ads homing in on the people searching the problems you can solve.

Just one thing first though. Although it sounds almost too obvious to say, do make sure your website is live and functioning as it should. You may be surprised at how many companies dip into their marketing budget to sit proudly atop Google’s search lists, with users just a click away from a website that doesn’t convert. As such, test first. And then test again!

Decision Time

Well, when it comes down to it, neither is essentially better or worse than the other. In fact, an effective marketing strategy is created when the two work in tandem. Dipping into the marketing budget can certainly boost your traffic and brand awareness in quick-fire time, but there’s no reason why you can’t then run a more cost-effective organic search marketing campaign in the background.

Ultimately, it’s your business and it’s up to you to weigh up what suits your specific situation best, so as always from the Byter Team, good luck!

www.byter.com

When we think of the main digital marketing channels available to us, it’s PPC and SEO that crop up most often. Though their features, targets and methods differ, the goal always remains the same: making sure your online presence is as strong and visible as possible.

This begs the obvious question: which is better?

PPC

Let’s first look more closely at PPC (pay-per-click).

PPC is jam-packed with clever technology but, despite this, still remains renowned for its speed. Of course, such technology does come at a price, but if set up correctly, it more than allows you to reap the rewards.

Google Ads

Being loaded with technology and algorithms, Google Ads allow you to home in on your targets, through tactics such as remarketing. The algorithms feed on your account’s data, providing the biggest bang for your buck.

This increasingly automated platform uses a huge bank of algorithmic data in targeting the precise time and searches that it knows will convert – all backed by an experienced paid media specialist, enabling your business to instantly reach the summit of the Google SERP.

This visibility is great for:

Promoting new websites.

Advertising new ecommerce product lines.

Keeping on the front foot against your competitors.

Reporting on every single piece of data, thus increasing the effectiveness of your campaigns.

SEO

Let’s now take a closer looks SEO (search engine optimization).

Likened to that silent hard worker in the shadows, SEO is technical, complex and analytical. With Google not revealing all the elements that make up their search algorithms, hours can go by researching, experimenting and implementing changes across a wide range of on-page tactics and off the site link. As a result, SEOs much research, plan and execute to ensure you get as high up the rankings as possible, although without the aforesaid speed advantages of PPC.

Nevertheless, if a strong strategy is applied, the potential long-term rewards are huge. Such a strategy involves optimising your content for targeted, valuable keywords, enabling search engines to crawl and index your site more easily. This leads to organic search results, hopefully near the top of page one, with your SERP snippet being engaging enough to entice users into clicking onto your website.

With the buyer’s journey acting as a guide, your site’s content can be crafted in a way that effectively answers your potential customers’ queries which, when coupled with a fantastic user experience, builds trust and ultimately action in the form of sales.

SEO and PPC: Head-to-Head

Put simply, when deciding on which route you want to take, think in terms of goals and objectives. Let’s see what a new business’ digital marketing journey might look like, building from the ground up.

4. Business building an audience at the top of the marketing funnel.

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3. Message of brand now being spread by returning customers

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2. SEO elements now used to capitalise on new traffic

Converting traffic into returning customers

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1. PPC tactics to ensure online visibility

E.g. wide-reaching campaign with broad targeting.

Remember, it’s choosing how and when you use each channel that matters. Although PPC might be faster and more measurable in terms of garnering traffic, once the money is no longer put into PPC, the ads stop and the traffic heads out the door along with them.

Alternatively, SEO can offer greater levels of (albeit longer-term) consistency for a less direct cost. Keep in mind SEO can effectively be done manually, through the likes of amending product descriptions on your site. Although the site will still earn traffic without this, it certainly doesn’t hurt to keep the momentum going.

Better Together?

With Google suggesting online consumer intent dependent touchpoints range from anywhere between 20-500, it seems unwise for a business to rely on one single channel for acquiring traffic. As expressed in the above diagram, the multi-channel approach helps to ensure that you don’t miss out on visibility across the entire buyer’s journey.

In summary, there’s no hard-and-fast rule about which one of PPC and SEO is better. Each has its own advantages at particular times, with different businesses being able to reap the rewards of each in different ways. More often than not though, a carefully applied strategy will contain a mixture of the two.

As always, good luck.

Byter Team.

Info@byter.com

0203 978 8820

www.byter.com