Designing the most effective online marketing strategy is a fascinating challenge for each client. With 7+ years of experience in Organic SEO, SEM and other types of online marketing we always have a battle of choosing the best strategy for online marketing campaign.

Small- and medium-sized businesses tend to share a few common approaches that attract qualified web traffic:

  • Organic SEO
  • SEM (adwords, bing/yahoo, youtube, facebook and banner ads)
  • SMO (facebook, twitter, youtube, pinterest, craigslist campaigns)
  • Blog marketing

When clients with consumer-oriented products / services express a concern over budget limitations, it makes sense to focus on SMO and blogging.

But what tools work best for B2B and professional services? Often, blogging and social media outlets fall short of the target. The battle for marketing dollars sets in, and the stakes for making the right decision increase dramatically.

PPC vs Organic SEO
What’s the best match for your Business? Lets compare:

 

Advantages of PPC:

  1. Rapidly attract website traffic from people in your geographic area who are searching for your products and services.
  2. Maintenance costs are brought in-house, if you spend 20 hours to figure out the basic ins-and-outs. Though it’s time-consuming, the knowledge is not too difficult to grasp.
  3. Start with any budget; and get your first $100 free from Google.
  4. Easily change the direction of the campaign and stop it at any time if needed.
  5. Once people click through to your website, you have the opportunity to capture their interest and win their repeat visit(s) later as customers or as individuals who refer colleagues and friends – all of which costs no additional investment dollars in your PPC campaign.

 

Disadvantages of PPC:

  1. Comparatively expensive when you consider organic SEO as an alternative.
  2. Specific keywords may be exceedingly costly to break into your market: for instance, local attorneys pay an average of $70 per click! Conversions from clicks to warm leads (or landed customers) is not a guarantee; causing your cost-per-acquisition to actually double, triple or more!
  3. Because PPC does not help your website grow, your organic SEO rankings are unaffected. When you stop paying – the clicks immediately stop. That’s it – no ongoing residual benefit.

 

Advantages of Organic SEO:

  1. Following a 6-month period, your cost-per-click will likely be 3-10 times lower then PPC.
  2. Trust. People believe they’re getting truthful information from organic ads more than paid ads.
  3. Sustainable results and residual income. If you stop investing in SEO, your website continues to attract qualified traffic which can be converted to leads, new clients and sales.
  4. Branding – Visibly appearing among top industry players can boost your company’s reputation. It only helps your ability to increase rates, win business and earn profits.

 

Disadvantages of SEO:

  1. It takes time. Usually, the first 2 months require patience, as the foundation for your company’s organic SEO campaign is taking place. Google follows its own schedule while indexing links and keywords.
  2. Requires a serious monthly budget of 100’s or 1000’s of dollars based upon the number of keywords and their competitive nature. Statistics show that you usually cannot be among top local – or nationwide - industry leaders with monthly budgets under $ 800. Remember, your competitors are spending this amount to be “king of the hill”. To successfully compete, you must do the same.


Business owners… it’s up to you now.

by Stan Bogdashin