When trying to make the most of any digital marketing budget, it’s important to evaluate what channels you’re able to make the most of right now and which you should hold off investing in until you’ve started seeing a return.
This debate generally brings businesses to a common question about two specific channels of digital marketing:
“Should I invest in SEO, enhancing content and optimizing my website, or a Pay-Per-Click Campaign?”
Figuring out what makes the most sense depends on your company’s unique marketing strategy. Prioritizing your immediate goals and identifying a timeline for the long-term will significantly affect what is best for your business. Let’s look at what each of them brings to the overall marketing strategy before attempting to settle the debate.
Search Engine Optimization and Content Marketing
- Improves site ranking and visibility for new leads through your brand’s personal voice.
- Has longer lifespan in gaining the attention of new leads. (Source)
- While immediate ROI is a possibility, SEO is really an investment in the overall digital presence and long term ROI.
- Content marketing needs less maintenance to be effective and successful.
- The wide variety of SEO tactics available to marketing agencies allow more opportunities for conversions.
Pay-Per-Click Campaigns
- Improves visibility of company for new leads.
- Generally easier to track conversions.
- Quicker ROI in generating leads.
- Takes less time to implement when you have the appropriate strategy.
- Takes a greater investment to be effective.
- Requires constant maintenance to be successful.
- More opportunities to segment direct targeting within target market.
Both utilize similar research and compliment each other in the implementation stages. You can make great content, but it’s useless if it doesn’t have the advertising dollars to increase its visible reach. Likewise, it doesn’t matter if you can pinpoint the appropriate groups for PPC when the content behind your ad lacks quality to drive conversions.
Finding that happy balance between the two can be tricky, but that’s why companies rely on Treefrog’s digital marketing team to figure out the best balance between SEO and PPC for any budget.