Pay-per-click marketing (or ‘PPC’ ) is a familiar term to all of us. It serves all the marketing purposes: visibility, customer reach, branding, and awareness. And it does so quickly, offering an overnight customer reach and company advertising platform. Considering this major fact, it is justifiable for businesses to ask us why they should not focus on PPC, and even prioritise SEO below it. Here, we explain our opinion of SEO vs PPC.
Organic SEO is slower, but has long lasting results. PPC, in contrast, is much faster but short-termed (unless you have an endless pot of money to draw from, that is). PPC could kick-start your business for short-term goals; however, traffic stops coming as soon as you stop paying for the online ads. You may also find the cost of some ‘clicks’ to be prohibitively expensive, particularly in big cities for popular products / services.
On the other hand, SEO, by way of a contrast, does not abandon your business and keeps driving traffic to your website on a long-term basis. It also continues to drive traffic even if you stop putting money into it for a few months (although some rankings may drop, you won’t disappear from Google altogether).
That’s directly opposite to PPC, of course. With PPC, the second you stop your budget and pause your adverts your company effectively disappears from Google: unless you’ve also been actively engaging in an SEO campaign alongside your PPC, of course.
PPC requires a considerable chunk of your monthly marketing budget to keep driving the traffic in. Now, if the amount you’re going to earn from PPC every month is equal to or greater than the budget you’re spending on it, then it’s totally worth your while doing it. However, for those companies who don’t find it as easy to get sales conversions from their websites, for whatever reason, organic SEO builds and grows with time; but once it is established, it helps you achieve your marketing and branding purposes without requiring a lot of money or effort. A good Digital marketer will look at your expected conversions, your monthly budget availability, and your profit margins per sale to gauge whether to recommend organic SEO over PPC: or, if budget allows, a combination of both.
And that’s actually the best possible option for most companies – although it may not always be practical in terms of budget, admittedly, – to have a combination of both PPC and SEO running simultaneously so that you’re maximising every possible avenue of Online customer for your company.
A really good digital marketing company will be able to talk with you about the benefits of both or a combined approach, and will understand budget restrictions etc form a critical part of your decision making process as to what form of Online marketing you take up.
To talk with us about PPC, SEO, or a combination of both please contact us for more details.
