Social Media Vs. SEO Vs. PPC - Which is best?
Now i know these all have overlapping elements but lets just assume you have 3 hours of time per week to spend marketing an online business you had just started and you were going to have to drive all the traffic to your site yourself, with no budget, no outsourcing then where would you spend your time learning and implementing?
Social Media Vs. SEO Vs. PPC?
Here is my take, what is your take???
Social Media
Difficulty to learn – Fairly Easy to get started
Cost – FREE
Time to Get Results – Can be longer – Must be strategic or results can be ZERO
Effectiveness – Can be hard to target your viewers, but you can build deeper relationships
Risks – Social Media Sites can change the rules or shut down your account at any time
SEO - Search Engine Optimization
Difficulty to learn – Very challenging, almost overwhelming
Cost – MORE TIME then money
Time to get results – Takes a long time relatively speaking
Effectiveness – Very Targeted results
Risks – Google can change rules anytime
PPC Pay-Per Click
Difficulty to learn – Average to Easy
Cost – Can be very costly, you are paying for every click NOT paying for results
Time to Get Results – INSTANT RESULTS
Effectiveness – Very Targeted results when done right
Risks – Google can change the rules and jack your prices with the famous “Google Slap”.
I give a more in depth break down of each of these on my blog including how I would spend my 3 hours a week in each of these areas. Let me know what you would do?
Greig
Social Media Vs. SEO Vs. PPC?
Here is my take, what is your take???
Social Media
Difficulty to learn – Fairly Easy to get started
Cost – FREE
Time to Get Results – Can be longer – Must be strategic or results can be ZERO
Effectiveness – Can be hard to target your viewers, but you can build deeper relationships
Risks – Social Media Sites can change the rules or shut down your account at any time
SEO - Search Engine Optimization
Difficulty to learn – Very challenging, almost overwhelming
Cost – MORE TIME then money
Time to get results – Takes a long time relatively speaking
Effectiveness – Very Targeted results
Risks – Google can change rules anytime
PPC Pay-Per Click
Difficulty to learn – Average to Easy
Cost – Can be very costly, you are paying for every click NOT paying for results
Time to Get Results – INSTANT RESULTS
Effectiveness – Very Targeted results when done right
Risks – Google can change the rules and jack your prices with the famous “Google Slap”.
I give a more in depth break down of each of these on my blog including how I would spend my 3 hours a week in each of these areas. Let me know what you would do?
Greig
Clarification added 8 months ago:
Thanks for the great feedback so far, this is turning into an excellent learning experience.
Just as an fyi and because several people have asked, please let me to clarify with regards to the "3 hours per week".
The group I coach is several hundred people that are doing home based recruiting in their spare time usually in addition to their day job or another business they are already running. It working very well and so I've rolled out an affiliate plan to help my team enlist new partners to be recruiters. When I surveyed my team of home based recruiters the average response was that they would initially have an additional 3 hours per week to spend working on promoting the affiliate program via social media or SEO or PPC. Anyway that is where the time limitation stems from.
The great response will also be good advice for other people that are starting an online in their spare time and have limited resources to get started. I think this will turn out to be a Q&A session that is referred back to many times in the future whenever new people set out to start a new online business.
Just as an fyi and because several people have asked, please let me to clarify with regards to the "3 hours per week".
The group I coach is several hundred people that are doing home based recruiting in their spare time usually in addition to their day job or another business they are already running. It working very well and so I've rolled out an affiliate plan to help my team enlist new partners to be recruiters. When I surveyed my team of home based recruiters the average response was that they would initially have an additional 3 hours per week to spend working on promoting the affiliate program via social media or SEO or PPC. Anyway that is where the time limitation stems from.
The great response will also be good advice for other people that are starting an online in their spare time and have limited resources to get started. I think this will turn out to be a Q&A session that is referred back to many times in the future whenever new people set out to start a new online business.
I also think the answer is not social media vs. SEO vs. PPC, but if I had to pick one, strategic use of social media would be the best. It's free; you can make connections quickly and get access to people you might not any other way; you can direct traffic to other aspects of your Marketing Communications; you can easily build your opt-in lists, etc.
There are definitely some organic SEO aspects that are not hard to learn (so many people don't even put the right keywords or metatags on their web pages). Re PPC I am not a fan of it for beginning businesses--I feel it works best when you have a finely-tuned, tested campaign and process that you have studied inside and out that you know will convert at a high enough percentage, with a low enough keyword cost to make it profitable (e.g. I spend $1, I know I make $5).
The entrepreneurs that I train or work with as clients are all taught to use a variety of marketing activities--online and offline--that have little or no cost associated with them (e.g. leveraging the media, having your own media properties--podcast, blog, internet TV channel).
The key aspect of success in marketing is an ongoing and consistent effort across short-term and long-term strategies, and most make the mistake of only trying something for a few days then they switch gears to something else, and then still something else--like a bee flying form flower to flower.
For example, out of the 12 ways that I teach entrepreneurs to do their marketing at little or no cost in my new book "What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know(TM) - Achieving The Life You Were Meant To Have By Making Money From What YOU Know!" I have them pick 3 they will do regularly and consistently to start, and then they can add on as they've gotten the hang of each of those until they build up to all 12.
There are definitely some organic SEO aspects that are not hard to learn (so many people don't even put the right keywords or metatags on their web pages). Re PPC I am not a fan of it for beginning businesses--I feel it works best when you have a finely-tuned, tested campaign and process that you have studied inside and out that you know will convert at a high enough percentage, with a low enough keyword cost to make it profitable (e.g. I spend $1, I know I make $5).
The entrepreneurs that I train or work with as clients are all taught to use a variety of marketing activities--online and offline--that have little or no cost associated with them (e.g. leveraging the media, having your own media properties--podcast, blog, internet TV channel).
The key aspect of success in marketing is an ongoing and consistent effort across short-term and long-term strategies, and most make the mistake of only trying something for a few days then they switch gears to something else, and then still something else--like a bee flying form flower to flower.
For example, out of the 12 ways that I teach entrepreneurs to do their marketing at little or no cost in my new book "What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know(TM) - Achieving The Life You Were Meant To Have By Making Money From What YOU Know!" I have them pick 3 they will do regularly and consistently to start, and then they can add on as they've gotten the hang of each of those until they build up to all 12.
It is relevant to a larger audience and as an Online Marketing company, we need to constantly answer the similar set of questions on daily basis. I believe SEO and PPC are better understood today than SMM, for which I would like to give thinking. But before that I would like to put forth the critical requirement without which you can't answer the question raised by you:
As mention by Kent, the thinking needs to start with 'what are your business objectives?', 'who's the target audience?' and 'where is the audience present?' (i.e. unless they are present on relevant Social Media Channels, you can't consider SMM).
Coming back to SMM, you need to really consider the following points:
a.) The 'real' value and opportunity of SMM lies in creating 'engagement/conversations/relationships', which requires a mixture of resources including creativity, competency in leveraging the respective channel, patience & passion to incubate the critical mass (in the form of content, user base etc) and most important deep understanding of customer concerns.
b.) 'Content' is THE king in SMM and contrary to what most of us think, it's a VERY expensive affair (please note quality is must).
As mention by Kent, the thinking needs to start with 'what are your business objectives?', 'who's the target audience?' and 'where is the audience present?' (i.e. unless they are present on relevant Social Media Channels, you can't consider SMM).
Coming back to SMM, you need to really consider the following points:
a.) The 'real' value and opportunity of SMM lies in creating 'engagement/conversations/relationships', which requires a mixture of resources including creativity, competency in leveraging the respective channel, patience & passion to incubate the critical mass (in the form of content, user base etc) and most important deep understanding of customer concerns.
b.) 'Content' is THE king in SMM and contrary to what most of us think, it's a VERY expensive affair (please note quality is must).
To start with, no budget? That will be difficult, even if Social Media is cost-free, time is money as well.
How one must spend time and money on marketing (channels) depends on the objectives and strategy.
If you need quick results, free up funds and get into PPC.
SEO is fundamental, it takes quite some time to generate results, but the results are lasting.
(PPC is renting the land, SEO is owning the land)
Social Media can be very effective and targeted, you must find your target audience, combine it with strategy/objectives and based on those, applicate the specific technologies/platforms to it.
SEO = must.
PPC = generate leads, conversions, instant visibility
Social Media = invest time in it, it won't dissapear, and it substitutes/add current business fields.
How one must spend time and money on marketing (channels) depends on the objectives and strategy.
If you need quick results, free up funds and get into PPC.
SEO is fundamental, it takes quite some time to generate results, but the results are lasting.
(PPC is renting the land, SEO is owning the land)
Social Media can be very effective and targeted, you must find your target audience, combine it with strategy/objectives and based on those, applicate the specific technologies/platforms to it.
SEO = must.
PPC = generate leads, conversions, instant visibility
Social Media = invest time in it, it won't dissapear, and it substitutes/add current business fields.
It is NOT SM vs SEO vs PPC, it is which can do what for my business. They are all viable but do not produce the same results. And, depending on what business you are in, devoting three hours a week might be just fine or might be woefully inadequate. (In my consulting practice, given that I spend a lot of time with clients, three hours a week is a good week for me.)
What business are you in? What are you trying to accomplish? (I get wary of people throwing answers at questions such as yours without fully understanding what you are trying to accomplish!)
As part of my consulting practice I have set up PPC campaigns for some businesses. For a specialty florist, for less than $200 in Google cost over a two month period I was able to quadruple the number of hits to the web site and they received about $10,000 in revenue attributable to web traffic. So, for this type of business PPC is excellent. SEO wouldn't work here because such a small business and relatively low web traffic, there is no way I could have gotten them to appear on the first page. (Google's algorithm uses overall hits to a website to determine page rank.) So, unless you are a major player I don't see how SEO is a viable marketing strategy. I would always opt for PPC.
In addition, social media would not do much for their business. Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, etc would no do much to drive traffic to their web site or generate phone calls. Would it help with credibility? Sure. Would a bunch of positive references on LinkedIn help too? You bet. But, would it drive traffic? I don't think so.
So, what are you trying do do? Are you trying to get more clicks to your website? Do you sell stuff there? Are you trying to get people to pick up the phone and call you? Are you trying to establish credibility in an industry?
What business are you in? What are you trying to accomplish? (I get wary of people throwing answers at questions such as yours without fully understanding what you are trying to accomplish!)
As part of my consulting practice I have set up PPC campaigns for some businesses. For a specialty florist, for less than $200 in Google cost over a two month period I was able to quadruple the number of hits to the web site and they received about $10,000 in revenue attributable to web traffic. So, for this type of business PPC is excellent. SEO wouldn't work here because such a small business and relatively low web traffic, there is no way I could have gotten them to appear on the first page. (Google's algorithm uses overall hits to a website to determine page rank.) So, unless you are a major player I don't see how SEO is a viable marketing strategy. I would always opt for PPC.
In addition, social media would not do much for their business. Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, etc would no do much to drive traffic to their web site or generate phone calls. Would it help with credibility? Sure. Would a bunch of positive references on LinkedIn help too? You bet. But, would it drive traffic? I don't think so.
So, what are you trying do do? Are you trying to get more clicks to your website? Do you sell stuff there? Are you trying to get people to pick up the phone and call you? Are you trying to establish credibility in an industry?
Optimizing for SEO and Social Media are full-time jobs and should be your primary focus. After all, if your customers can't find you there isn't much of a business model.
Depending on the timeframe you have to market and sell your product, all three sources of traffic are important. PPC if you are trying to launch and drive traffic quickly, SEO to create an ever-expanding base of customers and traffic, and social media to put a real face on your business that customers can trust. You need to be positioned in all three areas to make the most impact during your customers' decision cycle.
Here is a point that hasn't been mentioned yet: Your customers place much more weight on other people recommending you or your product when making a purchase decision. People recognize traditional advertising (including PPC) for what it is and trust it less. Your customers place the most weight on their friends and opinion leaders (newspapers, blogs or other experts they may encounter). Does your social media plan include ways to market to these opinion leaders - the people who might recommend you?
Another topic: SEO is not as difficult as it used to be. More people are doing it right and Google is constantly refining their algorithms to make it more difficult to game. That means you will have to be real in order to rank. Well guess what? Google puts lots of authority on other people linking to your sites and a great way to get people to link to you is to have a relationship with them. That is another way social media is becoming more important to your overall marketing strategy.
A final point: it is much easier to rank in search results on social media sites than on google. As search evolves, I suspect that people will begin looking for their favorite florist in Facebook or LinkedIn or one of the many smaller and more targeted groups. These sites don't really make it easy to surface these results yet, but they will.
Depending on the timeframe you have to market and sell your product, all three sources of traffic are important. PPC if you are trying to launch and drive traffic quickly, SEO to create an ever-expanding base of customers and traffic, and social media to put a real face on your business that customers can trust. You need to be positioned in all three areas to make the most impact during your customers' decision cycle.
Here is a point that hasn't been mentioned yet: Your customers place much more weight on other people recommending you or your product when making a purchase decision. People recognize traditional advertising (including PPC) for what it is and trust it less. Your customers place the most weight on their friends and opinion leaders (newspapers, blogs or other experts they may encounter). Does your social media plan include ways to market to these opinion leaders - the people who might recommend you?
Another topic: SEO is not as difficult as it used to be. More people are doing it right and Google is constantly refining their algorithms to make it more difficult to game. That means you will have to be real in order to rank. Well guess what? Google puts lots of authority on other people linking to your sites and a great way to get people to link to you is to have a relationship with them. That is another way social media is becoming more important to your overall marketing strategy.
A final point: it is much easier to rank in search results on social media sites than on google. As search evolves, I suspect that people will begin looking for their favorite florist in Facebook or LinkedIn or one of the many smaller and more targeted groups. These sites don't really make it easy to surface these results yet, but they will.
With only 3 hours per week, no budget and no outsourcing there is only one answer that can achieve results within a minimal amount of time.
To be a successful Online Marketer you need to target the end user of your product or service. The three tools you posed can all be combined to achieve successful results using an integrated marketing strategy that would however require significant time and a financial obligation.
PPC is obviously the quickest way to target leads and requires a financial contribution. The good thing about PPC is you can set a budget. As you track your results you can easily modify your campaign for greater results.
SEO is a very time consuming process but the rewards can be significant. This process requires constant monitoring and tweaking for optimal results. This is a constantly changing environment driven by the higher Gods of the Internet. You must continuously stay ahead of the curve through research and education.
That leaves Social Media, which is my pick. I like to describe social media as a means of turning conversations into relationships. These relationships can be built over various social networks. Some relationships are established with only a few conversations and others take many conversations to build a relationship. These conversations if used effectively can establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. Once the relationship is built it can easily spread virally over multiple platforms. You can use social media to target your leads and you can also collaborate with others to help you reach your market. There are many applications that can help you track your results. Other than time, there is relatively no other expense involved. Anyone choosing social media as a marketing tool should establish a social media strategy or plan that will keep you on track and focused. You need to choose 2-4networks you will use and determine how and where you will spend the 3 hours per week allocated for this project.
To be a successful Online Marketer you need to target the end user of your product or service. The three tools you posed can all be combined to achieve successful results using an integrated marketing strategy that would however require significant time and a financial obligation.
PPC is obviously the quickest way to target leads and requires a financial contribution. The good thing about PPC is you can set a budget. As you track your results you can easily modify your campaign for greater results.
SEO is a very time consuming process but the rewards can be significant. This process requires constant monitoring and tweaking for optimal results. This is a constantly changing environment driven by the higher Gods of the Internet. You must continuously stay ahead of the curve through research and education.
That leaves Social Media, which is my pick. I like to describe social media as a means of turning conversations into relationships. These relationships can be built over various social networks. Some relationships are established with only a few conversations and others take many conversations to build a relationship. These conversations if used effectively can establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. Once the relationship is built it can easily spread virally over multiple platforms. You can use social media to target your leads and you can also collaborate with others to help you reach your market. There are many applications that can help you track your results. Other than time, there is relatively no other expense involved. Anyone choosing social media as a marketing tool should establish a social media strategy or plan that will keep you on track and focused. You need to choose 2-4networks you will use and determine how and where you will spend the 3 hours per week allocated for this project.
I agree it’s fairly easy to get started and while learning social media is challenging it doesn’t have to be difficult. The learning curve depends on your clarity, strategy and focus and whether you choose to learn by trial and error or get help from someone qualified in both business and social media.
I teach my clients how to connect their business, brand, and social media so that they maximize and monetize their time and results. Without proper strategy and know how, most of the time is time wasted, turning something free into something extremely costly.
While social media is an important long term strategy - excellent for obtaining high quality leads, B2B, and affiliate relationships - it can convert quite quickly. .
You nailed two risks - change in terms of service and your account being shut down. These can be handled by careful branding and not overly relying on one networking site. The sites could also start to charge fees or can become obsolete (MySpace for most businesses). But the much bigger risk is that without knowing what to do, you can blow your branding and damage your business - perhaps irreparably.
While some businesses may do better with SEO or PPC now, social media is going to be an essential for most businesses in the near future.
SEO
Anyone online should take SEO into account even if it isn't their primary marketing strategy. Again you are spot on about the issues. Additionally, some businesses, even considering use of long-tail keywords, will have a very difficult or impossible time monetizing their business through SEO (no matter the expert they work with) and will never get to the first page in Google.
PPC
While PPC can get instant results, it doesn't work for all businesses either because of the cost of the keywords or the nature of the business or target market.
As you said, the risks of PPC are high when Google changes algorithms - but also in the too common case where people - especially beginners - don’t have their stops in place.
I am clear that social media is the new biz requirement for most businesses, and meets the criteria outlined in the question best overall. Ultimately the best decision about Social Media vs SEO vs PPC, or the best combination, can only be made after considering the connection between your business, brand, niche, marketing, resources and your own personality.
I teach my clients how to connect their business, brand, and social media so that they maximize and monetize their time and results. Without proper strategy and know how, most of the time is time wasted, turning something free into something extremely costly.
While social media is an important long term strategy - excellent for obtaining high quality leads, B2B, and affiliate relationships - it can convert quite quickly. .
You nailed two risks - change in terms of service and your account being shut down. These can be handled by careful branding and not overly relying on one networking site. The sites could also start to charge fees or can become obsolete (MySpace for most businesses). But the much bigger risk is that without knowing what to do, you can blow your branding and damage your business - perhaps irreparably.
While some businesses may do better with SEO or PPC now, social media is going to be an essential for most businesses in the near future.
SEO
Anyone online should take SEO into account even if it isn't their primary marketing strategy. Again you are spot on about the issues. Additionally, some businesses, even considering use of long-tail keywords, will have a very difficult or impossible time monetizing their business through SEO (no matter the expert they work with) and will never get to the first page in Google.
PPC
While PPC can get instant results, it doesn't work for all businesses either because of the cost of the keywords or the nature of the business or target market.
As you said, the risks of PPC are high when Google changes algorithms - but also in the too common case where people - especially beginners - don’t have their stops in place.
I am clear that social media is the new biz requirement for most businesses, and meets the criteria outlined in the question best overall. Ultimately the best decision about Social Media vs SEO vs PPC, or the best combination, can only be made after considering the connection between your business, brand, niche, marketing, resources and your own personality.
1/ With NO budget, you need to rule out PPC...as your point is invalid for gaining instant results.
2/ "...drive all this traffic to your site"
1. How large is the target audience?
2. How large is the search market on average monthly?
3. How aged is the website domain being marketed?
4. How soon does this business need new business?
3/ What is the business owners background education in?
Any experience in the web space? If so, how long, and in what field?
Does this person have advisers, or solely on own?
4/ Why is this new business important to people?
Why would this business be referable?
What is the purpose of the product or service for consumers?
5/ How would you rate the effectiveness of this new website?
Professional, Contemporary design, functional, clear and concise
communication and calls to action or is it some templated site or very
beginner looking?
6/ How large of a targeted following of people are located in Faebook,
Myspace, LinkedIn, type groups/forums/fan pages?
Good question. All is a little too vague for me to decipher at this time what would get me the most for my 3 hour time on a dime...
Looking forward to the update. But to quickly answer, SEO is great for the long-tail strategy...depends on how committed and patient the business owner is. SMM can be great if there is something unique about this business to share virally.
but...if the business site sucks, this business will undoutedly burn hours of time to drive in traffic that will most likely NEVER return nor refer to anyone with a word of confidence.
So, it starts with the business concept, the business website, then the where the audience is either playing online or what they are searching for in relevance to the website's purpose.
P.S. for Social Media Marketing...yes, they can shut down your account or change rules, but you really need to be disobeying the rules or doing something very unethical to get shut down.
Participating and sharing is one thing, spamming is another, amongst other things. If Facebook decided to start shutting down accounts for self-promoting business, there would be a backlash heard through the web in seconds...blogs, news, you name it. It would KILL these sites to pull such a bold and quasi-fascist-like move.
2/ "...drive all this traffic to your site"
1. How large is the target audience?
2. How large is the search market on average monthly?
3. How aged is the website domain being marketed?
4. How soon does this business need new business?
3/ What is the business owners background education in?
Any experience in the web space? If so, how long, and in what field?
Does this person have advisers, or solely on own?
4/ Why is this new business important to people?
Why would this business be referable?
What is the purpose of the product or service for consumers?
5/ How would you rate the effectiveness of this new website?
Professional, Contemporary design, functional, clear and concise
communication and calls to action or is it some templated site or very
beginner looking?
6/ How large of a targeted following of people are located in Faebook,
Myspace, LinkedIn, type groups/forums/fan pages?
Good question. All is a little too vague for me to decipher at this time what would get me the most for my 3 hour time on a dime...
Looking forward to the update. But to quickly answer, SEO is great for the long-tail strategy...depends on how committed and patient the business owner is. SMM can be great if there is something unique about this business to share virally.
but...if the business site sucks, this business will undoutedly burn hours of time to drive in traffic that will most likely NEVER return nor refer to anyone with a word of confidence.
So, it starts with the business concept, the business website, then the where the audience is either playing online or what they are searching for in relevance to the website's purpose.
P.S. for Social Media Marketing...yes, they can shut down your account or change rules, but you really need to be disobeying the rules or doing something very unethical to get shut down.
Participating and sharing is one thing, spamming is another, amongst other things. If Facebook decided to start shutting down accounts for self-promoting business, there would be a backlash heard through the web in seconds...blogs, news, you name it. It would KILL these sites to pull such a bold and quasi-fascist-like move.
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