SEO, PPC and Facebook Ads – how to choose?

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and PPC (Pay Per Click) are two of the most popular and effective methods of advertising in the digital world. There is a multitude of other ways you can get yourself out there online, however, SEO and PPC are consistent performers.

Since COVID-19 disrupted many in-pershave become much more normalised and utilised across a broader range of industries, in some cases becoming the main platform for business and trade. This blog is going to explore and compare different strategies in order to explain which may be the best for the situation when considering paid user acquisition.

PPC is a marketing method where advertisers pay a fee every time one of their ads is clicked. As opposed to SEO which provides ‘organic’ traffic, PPC is a method of buying visits to your website.

While PPC is clearly a ‘spend money to make money’ marketing method, in some ways it’s quite similar to SEO. The advertiser will still need to compete against other PPC campaigners, which will require keyword research and good organisation.

If you do manage to hit the right number of keywords in the right area, then PPC marketing will allow you to sit at the very top of the SERP. This means you will have the highest chance of being seen and thus being clicked on.

Although you will pay a fee every time your ad is clicked on, those clicks you receive may well be worth far more than the fee of the ad. For example, you might be charged £1 for a visitor from your PPC advert, but that visitor may go on to spend hundreds of pounds.

The downside is that this is temporary. You will need to keep paying for ads to stay at the top of the results and keep a close eye on your campaign as competitors may be employing the same tactics as you. Furthermore, ads can put some people off.

Social ads have been a long-standing advertising method, allowing people to market their companies on the largest social network site in the world. Facebook is the largest social networking site, and holds a huge amount of information on its users. This information allows Facebook to micro-target its adverts towards individuals who might be interested in them. This alone shows why Facebook ads are such a popular and effective marketing method.

Facebook ads do not rely on optimisation in the same way as SEO and PPC and will not help to bring in organic traffic in the long-run. However, Facebook ads have the potential to bring interested parties straight to your website to browse your goods.

Marketing strategies all have their pros and cons. SEO is generally considered the cornerstone of all digital marketing, as when it’s done well it provides long-term organic traffic which is always a good thing. However, it usually takes a few months for SEO changes to take effect. So if you need results quickly, you could make a few changes but you need to realise you won’t necessarily get enquiries flooding in. However, when things return to normal, you would expect to see more returns and your competitors may not make the same decision, so this is still worth considering.

The ideal answer to the question we posed about what you should do is all of the above. A strategy where you spend some money in the short term but also invest in organic results in the long term is ideal. We recently implemented a paid advertising campaign for a client which showed some immediate results (within the first week of going live) and helped them get their focus on sales quickly.

If you’re feeling confused, get in touch. We have started offering free half-hour phone calls to anyone who simply wants advice. It’s free and isn’t for us to push our services. We will genuinely look at what your business is and does and try to help you with any difficult decisions you need to make.