SEO vs Social Media, What is the most Organic form of Online Marketing? And what should I use?
Let’s find out the answer by asking some questions:
- What kind of business are you trying to market?
Depending on the type of business, you might have to pick SEO as a strategy. For e.g if you are a 2 person startup without funding, and you are trying to start a web design business, then it makes sense for you to try to capture local customers in your area by utilizing local seo. You won’t have to invest money into adwords or other paid channels and you can simply use Google search to get customers.
But if you were a local business, such as a restaurant, it might take you time to build up your web presence and attract customers using SEO, so you might want to start with a small adwords budgets in the short term to quickly get customers or you can use a facebook page to quickly generate followers and then sell your stuff by attracting customers from there (social media).
2. What are the short term and long term goals of marketing?
Depending on the stage of the lifecycle of a business, different strategies are useful. For e.g. if you a brand with a long term goal of creating awareness about your brand? Then SEO might not be the right answer. You might want to use a variety of social media channels to create awareness and you might employ influencers in the process (which might be expensive). For e.g. Snapchat and other brands spread through other social media channels and word of mouth.
So depending on the goals, you can pick one or the other channel.
3. What kind of customers are you looking for ? (i.e. single purchase, recurring, etc)
Depending on the life time value of the customers, and the pay cycle, we can pick one over the other. For e.g. SEO is a long drawn out process for software industry (SAAS Software) and it takes an entire team to perform these tasks. These acquired customers have a high LTV so it makes sense to invest in SEO.
But if your customers are not going to buy twice from you (for e.g. web design), then paid advertising on social media might be tempting to drive instant traffic needed to meet your revenue goals.
4. What kind of budget do you have? (i.e. resources, team members etc)
A Few bucks can get you impressions on facebook, and if your product is truly great, then may be you will able to create enough buzz with less money.
But if you have a large budget, you might use a combination of both strategies depending on the goals, but you will still try to use social media in the beginning to see what your users think.
My local farmers market in San Diego doesn’t have a budget, and they use facebook to great affect and everyone in the community knows where to get the latest news about farmers market (Facebook).
Lots of small businesses ask me the SEO vs Social Media question, and I tell them most of the local searches are happening on Google, you are better off investing in Local SEO and Google Adwords. Because I don’t think most people will go to facebook to ask a friend which company to use when their house is flooding (although we might be in for a surprise there :)
What kind of questions are you going to ask to determine SEO vs Social Media?
PS: If you are looking for a App developer or SEO company, then please reach out to me :)
