What is your 1st choice? SEO or PPC? This marketing and advertising question usually comes to the mind of entrepreneurs and business owners. SEO (search engine optimization) is known to be more sustainable, but takes more time to deliver results. On the other hand, PPC (pay per click) can secure clients/customers right away. But, this approach requires you to keep spending a lot of money for each and every new customer. The moment you stop advertising is the moment you stop seeing new customers.

If you’re just starting out your business, you might have a very tight budget for marketing/advertising. If this is the situation, it may be difficult for you to choose whether to spend on PPC or invest in SEO.

Be knowledgeable about your industry

The answer to the query ‘PPC or SEO’ depends on what your site does, your marketing budget & the level of competition in the space. If you’re in a niche marketplace with an established authority, your possibilities of succeeding with SEO are quite high & so you may not need PPC.

However, if you’re a beginner to an already well-developed industry, it’s a great plan to effectively allocate your spending between SEO & PPC. According to Varn Mediad and BlueHatMarketing.com, this approach is needed; simply because the marketing through PPC can assist you secure clients for your business rapidly. In a mature market, PPC advertising is also a good way to understand the most effective keywords. It will also assist you in developing a better SEO approach later.

Know your brand and audience

Not all businesses and websites can work effectively on both PPC & SEO. SEO is generally out of the question if your product is niche & people aren’t looking for it. The reason behind this is that no one is after your keywords (yet). In the same way, PPC may be a bad selection for you if your product has low margins.

Marketers should ask themselves the following questions: Does your web page receive any visitors already? Do you’ve an innovative product or service? Does your site support an authoritative content strategy? When businesses understand their audience and brand; they can generate effective content strategies, which are crucial to SEO. Nevertheless, while the ROI can be quite easily measured in the event of PPC, it isn’t as easy with SEO. This is particularly true in the preliminary stages of your business, since the returns from SEO are visible only in the long run.

Usually, it’s better to start with SEO

Many startups believe that it’s better to put off plans for search engine optimization in favor of pay-per-click, but a lot of marketing professionals are on the opinion that it is a lost opportunity. Major search engine Google also suggests that businesses get started with SEO. The reason for this is that Google adopts a “patient” strategy with new sites as these frequently end up with low-quality content or even get abandoned.

New businesses are usually not sure about what keywords to utilize or what the return on investment from different channels will be. You are able to start with as little as $500 & many keywords that’ll enable you to run a campaign requiring little tweaking & testing. This will permit you to pinpoint the keywords, which perform the best & utilize them to optimize further search engine optimization campaigns.

Remarketing

It does not matter how well your pages are from a PPC and SEO perspective, not all of your targeted clients buy from you the first time. Based on your niche, you may require quite a few rounds of marketing communication to get clients to open their wallets. Furthermore, you may have to target clients periodically based on the product life cycle.

For example, if you are offering car servicing, it’s a wise decision to reach out to clients every 6 months when it’s time for maintenance. One way to remarket is by means of email marketing. Another way is to utilize PPC for retargeting. Remarketing absolutely essential to get your audience back to your site & thereby help in increasing conversions.

Now, how do you put these words of guidance into action? Below is the short 6 step process should help you to start.

1. Do a short PPC campaign to find keywords that convert & to validate your business.
2. Utilize the keyword data to formulate an on-site SEO strategy right from launch.
3. Invest a portion of your monthly marketing budget in off-site SEO
4. Start with a comprehensive PPC campaign to begin attracting clients from start date until natural visitors move up.
5. As your website moves up the natural rankings, modify your budget distribution to minimize PPC spend and enhance the spending on SEO & other organic marketing approaches.
6. Remarket to previous visitors to increase conversion & result in repeat purchase.

About Author:

Navid Tayebi has a remarkable experience of digital marketing and brand development. He is the founder of Creative Over a digital marketing agency based in Lake Forest, CA that primarily focuses on providing digital marketing solutions to small and medium businesses. He is a versatile, organized and confident person. His areas of expertise are refinement and development of marketing goals, promotional activities, pricing strategies and branding. You can find Navid on Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook.