When you start up a business, choosing an online marketing strategy involves considering a host of factors. Many of these factors revolve around personal preference, aptitudes and working habits, but for many factors the driving force is economics.
When you start investigating what type of marketing campaign suits you best, you will want to choose a strategy that matches your company’s particular situation.
Two of the options for marketing strategies include PPC advertising and content marketing. Below is a comparison of these two strategies, to help you decide which one is best for your business.
PPC Advertising
Targeted Audience
Because you only pay each time an ad is clicked on, and presumably only people who are interested in what you are advertising would bother clicking on your ad, you can be assured that traffic to your site via your ads will already be interested in what you have to say. That’s called targeted marketing.
Fast Response Time
When you start up a Google AdWords campaign, The time between a customer viewing your ad and their reaction to the ad is almost instant. Either they are interested and want to know more and therefore they click on the ad, or they aren’t interested and they don’t. Moreover, you can specify the amount of time you want your Adwords ads to run and when you want it to run, so you will know for sure that any responses you get from the ad will be during this time period.
Quantifiable
Because you can pre-determine how much money and time you want to allot to your ads, you can very easily quantify the rate of return on your PPC advertising investment. That can be a very useful tool when it comes to determining when is the best time to run your ad, and what times are less profitable. Don’t waste your time on running ads no one will see.
Content Marketing
Cost Effective
If you do it yourself, publishing online content is free, other than your investment of time. There’s nothing to pay for unless you farm out the actual writing to a content provider (which may be a good idea if search engine optimised writing isn’t your forte).
Staying Power
It’s true what they say: Once something is on the internet, it’s always on the internet. That’s great news when it comes to content marketing. Once you create and publish your content online, it can continue to generate leads for your business virtually indefinitely, especially if your content is of a high caliber. What this means is that for a one-time outlay of time and effort, you could potentially get weeks, months, or even years of residual organic traffic.
Credibility
The more your content makes its away around the web, the more your name will become associated with the subject matter you are writing about. What that means for you is that you will start to become considered something of an authority on your subject and soon you’ll have a following of people who consider you among the go-to sources for information about your industry.
The more you publish content that is found to be useful by your readership, the more your online reputation will be bolstered. Remember: People buy from sources they trust. Content marketing is a good way to start building a relationship with a potential customer base, so that when it is time to open their wallets, readers may just turn into buyers.
On Target
Like PPC advertising, content marketing is useful in targeting the kind of audiences you want. Only those interested in what you are writing about will likely read it. Include a link to your site at the end of your article and you’ll see that targeted traffic click through to your site. If they’ve bothered to read all the way to the end of your article, you’ve got something they are interested in learning about.
In summary, when deciding which online marketing game plan is the best course of action for you, consider the following: your particular set of aptitudes and knowledge base, your budget and what your business goals are. Once you have a handle on those things, you can then use the comparison above to decide which path to take.
When it comes to PPC advertising vs content marketing, there is no rule stating you have to stick with one marketing strategy or the other; if one isn’t working for you, try the other. In fact, it could be quite possible for you to do a little of both at the same time if you are undecided.
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