At Maratopia Digital Marketing, we’re forever proclaiming the benefits of a good SEO campaign and why you can’t do without it.
But SEO cannot sustain your digital marketing alone – there are many other factors that comprise the customer journey. And while it’s an indispensable technique that places your business at the fingertips of searching customers and secures those all-important first encounters, it’s not the only way to get your name to the top of the search engines.
PPC or pay-per-click marketing is a method that often draws scepticism from small businesses. And while it’s no substitute for a strong SEO campaign, it’s a great way to get your optimisation off the ground in those early stages. And in the long-term, your SEO and PPC campaigns will be stronger together – here are just five reasons why.
1. Get quick results
SEO can work miracles for your site.
But it takes time to bring in those results organically. A strong SEO campaign can take several months to your site to those highly sought-after top spots on the search engine results page. And while organic results are long-term and sustainable in nature, they take time, patience and hard work.
In the meantime, pay-per-click marketing is a great way to provide a short-term boost that gives you instant and measurable results. It’s a guaranteed ranking for keywords that will bring customers straight to you.
2. Increase your visibility
In the digital marketing realm, visibility is everything. It’s why we do what we do, after all!
And as we’ve established, when it comes to search engine visibility, SEO will get you long-term results. But PPC is a great way to lay the groundwork for brand awareness that will build your customer base from day one. Let’s break it down.
A customer searches for your product. They see your PPC ad. They might not click on it right away – or at all. They may make another related search. Again, they’ll see your ad.
In this first stage of interest, they may click on your ad, or they may scroll past. Either way, they’ve had their first introduction to your business, increasing the likelihood of interaction on their next search.
Brand awareness is one of the most significant hurdles for a business, especially in the early days of your digital marketing campaign, but PPC is a great way to break that first barrier.
3. Test the waters
Whether you’re writing two thousand words or ten carefully crafted ones, copywriting is a skill of its own.
And PPC is a great way to get a feel for what works when it comes to ad copy.
From an SEO point of view, boosting your site up the search engines is a fantastic tactic, but if your SERP result is ultimately uninspiring, your CTR will suffer. That means less site traffic, and over time, a lower ranking.
With your pay-per-click campaign, you can figure out what works to drive those clicks, and what doesn’t. It’s a fairly low-risk way to test-drive both your copywriting skills and your keyword strategy – if it works with your PPC, there’s a good chance it’ll work with SEO too.
4. Second time lucky
Have you ever heard of the rule of seven?
It’s a classic marketing principles that dictates that your customers must be exposed to a brand at least seven times before they will convert.
Think of it this way – how often do you make a purchase the first time you visit a site? How much time do you spend going back, making your mind up? Perhaps once you’ve left the site you start to see targeted ads
This is known as remarketing, and it’s a fantastic opportunity to grab those customers who didn’t convert first time round.
Instead of waiting for customers to come back to you, remarketing gives you the chance to go out and find them. And customers who have been exposed to your PPC campaigns are more likely to click when your SEO is running the show.
5. Dominate the SERP page
We’ve mentioned that presence and visibility are two extremely powerful tools online.
And with a combination of PPC and SEO, you can secure both by dominating the search engine results page.
Admittedly, this will take some time to achieve as you work your way towards the number one spot. But in the long run, that increased visibility is hugely valuable for brand awareness and recognition and consumer trust.
For instance, let’s say your SEO campaign snags you that top organic spot. If it’s your PPC shopping ads lining the top of the search page too, it tells the search user that you are the leading expert on the product they’re looking for and gives you an instant advantage on your competitors, who are nowhere to be seen.
In summary, SEO and PPC are two brilliant techniques in their own right, but infinitely stronger when used together.
And with our team you can set budgets for your PPC campaigns so that you’ll never pay more than expected. We’ll take an integrated approach to both SEO and PPC to produce a campaign that that yields results fast whilst laying the groundwork for long-term search success.
