When it comes to deciding between search marketing and social media advertising, both marketers and business owners alike are faced with a challenge. Each tactic has its own unique attributes which make it ideally suited to different audiences and intended outcomes. Let’s take a quick look at the two to see which comes out on top:
Possibilities for Search Marketing
From a business perspective, if visibility is your overarching goal than search marketing is the best bet for your marketing plan. Solid, factual inbound content (blogs, articles and posts) resonate strongly with an SEO/search focused strategy, appearing in search results as a means of answering commonly searched questions for your target audience. SEO also offers the chance to turbocharge your results via paid search, if your organic efforts are not paying off as strongly or as quickly as required.
However, search results allow for limited engagement, and rely on a customer having a clear grasp of what it is they’re looking for – as well as companies and marketers having an equally firm hold over which search terms a customer will be entering when looking for that particular product or service.
The Case for Social Media Advertising
Reputation management is made much simpler through the utilisation of social media advertising, allowing for real-time responses and enabling businesses to better understand their audiences with each new post or ad. Engaging, relationship-building content achieves great results, and the opportunity for encouraging sharing behaviour helps to grow an existing network beyond its established parameters in a way which is out of reach with search. Paid social also offers the chance to place ads directly in front of interested parties, helping to generate traffic for your website. However, the public nature of social media means any negative messages require a fast turnaround time and reputational damage can be severe if a social strategy is handled poorly.
Dual Investment for Business Growth
A solid marketing strategy often uses a combination of both of these tried and tested online marketing tactics as a means of creating a fool-proof, measurable toolkit. While it can be tempting to pour all of your time and investment into one methodology, this is unwise in the long-term as it eliminates all other avenues of generating interest and revenue for your company. The best marketers understand that a solid social strategy and a strong search strategy can be entirely complementary to one another, helping drive businesses to ongoing success.
