Now, whether you’re a marketer trying to figure out which Marketing Strategy would be your #1 most prioritized skill or you’re a business owner/ entrepreneur who wants to budget better. This article will give you an answer after you dig further into it.

You see, it’s important to know which strategy is the most value-generating to your business, especially when you’re just getting started and don’t have a big budget, so you can optimize and grow faster. 

First, you should be aware that…

The Offer Is All The More Important

Most business owners/entrepreneurs commit to using one single offer over and over again. 

The point is… even if you know the greatest techniques with regards to SEO, PPC,… but your offer is not attractive you probably still can never get a healthy ROI out of your marketing campaigns.

That’s why a good offer can be a difference between 6, even 7-figure companies and companies that can’t even make a profit from what they are selling.

For example, the difference between selling a product/service without a money-back guarantee and selling the same product/service using a 60-day money-back guarantee is very significant.

Offering a money-back guarantee or satisfaction guarantee can significantly increase your conversion rates. It helps build trust and credibility in your company and service, and reduces the skepticism and the risks that your prospects need to put on their shoulders!

So anyway. Before we analyze these 3 types of digital marketing. It’s crucial to also understand…

The behavior of your potential customers:

Even if you can make the most delicious hamburger in the world, it will make no difference if you’re trying to sell it to a vegetarian. That’s why it’s very critical to know exactly where your prospects are and what they are doing on the Internet.

Understand the demographics they have in common… Do they usually read Email? Or do they usually spend 80% of their time surfing Facebook, Instagram, and many other social media platforms? Or do they just use the Internet to search for what they want on Google?

And with that said, there is one very common mistake that I see a lot of marketers and business owners are making and are not even aware of… The difference between “potential keywords” and “high commercial potential keywords”.

Now, it’s probably logical to say we should focus on things that users search for the most because they are likely to buy them.

In some other industries, it might be the case, but it’s not for the digital marketing niche. The money-making potential of a certain keyword is not in direct proportion to how many times the prospects search for it.

Let’s take a look at the 2 pictures below…

Search volume for keywords related to Social media marketing is the second-highest, and PPC management is the least.

These are some keywords like: “What is PPC”, “types of PPC ads”, “How much to spend on SMM”

However, when it comes to “high commercial potential keywords” like: “PPC management fee”, “SEO service near me”,…

The result is quite different. Search volume for PPC management is now the second-highest.

So, what does this have to do with your business?

You see, it’s important to know exactly which activities in your business are generating potential outcomes and which activities are bringing in HIGH commercial potential outcomes. That’s a BIG difference!

Now, let’s dig deeper into each of these 3 types of digital marketing.

(#1) Marketing Strategy – SEO

First of all, according to Hubspot, most businesses spend a majority of their time on SEO

So, here are the 3 biggest benefits to consider:

1. You don’t need a BIG budget to do SEO:

If you currently don’t have a big budget for advertising, SEO is a very good choice because it just requires time, effort, knowledge,… sometimes money as well but it’s much more affordable compared to buying ads. And by the way, the average cost per click is not cheap, according to wordstream.com

Google’s algorithm determines which are the best results whenever someone searches for something. It means, if you can build a website that is friendly and worthy to Google, it’s going to attract FREE traffic to your site even many years later (if you constantly update your site).

The initial investment is big – you might want to hire a marketing agency to help you with this, but there is no additional cost to constantly attracting new potential customers to your site.

Keep in mind you need to update your site each and every month if you don’t want to be taken down by the new update from Google’s algorithm. With all that said, SEO can be considered the most time-intensive strategy to follow.

2. You’re are able to beat your competitors

As I said earlier, SEO is nowadays considered the most effective marketing strategy. Around 61% of marketers believe improving their rankings on Google (SEO) and their presence is their number #1 priority.

And most of your competitors are following this strategy as well. So if you know how to do this properly (better than your competitors), you can easily move ahead of them.

3.  SEO is one of the best ways to build trust & credibility:

Unlike any other paid advertisements – which make people more skeptical. SEO helps you build trust and credibility real fast because you’re giving away FREE, valuable, and actionable content to your audience.

You see, the goal of SEO is to build a strong bond with your readers, providing valuable information so you can deliver a great experience whenever your potential customers land on your website. With that said, there’s a lot more to do than just finding and focusing on some keywords. For example: 

• Top Backlink Profiles – And how to build backlinks

• Use Google Analytics to understand user behavior

• How to optimize on-page SEO

And really… This process takes patience, commitment, and a lot of effort. 

(#2) Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing can usually be assumed as it is no different from SEO. In fact, it’s not true, here are the 3 benefits of content marketing

1. The number #1 most important driver for your site’s ranking

As you can see, Google updates dozens, if not hundreds of updates from minor to major every single year. It makes marketers like us sit there freaking out about what is going to happen, how to keep the same rank,… and so on.

But one thing for sure is… year in, year out, the most important component that contributes to your SEO and helps increase your rank on Google is nothing more than GREAT CONTENT.

Keep in mind the best way to create effective and valuable content is to follow the E.A.T template. 

By consistently sharing valuable content that is relevant and useful for your readers, you can let the search engines know that you’re serious and you stay committed to serving your readers.

BONUS tip: Creating a content calendar will be very helpful to your content marketing strategy. It will let you know what you need to do. 

Besides, you can use Ubersuggest to find out what your audiences are searching for, block that idea on your content calendar, and just go for it!

2. People love receiving

Giving away valuable content for free gains you power. It helps you increase your domain authority, domain score, trust, perceived expertise,… Moreover, if that piece of content is SO valuable that a lot of people would like to link to it (your content earns backlinks from external sources), all the above-listed benefits increase even further.

The more quality your content is, the more likely it will earn you more search visibility than you ever thought possible.

BONUS tip: If you want to increase the effectiveness, even more, you can include in your content a checklist, a report, templates,… or something that your readers can take and implement right away… So you can collect their email address and use them for further email marketing campaigns.

3. Anyone can do with this kind of marketing strategy

You and your team don’t need to be experts in your industry to open a laptop and start writing. Content marketing is nothing more than just that! Anyone who has something valuable to share with the world can become a content marketer.

Even if you currently are not good at what you’re doing… just keep writing. As long as you keep writing and providing valuable content to your audiences every single day, you’re going to get good at it sooner or later.

Besides, you can also use apps like Hemingway or Grammarly to improve your grammar. 

Content marketing is not expensive. It’s available for anyone, even if your team is small and doesn’t have a lot of money to spend on marketing. And the point is… The sooner you get started investing in this strategy, the sooner you will see actual results. With that said, I see there is no reason to exclude content marketing from your company.

And really… If you’re not confident in writing. There are many forms of media included in content marketing strategy…

And just a quick reminder based on the current situation. Don’t forget to tweak your content to make sure they are all suitable for the pandemic situation. As you can see from financesonline.com, over 94% of marketers have already adjusted their content.

Comparison: SEO & Content Marketing

As you can see, when you walk to carry on a Marketing Strategy with SEO, is much more technical than content marketing. Following that, SEO is also a lot more difficult.

Now, let me give you an idea of what it involves. On-page SEO:

• Research relevant and potentials keywords and try to include them on your page
• Maintaining full ownership of your content
• Create captivating titles
• Photos and images are even more important than what you write
• And more…

Off-page SEO has a lot more to do with technical optimizations:

• Page speed optimization
• Link Building
• Fix broken links
• Redirect
• And more…

Until now, I’m sure you’re aware that SEO and content marketing must go together. SEO and content marketing do not require a big budget, but this one does…

(#3) Marketing Strategy – PPC (Pay-per-click)

As you can see, according to acquisio.com Google and Facebook are now the 2 biggest advertising platforms for marketers and business owners like us. 

1. Starting from nothing but you can be on top SERP immediately

Of course, this is the most expensive way to follow but it will bring you instant results. 

As you can see if you start to build your content marketing plan and try to get SEO right. It will cost you at least a few months just to find your place or just to be ranked on page 1 of Google for a few keywords, let alone on top 1 of SERP.

Using PPC, whether you’re just getting started or just an established brand you can dominate and stay at top 1 immediately. Getting a top SERP position without months of hard work is totally possible with PPC – And it’s probably one of the best ways to find some of your first customers.

For example, if you’re a coach and you want to find your potential customer in America. You use Ubersuggest and you see that there are a lot of people searching for “online coaches”. If you’re not on a shortlist that Google provides to your target audience using that keyword, you may want to use a PPC campaign that targets directly the “online coaches” keyword.

2. Get immediate results and can optimize over time 

Unlike Content marketing or SEO – which is “money in the future”, PPC is “money in the present”. This means you can get immediate results from your PPC campaigns and optimize them to get better profits.

Just imagine, if you put every $1 you put into the PPC campaign that you can get back $4, now you don’t even need a marketing budget anymore!

And according to leadsquared.com businesses make an average of $2 in revenue for every $1 spent on Adwords – a 100% ROI!

So PPC ads are all about testing and optimizing. You should know exactly how each particular PPC ad works. For example, on the same platform (Facebook). It’s imperative to know the difference between Facebook Ads & Boosted Posts.

The more creatives that you put on the marketplace to test, the higher chance that you’re going to get a healthy ROI and make a massive profit from your marketing campaigns.

3. You don’t need to rely on Google’s algorithm

If you do SEO and content marketing, you’ve got to spend lots of time worrying about all the ups and downs of the search engines. If you can’t change your content on time, you can lose your place on Google immediately.

By contrast, PPC ads offer stability. Hardly do PPC algorithms go through massive changes. It means you don’t need to worry too much about the algorithms, and you can also predict the results of your future campaigns based on what is happening with your current campaigns.

Conclusion:

As you can see, which one you should focus on really depends on your marketing budget and your goals.

If you want to get instant results you definitely want to prioritize PPC ads (of course you all need a big budget). However, if you want to play a long game and you don’t have a HUGE budget for paid advertising, SEO and content marketing might be a better choice.