While many small businesses start their selling journey within their local community, for a company to grow, it must expand past its local region and start drawing in customers if it wants to reach its full potential. Since startup e-commerce retailers may not have loads of tools at their disposal to help them achieve this goal, it’s important to do the research to know which technological advancements are worth investing in when reaching consumers outside of their community.
Understand the differences between communities
Each local community is unique, which means that you should take some time to explore your new target market before venturing too far. For example, if the differences you find are major enough, you may want to warrant a change of tone in how you communicate with this audience. After all, it’s always good to speak to local markets when you’re developing your new business. We also recommend creating localized content on your website to help attract shoppers.
Ask yourself, “does my product/service fit this new market?”
Whether you’re a Canadian business looking to expand into the U.S. or a U.S.-based business wanting to capitalize overseas, the first thing any company should do is to make sure their products and/or services are suitable for the clients within these new markets before investing in digital marketing services that will target and approach these shoppers.
Use your personal connections to create a buzz of social engagement
Your biggest supporters are the people whom you’re closest to, which is why it’s important to never overlook friends and family when your business is attempting to bridge another community outside of your own. Look to where you’ve lived in the past, where you went to school, and where your loved ones live, and start creating campaigns and social engagement around these connections. It’s much easier to creak into markets that you’re already familiar with than to start something from scratch.
Build your relationships and reputation as a business owner
A growing business relies on the strength of its relationships and reputation to succeed. Since building these connections requires knowledge of your products and/or services consider offering a few complimentary minis or sessions to allow people to test before they purchase. You can also collaborate with other local businesses that share your values to allow them to build with your brand and possibly utilize social engagement to tell their customers about your brand. Peer and client endorsements often go much farther than a basic marketing campaign.
Focus on your online presence
E-commerce businesses heavily rely on their online presence to bring traffic, conversions, and revenue to their websites. Start by optimizing your website and narrow your focus to the pages, categories, products, and services that most people will check out first. You should also research to see what competitors are doing, what platforms they use, and the types of content they create that may also resonate with your target market. Then, mirror their strategies by creating social engagement to serve your audience.
Which method of outreach are you most keen to try? Let us know in the comments section below.
A digital content strategy is a huge part of an effective game plan for e-commerce businesses. Whether you’re a new company on a limited budget or an established brand that’s looking for a fresh avenue to allocate your funds, there are plenty of awesome tools out there that help you to amplify your content marketing efforts—many of which are free to use!
#1: Canva
While Adobe Photoshop is a great platform for professional photo editing, Canva is an amazing free tool that allows business owners to easily touch-up graphics, while also enabling them to create custom images through modifiable templates, graphics, and fun, animated elements. This is a game-changer regardless of the industry you’re in, as it allows your team to get creative, but also gives them the safety net of having graphical elements pre-made and ready-to-use. Although there’s no need to pay for the software, there’s an option to upgrade to Canva Pro for additional access to a bunch of editing features and templates!
#2: Trello
For this one, we’re taking it right out of our personal digital content strategy. Here at Trek Marketing, we swear by Trello. This virtual project board allows you to keep track of your content projects by creating lists—writing, editing, launch days, etc. Not only can you better manage your deadlines and tasks but other team members who have access to your Trello board can as well, streamlining your digital content strategy with a better workflow.
#3: HubSpot
Captivating headlines and titles are essential to content marketing success. However, many entrepreneurs are expert copywriters, which can make it challenging to come up with catchy titles. That said, HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator is a great resource for e-commerce captions. All you need to do is write three important nouns that are relevant to your topic and niche industry and HubSpot will generate something on the spot. It’s that easy!
#4: Thinglink
We’re living in a time where you need to catch your audience’s attention by sticking out from your competition, which means that you need to generate buzz to become popular and powerful. Since most consumers today are drawn in by interactivity over words, Thinglink is a great digital content strategy tool for creating interactive images, videos, and 360 content. It’s so important to have a strong collection of visual content, especially when further explanation is needed to explain complex ideas or topics about a product or service.
Are there any other free platforms that we missed on our list? Drop a comment below to share with our readers.
Whether you want to admit it or not, marketing has gone digital, which means that content creation services are more important now than they’ve ever been before. That said, finding ways to stand out in the heavily saturated webspace rests with finding innovative and creative means for consumers to engage with your content. So, if you need some reasons to feel inspired to start creating some captivating online content, continue reading to discover what helps to generate some buzz.
Content creation helps to build trust with your audience
While in the real world, relationships are more of a two-way street, in the business world, it’s paramount that businesses work hard to build a foundation with their customers, even if these consumers aren’t the first to engage. That said, you shouldn’t create content for the sake of filling space, you should create something that provides value to the people who love and want to engage with your brand. This could include using your creating a blog that educates the audience on a certain topic, using one of your social platforms to offer a daily dose of industry entertainment, or simply sending out an email with a special coupon code to shop. The key to content creation is consistency by delivering amazing content ongoing to keep customers knowing about your services and coming back. The more time someone invests in your content, the more familiar they become with your brand. It’s that simple!
Content creation helps to build brand recognition
Lots of content means that your business is building a library of resources that will continue to define your brand. Whether these pieces of content are an article, image, or social post, every time someone clicks on it, their engagement instills name recognition, so perhaps in the future when they require your product or service, you’ll be at the forefront of minds. To do this, create and utilize powerful and creative images and messages that best represent your brand’s aesthetic. This is especially important for social media and email marketing.
If brand awareness is something on your agenda that you need help with, Trek Marketing offers a variety of content creation services that will help you to succeed by resonating with your target audience.
Content creation helps your SEO
Anyone that runs an e-commerce business knows that SEO is an essential part of your digital marketing strategy. So, why not formulate your content creation to also increase the chances of potential customers finding you with SEO? This can easily be done in the blog section of your website. Simply ensure that you’re using keywords that are relevant to your brand so that your new article will appear organically in various web results. While SEO can take some time to really kick it, it’s a valuable tool that can boost your website at random times when the right keywords start trending.
How developed is your content strategy? If you have any questions about our content creation services and/or process, please drop them in the comments section below.
The right digital marketing investment will help your e-commerce business grow and while all of the services that Trek Marketing provides are beneficial to an expanding company, depending on the industry, some offer better value to start. Read through the brief descriptions we’ve provided below and let us know which digital marketing agency services you’re interested in trying out.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
SEO is a digital marketing practice that’s designed to improve the appearance and positioning of web pages in organic search results like Google and Bing. Because of how we discover content online, it’s important to rank high on search engines to increase traffic to a website and generate more conversions. This is a very common digital marketing agency service and is one of the first investments that growing e-commerce businesses make to gain heightened visibility on the web. That said with thousands of other pages doing the same thing, your content must be authoritative, targeted, and contain lots of searched key terms to ensure that your ranking is high and click-worthy.
Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
PPC is an online marketing tool that strategizes when digital ads are based on the users (gender, age, location, job title, industry, education, interests, etc.). This internet advertising model encourages purchase-driven traffic to websites and only charges the business owner when the ad is clicked. What makes this digital marketing agency service worthwhile is that allows you to keep control over your campaign costs, specifically target an audience, and create a high engagement among those who would be most likely to use your product or service.
Email marketing
By sending out emails to a list of contacts who have been permitted to receive communication from you, your business can create and drive sales by tracking personalized or automated e-newsletters. Whether you have the experience to utilize the drag-and-drop editor feature or prefer to dig through real-time reports, email marketing is simple, effective, and a great way to connect with your customers.
Social media marketing (SMM)
SMM allows businesses to use the power of multiple social media platforms to connect with their audience. By building brand awareness, companies can market products and services, increase sales, drive web traffic, or simply create a community that leverages popular channels to establish a brand following. Not only does SMM give businesses a great opportunity to follow consumer activities but it also helps them to give valuable insight into the likes, dislikes, and interests of their buyers so that they can create a better, more attractive marketing strategy.
Blogging and content creation
While these two digital marketing agency services are very inter-connected, there are also some distinct differences between them. While a business blog is a section on a website that consists of informative, diary-style text entries that are typically published on an ongoing schedule, content creation is the process of generating other types of written and published text from topic ideas that appeal to your buying persona. Copy is then placed to bulk up website text and assist with driving traffic through SEO practices.
Do you need help with any or all of the above digital marketing agency services? If you want immediate assistance, please drop a comment below and someone from our sales team will be in touch with you.
Social Media Management can be a daunting task, especially if you’re new to the industry. With millions of companies competing to get the market’s attention, you’ll have to bring your A-game to stay relevant amongst all your competitors.
As Social Media has grown substantially well over the years, the competition has also increased. Companies saw the impact it can have on their brand publicity and profitability. Fortunately, you won’t have to do all things by yourself. Many Social Media Management Tools for different applications have been developed to provide a scalable service for people trying to grow on social.
In this article, we’ve garnered some of our personal favorites regarding Social Media Management and how you can use these particular tools in organizing, creating, managing, and all across the board to make your social media growth a little faster and much more effortless.
Staying on top of all your marketing plans for every social media platform is not as easy as it sounds. Using one or two platforms might be manageable, but imagine balancing four, five, or even six accounts for different platforms, it sounds stressful, right?
This is where Hootsuite comes to the rescue. With a customizable dashboard, you may now easily oversee what’s happening across all your social media platforms and holistically execute your marketing strategies. Do more in less time by using their added features such as scheduling posts, organizing content, easy access to data analysis, and more!
Success in social media is a constant search for ways to create content that people will find interesting, therefore gathering traction and consistent traffic. This is why collecting data points and live analysis is the game’s name, which Buffer completely understands and aims to provide for social media marketers out there to use.
Schedule posting and analyzing real-time analytics are just a few of the many tools you’ll get from Buffer. Their simplistic approach and consistent ways of improving service make Buffer one of the most viable comprehensive tool kits for social media management today.
Talk about creating something from nothing, Later has come from being a simple Instagram tool back in 2014 to being the number 1 visual marketing platform for Instagram with over 6 million users globally. There’s no question why many companies have trusted Later, as the effectiveness of their simplified methods speaks for itself.
Scaling from an Instagram scheduling tool to being a comprehensive social media management toolkit makes Later one of the favorites in the media world. With visual scheduling, media management, marketing, and analytics, you’ll be able to skyrocket your brand to the next level.
Not all social media managers need the same help when streamlining their processes. Some may be more interested in data and intelligence, and some may need help in customer care. SproutSocial understood the dissimilarity in the business needs and provide solutions that cater to each problem separately.
SproutSocial has all the right tools for you to create a formidable brand, whether you need social amplification, social commerce, or employee advocacy. Turning problems into opportunities, SproutSocial has continued to improve its services to better cater to companies worldwide.
When you think things can’t get any better, Agorapulse finds its way into providing service for social media marketers like no other. Managing multiple social media accounts on various platforms could easily be a mess. Having management tools is a must-have if you’re serious about competing in the current market.
Agorapulse is making its case for being one of the best social management tools today. They focus on bringing order in the chaos of your inbox, providing quality support, competitive pricing, and creating a seamless approach to making things a lot less complicated for efficiency and better progress.
If you’re looking for a cost-effective social media marketing management tool for your business, SocialPilot should be on top of your list. With collaborative features, you’ll be able to share ideas and have a cohesive approach with your work team regarding the strategies you’re planning to implement. You’ll also have access to accurate data analysis that you can use to improve your approach and get more traffic.
SocialPilot has an effective way of foreseeing marketing trends and tools you can use in implementing more data-driven marketing strategies.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the strategies, next big thing, tools, and other noise that floats all over the internet. Content Marketing doesn’t have to be so complicated, and this is what ContentCal has been trying to prove ever since it launched. They aim to provide robust tools and strategies that are tried and proven effective methods that ramped up so much traffic for their satisfied clients.
ContentCal isn’t stopping at providing business toolkits. They also help educate marketers worldwide on what it takes to create engaging content that truly works.
If you’re looking to attract new customers, gain better traction and improve your workflow efficiency, Sendible is a sensible solution for all your marketing problems! Sendible seems to make all the right moves in creating a comprehensive social media management toolkit for social media managers and agencies, providing a wide range of functional tools ready to be utilized.
Monitor your performance through detailed progress reports and track user behavior through data analytics using the vast features of Sendible.
Optimizing workflow through collaborative strategies seems to be working quite well for companies today. As the competition for people’s attention rises, it’s becoming more crucial to have an effective social media management system that promotes communication and collaborative effort, ideal for team projects on agencies.
With 45+ integrated applications, Zoho never fails to provide what every scaling business needs. Integrations such as CRM Plus, Workplace, Finance Plus, and much more separate Zoho Social from your ordinary social media management system.
Unlike most all-around social media management systems, Tailwind is tailored primarily on two visual platforms: Pinterest and Instagram. That being said, expect to have a more curated approach to their social media growth methods. The primary purpose of Tailwind is to eliminate the hours and hours of staring at your screen without getting anything done and doing the guesswork when it comes to business. They believe that to find success in social media, you’ll have to have structured and data-driven decisions.
Doing everything alone won’t do the trick, and so to find success in social, you’ll have to seek tools that’ll help streamline your processes, especially for marketing. With Tailwind, creating, scheduling, optimizing, and automation should be a breeze and instantly take your brand to the next level.
Not so long ago, online real estate marketing was a nice-to-have asset for real estate professionals. However, times have changed and businesses that don’t invest in their digital portfolios risk falling behind their competitors. As technology continues to govern our lives, our reliance on it will only continue to grow. Thus, the best way to ensure that your leads continue to grow alongside your company is to work with a digital marketing agency that understands how important clicks can be.
Take advantage of geo-fencing
What’s geo-fencing you ask? It’s a virtual perimeter for a real-world geographic area. This location-based technology allows business owners, in this case, real estate agents and/or companies, to hone in on a target audience based on location. Since a huge majority of prospective home sellers and buyers use their mobile phones to search for real estate, “geo-fencing” is an effective way to deliver relevant messages to the right people. How your campaign works are by precisely targeting a radius around a specific location, which makes it easy for smartphone audiences to find you based on that defined region. The region could be a small neighbourhood or an entire city, and you can also specify types of real estate such as apartments, single-family homes, and office spaces.
Build out your SEO strategy
While this digital marketing service is best used in a wide variety of industries, real estate marketing greatly benefits from an effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. That said, because location is such a key factor in selling something like real estate, local SEO is important when formulating your business goals. For example, it’s essential to rank for local search terms like “best real estate agent” and “homes for sale near me” as these are common phrases that clients type in search consoles to find their ideal agent and/or open houses.
Here are some other ways to utilize SEO in your real estate marketing:
Create and optimize a Google Business Profile
Regularly write and publish content through that profile
Build backlinks from professional and general directories
Gain reviews on Google, Facebook, and Yelp
Social media harnesses huge power
When it comes to online selling, social media platforms are a goldmine, especially for those looking to generate real estate leads. This is because many active homebuyers are from the generational group who regularly use social media. So, by leveraging the power of popular channels, your real estate marketing can easily reach the audience that currently dominates the market.
Below are some ways we suggest;
Research relevant hashtags and use them to optimize your social content
Use your accounts to educate buyers
Chat with your followers and answer their comments
Promote amenities and neighbourhoods, not just the house
Share your real estate success stories
Consider utilizing video as part of your social strategy
Real estate marketing is rapidly growing, how are you going to remain relevant in a heavily saturated industry? Drop a comment below to let us know.
Using a high-quality photo to represent your brand or use it for an article is an easy way to upscale your content by a mile instead of posting without one. Especially in a world full of multimedia content scattered all over the web, people’s attention span is also getting shorter, so plain long paragraph blogs won’t be enough to get people interested. If properly used, images could also add much more context to your content and separates it from the rest, resulting in much higher traffic to users.
Fortunately, you’re not the only one. Bloggers, content creators, e-commerce website owners have similar problems sourcing high-quality stock photos for their brand, so businesses noticed this need and provided an excellent solution. Today, we will share our little secret to you in sourcing some of the finest stock photos from the best sites offering royalty-free images online.
Are you searching for high-quality images taken by professional photographers worldwide? You might want to check out some of the most beautiful collections at Pexels. Upgrade your marketing campaigns by taking advantage of their wide range of photos that are free to use. You’ll also be helping free-lance photographers by downloading their images, so it’s a win-win situation!
Since we’re talking about the best royalty-free image sources online, we can’t simply forget about mentioning Unsplash. With over 2 million free high-quality stock photos taken by professional photographers worldwide, it’s a total one-stop-shop for stock images online! Diversity is one of the main reasons Unsplash remains one of the most widely used image sources online today. They have a range of categories that brands can capitalize on and use for their marketing campaigns.
Sourcing royalty-free images online isn’t just about having tons of photos. It’s also about the user’s ability to conveniently brush through those millions of photo selections. With Negative Space, you could easily find what you’re looking for through their seamless filtering options, making it effortless to find exactly what you’re looking for. With these features, you won’t have to spend much time scrolling through many images, giving you more time to polish your content.
If you happen to be looking for images taken by an inspired creator, Kaboompics is the way! Karolina, the spectacular talent behind these free images, has taken the world by storm with her remarkable stock photos that she offers freely for people online. She has decided to take her hobby to the next level by providing thousands of free stock photography with distinct color palettes, ideal for social, websites, and more!
Most people might already be familiar with this one as they are one of the leading online graphic design sites. Besides having an easy-to-use editor, Canva also offers a ton of free stock images, so you won’t have to switch tabs looking for photos online as you can go straight to editing those free stock images all at the same place! Canva is famous for its straightforward interface, and you’ll find more ways to take advantage of their free features for your marketing schemes.
Are you looking for free high-resolution photos? How about vector illustrations and SVG Icons? Reshot has got you all covered! Offering a wide selection of bold and fearless designs for businesses, you’ll surely love Reshot the moment you see their website and how unique they are when it comes to presentation, not to mention what they provide. Their motto is having offer instant downloads with no strings attached, made by designers for designers, and stress-free browsing. Reshot is undoubtedly shaping the modern landscape of free-stock images as they embark on a more seamless way to give creators and website owners what they genuinely need. Feel free to visit their site and check them out for yourself!
Nappy is a royalty-free image source that aims to leap forward for the cultural representation of black and brown communities. They aim to crush the cultural boundaries and represent their own by providing high-resolution images for brands to use worldwide. Regardless of your stand on their mission against lack of diversity, you can’t simply ignore that their pictures are outstanding and worthy of being seen.
If you’re a blog junky, you might’ve read some of their blogs that talk about a wide range of topics, mainly in the e-commerce business world. However, not many people know that Hubspot also offers a selection of high-quality stock photos on their own as they have found a shortage in this area. They’ve divided their free stock photos into four distinct categories: office-related, computer, kitchen photos, and miscellaneous.
Speaking of the traditional image sources in this list, Pixabay is worth mentioning for its consistent service in providing royalty-free images for businesses online. Aside from offering a wide range of free stock images, they also carry out vector graphics, illustrations, videos, music, and sound effects free for everyone. There is no question why Pixabay remains one of the classic sources out there, as they have everything you’ll need to enhance your already beautiful content and take it to the next level!
Feeling creative, you might want to check out how Rawpixel is smashing the free-stock game by providing some of the most diverse selections for everyone! By visiting their website, you’ll immediately see how they aim to separate themselves from the traditional free-stock image sources by overcoming creative boundaries with the help of their talented team and community of inspired creators. Brush through their topics and easily find ideas to represent your brand in many different ways! You’ll find primarily free options on their website. However, the paid option will serve as their means of contribution towards Hope for Children, a non-profit organization for children worldwide.
We hope you’ve found a ton of value in this post, especially in sourcing free images online. Indeed, spending money on resources such as images may help. Still, it doesn’t mean you’ll be disabled without cash, as you have many free image source options to brush through online and may find even better pictures to represent your brand!
The significance of cyber security is seemingly more notable in this ever-growing digital world we live in. Yet despite the surge in online shopping, many businesses and shoppers are unprepared to deal with vulnerabilities. As the world of e-commerce and digital marketing expand hand-in-hand, the opportunity for attacks becomes more prominent. Listed below are three prevalent concerns where businesses could greatly benefit from professional cyber security services.
#1: Malware and remote access to customer relationship management (CRM)
Cyberattackers target CRM software to access personal and financial information about employees, customers, and vendors. Not only does this cause irreparable damage to a brand’s image, but it also exposes weakness in the system. A CRM is where businesses store the majority of their private data, which is why it’s essential to stay ahead of hackers by testing for security weaknesses before they’re exposed. This will help to build meaningful customer relationships and grow your company revenue.
While building a secure website should begin in the development stage, stricter security measures may be needed later as well. However, are there any things you can do to maintain cyber security in-house? Be sure that any software you download comes from trusted sources and partners and always log out of CRM when you’re not actively using it.
#2: Phishing and email marketing
Email-based attacks have increased in frequency since the rise of this digital marketing service, but even more so since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, where businesses saw an increase in new, organic, online traffic.
For those who’re unfamiliar with the terminology, phishing is a word that’s used when hackers pose as real businesses and send malicious emails to people to trick them into revealing financial information, system credentials, or other sensitive data. In this regard, business owners must remain aware of email phishing tactics while email users avoid strange requests for information.
#3: Fraud and social media marketing
Social media is one of the many elements that make up the bread and butter of the digital marketing industry. As such there are cyber security concerns around attacks where hackers are impersonating businesses or deploying ransomware—a type of malware that threatens to publish the victim’s personal data and block access to it unless a ransom is paid.
Hey there, Digital Dynamo! Before you dive deep into that vast sea of algorithms, backlinks, and whatnot, how about a chuckle or two? Or better yet, a snort-laugh that makes everyone around you slightly concerned! Dive into this treasure trove of the finest (and funniest) digital marketing and SEO jokes and puns. Whether you’re the ‘I-know-SEO’ superstar or the ‘I-thought-SEO-was-a-typo’ newbie, we’ve got something to make you giggle. Fasten your laugh belts, because we’re about to take you on a wild, whimsical ride through the quirky lanes of digital marketing humor. And trust me, by the end of this, you’ll say “I never META joke I didn’t like!
Why do mobile marketers make good parents? They are responsive.
Why are SEO guys the worst dancers? They do not have any algo-rythm.
Where does the SEO do his grocery shopping? Any store with organic and fresh content.
What do SEOs use when they go fishing? Linkbait
What two things do SEO pre-schoolers have at break? Cookies and link juice boxes
Why did the SEO cross the road? He wanted to get hit with traffic.
What does the SEO use besides consonants? Disavowels
How did the SEO find her way back through the woods? Bread crumbs
Why did the SEO expert get kicked out of the grocery store? Cutting in line to be the 1st position
Why is it wrong to have lots of Pandas in the same cage at the Zoo? It could be considered stuffing!
What do you call an SEO expert who sells vans? Danny “SellAVan”
What do you call a game where touching the person makes them NOT it? Alt tag
Why are SEOs good at game shows? They’re good at Quick Answers
What are the two favorite animals of an SEO? Panda and Penguin!
What does the SEO wear to the wedding ceremony? A Black Hat.
Why does the SEO never eat soup? It’s usually thin content.
What does the SEO guy say before bungee jumping? I hope I have a good bounce rate.
Why did Tiger Woods get into SEO? To get his #1 ranking back.
What does an SEO drink to build muscles? Link Juice!
How does the SEO name her son? JSON.
Why did the marketer break up with the calendar app? Because it was too many dates!
Why do SEOs hate running marathons? Because they dread long tails!
What’s an SEO’s favorite city? Rankfurt
Why did the marketer go to school? To improve his site’s education level!
Why did the social media manager go broke? Because he couldn’t ‘Ad’ up his expenses!
What did the marketer say after a successful campaign? “That’s ad-tastic!”
Why do SEOs like to work at the zoo? Because they know how to handle the SERPents!
Why did the email marketer get kicked out of school? Too many spam reports!
Why was the SEO expert so happy on the camping trip? Because he mastered the camp’s site!
How did the pay-per-click specialist feel when he discovered meditation? At peace with every click!
What did the digital marketer say to the billboard advertiser? “Looks like your ad’s taking up too much space!”
Why did the SEO get kicked out of the party? He brought too many bad backlinks!
Why don’t SEO experts go to college? Too much duplicate content!
Why did the conversion rate optimizer get kicked off the soccer team? Too many goal abandonments!
What’s an SEO’s favorite weather? Cloud optimization!
How can you spot an outgoing SEO? They stare at your shoes instead of their own when talking!
Why did the Facebook marketer get kicked out of the bar? Too many targeted shots!
How do SEOs stay calm during stressful times? They keep their internal links in check!
Why was the SEM expert good at basketball? Great ad placement!
What does the SEO say at the end of a yoga class? Namaste on the first page!
While all digital marketing services have their purpose, there may be a route to take that’s more suited for your business. When it comes to PPC and SEO, more digital marketing services are strategic and possess the power to generate traffic and conversions. That said, before you decide whether one or both is more suited to your needs, you have to understand what they do and their pros and cons.
What’s Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)?
Known most often as PPC, this digital marketing service uses targeted advertising to buy visits to your website. Business owners pay a fee every time someone clicks one of their ads—the cost varies depending on where the ad is placed (Google, Facebook, etc.) and your budgeted monthly ad spend—which is leveraged by search engine traffic or by bidding for keywords related to the products or services you’re selling.
What are some advantages of PPC?
This digital marketing service is known to produce quick results. Once your campaign is launched, you should see an uptick in traffic, clicks, and conversions.
PPC is easily controlled. Business owners set a budget with a goal of how many leads they hope to get in return.
You don’t need to worry about search engine algorithms when you use PPC because you aren’t trying to obtain an organic position. You bid for your spot!
PPC allows you to easily target potential customers based on keyword searches, their geography, and even the time of day. This cannot be done with organic traffic.
These types of campaigns allow visuals in addition to text. This can help a user to be more inclined to click on the advertisement, which increases the average click-through rate.
What are some disadvantages of PPC?
It usually costs more than SEO to get good results, as some keywords have higher price points than others.
The research required to know which keywords to target is time-consuming, on top of managed ad spend and measuring returns.
PPC only remains effective while you’re paying for it. Unlike SEO which continues to draw in traffic as a long-lasting method, the minute you stop your PPC campaigns to divert the budget elsewhere, potential customers won’t be able to find your site the same way.
Click fraud is a problem that occurs when companies use manual clicks or damaging software to simulate human clicks from various IP addresses. This will rapidly increase your cost.
As one of the most common digital marketing services, SEO is all about optimizing your web pages to get them to rank higher in search engine results. This enables search spiders to understand your web pages and rank them above your competitors. Keep in mind that search engines like Google are consistently changing their algorithm to provide more helpful content to their visitors, which can affect your rankings if you aren’t on top of these new requirements. While cultivating inbound links from other sites dictates your “link authority” elements like blogging, social media marketing, and videos are other ways to effectively use your quality links.
What are some advantages of SEO?
This digital marketing service is cost-effective and is incredibly budget-friendly to set up and manage.
Organic SEO is completed with long-lasting intention, meaning that when it’s properly optimized with good link authority, your site can continue to rank even if you step away from it for a few weeks.
SEO helps to build credibility and trust.
What are some disadvantages of SEO?
When compared with PPC, SEO is a much slower process, as it can take months to start seeing results.
SEO is ongoing. Your site will never be 100% optimized so it will require continued work to reap the rewards of higher rankings.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to digital marketing, which is why the answer to the which provides more value depends on you. If you have the budget, a PPC campaign will offer you the fastest results. However, if a longer timeline is something you had in mind, SEO efforts achieve some of the best results and return over time. Either way, Trek Marketing can help get your digital campaigns launched!
Which of the two digital marketing services has proven better for your business? Let us know in the comments section below.
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