Examining The Differences Between SEO vs. SEM vs. PPC
Hey everybody, I’m Solomon with Clickx. Today’s Marketing Hack of the Day we’re talking about SEO versus SEM versus PPC! And you’re like, “Man! I have no idea what this, all these jargons are!” You know somebody called me and said, “Hey! Your SEO is not really good. You need to work on that.” or you might have gotten a bunch of spam emails in your inbox saying, “I will fix this for you for five hundred dollars.” And you’re like, “I don’t know what that is! I need to learn more about it.” That’s what I’m going to help you up today with! So let’s get started.
SEM Involves Increasing Your Visibility On Search Engine Results
First of all, I want to talk about the differences, so you understand you know the similarities, I’m going to talk about the differences. The similarities are the middle guy over here SEM! SEM just simply means search engine marketing. That’s all it means! Alright! Search engine market that means that you’re going to market on the search engine. So, people are searching for something, you’re going to market there. Alright! There are two ways to market! One is search engine optimization or SEO and the other part is pay-per-click, which means you’re going to pay every time somebody clicks on the ad, which is on the top!
So, I just want you to understand that they’re both sort of under the umbrella of SEM. If you split SEM into two things; you will see search engine advertising which is one part that you’re advertising to people that are searching and the other one is search engine optimization in which you’re actually trying to optimize your website, so that you can show up for relevant search results! I love paid search elevator. I like all this stuff, because we’ve built Clickx, which is to really help you manage your online marketing from top of funnel to middle of funnel to bottom of funnel. It is going to help you grow your business!
SEO Strategy Is For The Long-Term
Now, there are pros and cons for both of them! For SEO the pros are, yes! You’re going to be able to show up on top of search results, granted, you did all the things. Right! You did your SEO spell checks, you made sure your title tags and your Meta Descriptions and your content is amazing, you’re not duplicating other content and you’re really working on giving a great user experience and search engine want to reward you and give you more rankings and you do show up for long tail or short tail keywords on the first page of Google. That’s great! That’s a long-term thing! So, I like that it’s free! That’s a pro, it’s like, hey! You’re not paying anything other than the time you’re investing into it or you might have resources, you have people on payroll that’s working on your marketing; that’s payroll and that’s expenses, but you’re not paying anything to Google for every one of those visits that you’re getting there absolutely free. Doesn’t cost you anything more than the time and the resources that you put into it! So, you have to see what is that right for your business? On the con side you know it’s going to take a long time! Now, a lot of entrepreneurs they want results quick. They wanted it yesterday, they have numbers to make. So, is SEO going to be the thing that’s going to make you your numbers this quarter! Probably not! There’s a whole industry it called SEO, search engine optimization and like I said, you would use tools that I’ve been using for ages and or new tools that we’re creating like Clickx to actually manage that SEO process, so that you have more success faster than just keep trying and failing!
The long story short that to me is a very long term, so it should be on your marketing plan! It shouldn’t be like, oh! I just do paid! Now, you should certainly do it to me, it’s like the most foundational thing that you can do in the paid search environment. What you’re really doing is you’re actually creating a mathematical equation. Alright! I can invest X dollar amount to get X amount of visits to my website. You’re making a bet that those people are going to actually call me, they’re going to fill out the form or buy my product and that equation is what you’re solving in the paid media!
PPC Strategy Is For The Short-Term
From the PPC side, the pros would be that it’s instant, it’s fast you can actually get to work and get results in a two-week time frame, if you have that much time! That to me is so much more exciting, because I know that I can turn this into an actual business that is viable, more so than hoping that I’m going to just show up magically, because I’m going to write all this blog post and I’m just going to tell my friends about it and then you might get disappointed that it doesn’t necessarily do that! Right! So, to me the cons would be it costs money!
One Strategy Can Be More Beneficial Than Another Depending On Your Needs
Well, a lot of business owners aren’t really ready to spend a bunch of money now! Again, like I said, I have a different perspective on it. I’ve seen both you know extremes where SEO is just killing it. I’ve seen it where, Oh My Gosh! Its unbelievable conversion! This is amazing! And I’ve also seen PPC being a very viable solution where the leads from SEO were not as good or they’re just not enough volume! And in paid search it was just so much faster, because you’re spending money and you’re getting the ROI and you’re getting phone calls and you’re able to close those deals and actually turn them into revenue and then there you go that actually works out very well! With all these jargons you’re just like, man! There’s a lot to look at! How do I manage it?
Use Metrics To Decide Which Strategy Brings The Most Value
You’re right! That’s why we went off and start building tools to actually help people make their life easier, but what I recommend that you do is you look at all of this in terms of quantifiable results for your business! How much is a lead from SEO versus how much is a lead from PPC efforts? Right!
You should start to really break down the cost per lead by Channel. Organic, which is the SEO, the paid and start to do even more Maths on cost per acquisition! How much does it cost for us to generate a customer?
You really have to understand what kind of growth you’re looking for and you really need to invest wisely depending on what that is. Right! So, to me the best analogy I can tell you is take all the traffic that you’re getting the way I look at all of this is that to me, it is really at the end of the day is a beautiful funnel! Alright! This is my funnel. Alright! The way that I look at it is at the top, of course, I have SEO, I have PPC, I have maybe local campaigns that I’m running, maybe I have referral campaigns I’m running, I have all these sorts of traffic and you need to really analyze which ones are generating leads and what is it costing you per Channel! You need to analyze that and you need to see at the bottom of the funnel what is actually converting into customers? What is the best channel for you to market? So, for me I got my visitors at the top. Right! I got prospects here! People that are looking at it! It got leads and they end up becoming customers over here! Beautiful graphic! Alright!
At the end of the day, you want to make sure that as you’re generating traffic what are these customers at the bottom? Who are they? How do they hear about your brand? And as a marketer you want to optimize every single touch these folks have in your brand as you nurture them and get them closer to buying it. You have to start measuring those KPIs. Who is most likely going to convert! That’s the first thing you want to look at and what percentage of my top-level leads actually convert, the percentage, right! You want to be looking at things like that. That’s going to help you do and don’t get hung up on the SEO versus the SEM. And I’m confused, do I need social ads? No! I don’t think any of that really matters, if you can actually run your business like this which is what I like to tell people and that’s my strategy. That’s a way that we think is that can you figure out what’s working for your business and start to work on that and work backwards, because today’s marketing is very different from the way marketing used to be ten years ago! Alright!
Understand That Marketing Today Is Different Than Once Was
The way marketing works today is that people are exploring, they’re searching and they’re trying to solve the challenge that they’re looking to solve and they’re always going to be searching for and it’s all leads for you at the top of funnel. And you as a business need to do a much better job; figuring out where it is? Where you’re losing people? What could be that? What’s causing that and also how much of that is converting? What are the best? What is that persona of the people that are converting? And how are they here by you and how do you invest more into it?
I hope you got some insights as to all these different jargons and what should I be doing as a business what’s the difference and you don’t know whether to pick this provider or that provider and they both sounds really good and they’re really good at selling! Obviously, you’re looking at it, but at the end of the day you need to understand what makes sense for your business and that’s the provider that I would work with! Alright!
Thank you again for watching another edition of Marketing Hack of the Day.
