SEO – only a part of digital marketing
Last week you may have read my article on digital marketing. A lot of business people I speak to are confused as to where they should be spending there cash online to promote their business. As much as I love SEO and it’s power it’s only part of an overall digital marketing strategy. Today I’d like to break it down a little more.
SEO Is the foundation
Think of SEO as the foundation of your digital marketing. If you get it right it will always increase traffic to your site without you having to do anything else at all except publish content. Apart from the obvious challenges with SEO one of the elements that is impossible to control is the variation of phrases that your site will appear for and the pages that will turn up for those searches. Your SEO visitor is likely to visit more pages and stick around longer than one that came in from say display advertising. This is why it is a good idea to have a call to action on nearly every page of your site.
Search Advertising
This is probably the most second most powerful type of digital marketing after SEO. Similar to SEO, search advertising allows you to get a message in front of a potential customer at the precise time they are looking for it. The major downside is the cost. Unless you know what you are doing it can be incredibly costly and run out of control pretty quickly.
Display Advertising
Meh…
Not a huge fan. Although it’s usually really cheap there’s a reason for that. The conversions are typically quite low. I wouldn’t even considering it until you had your SEO working nicely for you and and a search advertising strategy. For the amount of effort you have to put into creative and network selection most businesses will get a much better return by focusing on search.
Facebook Creepiness
In my recent digital marketing article I explained how I learned about some of Facebook’s creepy/good changes for marketers. I was never a fan of the ridiculous display ads down the right hand side but some of the custom audiences functionality is pretty cool. In fact I sold my house using one of the techniques. That’s a post for another day though. There are a bunch of other properties to advertise on of course, like Pinterest, LinkedIN as well as things like direct sponsorship with a site or a podcast. Get your SEO right first though, then you can play in other forms of digital marketing with your SEO ticking over in the background. Out side search, where do you like to market?
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
