SEO vs social media marketing and which is better is a consistent question being asked among business owners for the better part of the last decade. Although they both have their places in marketing, it is not a simple black and white answer but grayer. To be able to find out which one would be better for your business we will be breaking down each. You may even find out that they both might work for you, or neither.
SEO Pros and Cons
Being an SEO company in Denver, we are a little partial to this statement. However, we believe that SEO isn’t for everyone or every industry. Here are the cons when it comes to search engine optimization.
- Time is money – If we have said it once, we have said it a million times. SEO is a process of accumulation. When investing in SEO, it may take up to months to see the benefit in what you are doing right now.
- Good SEO isn’t cheap – If you want to invest in cheap SEO and cheap SEO tactics, then you get what you pay for. Although you don’t need a doctorate from an ivy league school to understand the ins and outs of SEO, it is time-consuming.
- Calculating results – Different parts of your SEO marketing campaign will provide different results. There needs to be an understanding that people will not be calling you tomorrow or even next week. First comes rankings, then comes traffic, then comes the leads.
Pros of search engine optimization can take time to be realized but once you have reached that point, you’ll wonder why it took you so long to get started.
- SEO is like a fine wine – Fortunately, everything you are doing today for your website will not go away. There are a few exceptions to the rule, but SEO done right will bring you benefits for years to come.
- Inbound marketing – One of the most fundamental differences between SEO and social media is with SEO, the customers will find you. You don’t have to find the customers.
- Return on investment – Inbound leads cost on average 61% less than outbound leads. Whatever you are investing in SEO, you can count on getting more leads.
Social Media Pros and Cons
We let SEO get the first word in on this conversation but we didn’t forget about social media. Here are some of the pros of social media marketing.
- Cheap initial investment – In most cases, you can run social media ads for as little as $10 a week. Results may vary but you can’t get much more inexpensive than that for some exposure.
- Easy to understand – There is no secret code to the Facebook algorithm locked away in a safe and thrown in the ocean.
- Brand awareness and loyalty – It’s no secret, most of anyone who is anyone is on some form of social media. It is quite simple for someone to start to recognize your brand if they see you on their timeline.
Now for the cons of advertising on social media.
- Time-consuming – Much like SEO, if you want a truly successful campaign then you need to be posting and posting, and posting regularly.
- Not all publicity is good publicity – It’s too easy for anyone to blast negative things about you on social media and there aren’t the same provisions in place that there would be on Google to protect you from false reviews and comments.
- Return on investment – As discussed above, inbound marketing always brings a higher ROI.
Can you do Both SEO and Social Media?
Anyone with at least a few credit hours in marketing 101, will tell you that your marketing strategy should be as diverse as possible. Only doing one form of marketing will not sustain over a long period of time. The good thing about both of these marketing strategies is that they can feed off each other and make up for what the other can lack. Much like running PPC and SEO together, you are getting more visibility which is never a bad thing.
In the discussion of SEO vs social media marketing, which is better? They both have their apartment pros and cons. Maybe the question you should be asking yourself is why am I not doing them both?
