Marketing vs SEO

SEO: Spy vs Spy

Marketing, The Big Picture

Marketing, that holistic thing you do for the health of your business. And SEO, the spy vs spy cloak and dagger world of espionage, shady virtual back room deals and unsavory characters power playing for full spectrum dominance in the online battle space. Many make the mistake of prioritizing SEO at all costs.  It gets so much hype because once discovered, it seems like an easy pay to play move for many new business owners. You pay some guy in Belarus to pump your links out into the vast ocean of Internet, or you hire a company in LA to do the same. And you suspect that fancy online marketing firm you hired is outsourcing to the guy you could have Paypal'd in Belarus. Funny how these things work. 

The obvious truth here- it's not one or the other- SEO is part of marketing. But it seems like the golden power play for new business owners and those new to online marketing. It's a compelling easy in, especially to those techheads among us who believe technology can do it all. However, that's missing the big picture. Real SEO is lots of work. Real marketing is even more work. Where to concentrate your efforts just depends what best fits your business.  Where are your customers?  Now go there.  Even in 2017, sometimes even the conventional approach is the best one.  This is true for some in the B2B marketplace, especially in traditional niches like industry and manufacturing. 

In a perfect world with healthy budgets, you do it all and figure out what works and then do more of that. After all, new businesses need results, and pay to play SEO seems like the easy solution to make those sales happen. But, so is Adwords and all the social media platforms with PPC (Pay Per Click advertising), and even billboard ads, if you listen to those people.  The reality will always remain that you can't get many instant results with any kind of SEO, it's a long game.  And so, PPC becomes the most likely return on your investment if you're just starting out.  As your online brand develops and those SEO and social efforts gain momentum, you can reduce your PPC spend.  Hopefully by that time you'll know how much of your sales convert from each of those online efforts.  And you'll have the confidence of knowing how much SEO fits into your marketing picture.