Initially, it is only normal for recent and small businesses to struggle with acquiring customers. The challenge is to find the right balance among your marketing campaign’s costs, results, and maintenance. However, you are faced with ppc vs content marketing at the end of the day - which marketing strategy should you choose?
In this blog post, we have explored what each of the two marketing strategies means, along with the advantages and disadvantages of ppc and content marketing.
Then you can decide what is right for your specific business situation and your brand - content marketing, PPC, or both of the two.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing involves the creation, publishing, promotion, and distribution of content to the right audience across different platforms. In this approach, brands focus on publishing valuable content to attract customers toward their products or services and get the desired results.
Such results may include making a purchase, downloading content, subscribing to more content, signing up for other content, or anything else.
What Is Pay-Per-Click Advertising?
Pay-Per-Click or PPC is a type of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) approach that requires businesses to pay when customers interact with their advertisements.
More particularly, each click from a customer on an ad requires the advertiser or business to pay the ad publisher, such as Google.
Using PPC ads allows you to attract consumers who are interested in buying your products or services.
Advantages of Content Marketing
1. Generate High-Quality Leads
You can earn better leads from organic search than through buying with PPC, after your content starts ranking high. High-quality leads are more likely to buy your products or services, and content marketing attracts them more than PPC ads do.
2. More Cost-Effective
Another advantage of content marketing vs paid advertising is that content marketing has upfront costs, but you pay for only what you need, nothing more.
While strategizing and creating your content, you may need to pay for certain content creation tools.
After publishing the content, it will keep climbing the SERP ranks if it is valuable enough. On the way, it can earn clicks, leads, and conversions. You would not have to pay a single additional cent to promote the content.
3. Build Authority
When you keep publishing and promoting useful and informative content, it boosts your authority in the industry. Before long, your qualitative content makes people start seeing you as a thought or opinion leader in that industry or niche.
Benefits of PPC In Marketing
1. Fast Results
Google Ads lets you bid enough on your target keyword to shoot to the top of Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
Of course, your sales or landing page also needs to be relevant to the target keyword. Once you are at the top of Google, your website could get tons of traffic.
LOCALiQ’s Search Advertising Benchmarks for 2022 state that the average Click-Through-Rate (CTR) for Google Ads across all industries ranges between 6% and 7%.
The arts and entertainment industry has a high average CTR of 11.43%, followed by a 9% CTR for the travel industry. Google Ads in the attorneys and legal services industry see a 4.24% average CTR, the lowest among all the industries.
2. Easy To Set Up
A huge benefit of advertising vs content marketing is that the former is quick and easy to set up.
All you need to do is understand how each PPC platform works and which one drives the best results for your brand. After that, the concerned platform lets you have your PPC ads up and running in no time.
So, if you want to build your brand’s online presence and extend your reach quickly, PPC would be a better option.
3. Highly Targeted
With PPC advertising, you can get your ads in front of the right audience. It lets you choose your keywords, along with tailoring your campaigns by interests, demographics, or geographical location.
You can also track your PPC campaigns by integrating trackable URLs. Additionally, PPC opens the doors to remarketing campaigns to make past visitors return to your website.
This can help you attract new customers who require a little push and more persuasion before deciding to buy your offerings.
Disadvantages of Content Marketing
1. Takes a Long Time
You should be seriously committed for content marketing strategies to work. That is because it takes time for content to build momentum, no matter how useful and relevant it is to your target audience.
Months may pass after your content is published and before you see any results at all. So, content marketing requires a lot of patience.
2. Difficulty In Finding Good Writers
Hiring a long-term good writer is easier said than done nowadays. Some candidates may not possess all the required skills, while others may lack the desired experience in writing.
In the process, vetting writers yourself to figure out if they might be a good fit for your brand can become time-consuming.
3. Tough to Find Content Ideas and Topics
Coming up with creative and effective topics and ideas for your content can be challenging. You need to brainstorm new ideas that can attract your target audience and make them buy your offerings whenever you publish content.
Add to that the time required for keyword research, and you find yourself spending a lot of effort on content marketing.
Cons of PPC
1. More Expensive
You can sustain a long-term PPC strategy depending on how much money you can dish out. This is because Google or any other search engine charges you every time someone clicks on your ad.
Also, the more competitive the industry, the more expensive a PPC ad can get. If your goal is to stay at the top of Google’s SERPs to keep increasing traffic, you will end up paying a lot.
2. Very Competitive
The popularity of PPC advertising as a marketing method causes a fierce competition for popular keywords.
Bigger companies fight bidding wars for these keywords, pushing up the prices out of the reach of smaller companies. So, on a limited budget, you may not be able to target the keywords you want.
3. No Money, No Success
A major con of ppc vs content marketing is that you disappear from the top spot the moment your money dries up. As a result, once your budget runs out, so does your website’s traffic.
This is completely in contrast to content marketing, where you earn and maintain your rank on Google’s SERPs by publishing quality content. Your rank does not disappear so long as you keep updating your content and making it relevant to the specific keyword it ranks for.
Conclusion: Blending PPC and Content Marketing for Better Results
When discussing ppc vs content marketing, both methods have their pros and cons. However, you cannot really choose one over the other, as each of the methods is specific to certain situations.
You should choose PPC if you:
- Want faster results
- Wish to direct your target audience to a landing page
- Promote a limited-time offer, such as an early season sale or a holiday sale
On the other hand, content marketing would be a better option if you:
- Have a low marketing budget
- Want to maximize your long-term ROI
- Want to establish your brand authority in your niche or industry
The best strategy, though, would be to blend content marketing with PPC. PPC ads can help you drive more traffic to your website, which quality content can help you nurture towards conversions.
However, your lack of time may make it impossible for you to pay adequate attention to either content marketing or PPC. In that case, reach out to the Digital Marketing Experts at MyTasker. They can help deliver outstanding results for your business by integrating PPC and content marketing.
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