SEO vs. social media – which marketing approach brings more business?

Luke Meredith

When you’re looking to make the most of your marketing budget, there are numerous strategies you may consider taking advantage of.

Two of these come in the form of search engine optimisation (SEO) and social media marketing. Many agencies will offer both of these as services, often to very good effect – but which approach best suits your business’ goals?

Well, that depends on what your goals are from investing in digital marketing. Here, we’ll explain what we think are the best reasons for investing in an SEO or social media marketing campaign for your business.

I want to gain more business online

If you want to spend your marketing budget on the approach best suited to bringing more paying clients and customers to your business, search engine optimisation is your best bet.

A full-scale SEO campaign is designed to bring improve your website’s standing online by improving your rankings on search engines such as Google for key terms that your target audience will be searching for.

For example, if you are a personal trainer based in Manchester and you’d like to rank as highly as possible when Google users search ‘Personal trainer Manchester’, you need strong SEO. With more visibility from searchers, your website’s traffic is likely to increase dramatically. For all its merits, social media marketing won’t always give you this.

Combining content marketing with various technical SEO practices, a marketing campaign like this may take time to garner results, but is the most reliable long-term marketing solution for bringing in new leads to your website. Naturally, it’s absolutely crucial to ensure your website is of a high quality to ensure you can convert all of the new traffic your SEO campaign brings.

Can I ignore social media?

If you choose to invest in an SEO campaign, you may not feel the need to invest any time into your business’ social media efforts. This, however, would be a mistake.

Being active on social media and creating engaging content is a great way of building awareness, publicity and credibility for your brand. Investing in professional social media marketing would mean this responsibility would not fall solely on your shoulders, but unfortunately is unlikely to result in directly bringing in new business.

In many instances, a happy medium would be to invest your marketing budget in an SEO campaign with an agency, and focus your internal efforts on your company’s social media. This will also allow you to create social media content with more genuine personality that reflects your business’ values, as this sort of content can be very good for creating engagement.

At Engage Web, we specialise in creating SEO campaigns that help our clients gain more customers, grow their businesses and reach their ultimate goals. To see how we can help you, book a call today.

About
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Luke Meredith

Content Editor at Engage Web

At home in both the digital sector and the world of communications, Luke thrives on deadlines and has held roles in healthcare, retail and digital marketing, gaining a sound knowledge of a wide range of sectors. He’s a massive swot as well, holding a first-class degree in BA Communication and Media, and now uses his writing skills and keen editorial eye in his role as Content Editor here. Luke helps to oversee our clients’ content requirements, while also looking after a pool of freelance writers across three continents.

SEO vs. social media – which marketing approach brings more business?