While you almost certainly want to be focusing on both SEO and social media marketing (among other strategies), as a small business owner with a limited marketing budget, you may be wondering which of the two is most important. Read on and we’ll take a closer look…
SEO Vs. Social media marketing
- SEO (search engine optimization): is a digital marketing method that focuses on optimising your website for better search engine visibility, traffic, and conversions. It’s a long-term strategy designed to create sustainable, ‘organic’ revenue generation.
- Social media marketing: is a digital marketing method designed to grow your brand awareness via the various social media platforms, engage with your audience in a meaningful way, and create targeted ads to promote various products or services.
So, if you had to choose between the two, which is most important?
Which digital marketing method is most important?
While both methods are incredibly valuable, search engine optimization should take priority. However, you should dedicate time and money to both, in a combined effort – and you can do so even with a limited budget.
An SEO optimised website is designed to convert traffic
The fact is, you can drive as much traffic to your website as you like via solid social media marketing, however, unless your website is well-optimised, you will struggle to convert any of that traffic into loyal, paying customers.
As such, investing in a high-quality website with a flawless UX design, compelling sales copy, fast page load speed, and a multitude of other critical factors (that each contribute to your SEO), is incredibly important.
A social presence is great for building trust and authority
Similarly, you can attract plenty of people to your website, however, if they research your brand and can’t find you on social media, or discover very little in the way of social proof, they might not feel as confident investing in your brand.
This is why it is important that you establish your brand on the appropriate social media platforms, sync them up with proper branding and NAP citations (Name, Address, Phone number, etc.), and encourage your customers to leave positive reviews if they are satisfied with your products or services provided.
Create content that benefits your SEO and socials
The best thing about SEO and social media marketing is that both strategies can benefit one another in a number of different ways.
In the early stages, when your budget is somewhat limited, you can create awesome for both. For example:
- Populate a blog on your website / guest blog with ‘customer-centric’ and genuinely valuable information.
- You can then share those blog posts on Facebook and condense the information provided into snippets for Twitter / visual carousels for Instagram.
You don’t have to spend a fortune on ads
Take Facebook as an example; you can spend as little as $1 dollar a day on ads, thus pushing your posts that little bit further and gaining more impressions.
If you take your time to create highly targeted ads with stunning visuals and compelling copy, even on a low ad spend you can start growing your audience and social following bit by bit.
Final thoughts: Invest in the experts and do both
The truth as to why so many small business owners don’t have the budget to invest in SEO and social media marketing is not because they don’t have the money, but because they don’t fully recognise the immense value that both strategies can bring to their business.
The fact is, when executed properly by an established social media marketing agency that also specialises in SEO, your business can achieve a highly attractive ROI.
In other words, if you look at both digital marketing methods less as a ‘cost’, and more as an ‘investment’ in the long-term success of your business, you’ll likely be more willing to up that initial spend.
The key? Shopping on reputation and investing your money in a reputable digital marketing agency that has a proven track record of strategizing solid campaigns built for success.
Low risk – high reward.
