Organic vs Paid: Is there a Winner?

The world of internet marketing can be pretty complex and confusing, especially if you’re trying to figure out how to find balance between paid marketing and organic marketing. While many will claim you should stick to one or the other, the truth is that you can benefit from both and should – without a doubt – incorporate both into your marketing strategy.

The Advantages of Paid Marketing

When you’re running a paid PPC campaign, you can generally use an unlimited list of keywords. Of course, this depends on your budget limitations, but you don’t have to put as much effort into “ranking” for a series of keywords as you would if you were trying to create content for natural, organic rankings in the search engines.

Local and regional businesses also have an advantage because they don’t necessarily have to target their keywords geographically. This actually expands the audience and exposes your business to those who search without city, county, state, or other geographic additions to their keyword phrase.

Another positive aspect to PPC ads is the exposure you get regardless of whether or not someone clicks on the ads. You only pay for your ad if someone clicks on it, but your ad is viewable and seen by so many others, giving you a billboard-like effect. You never know if someone might look your business up without clicking on your ad or go back to look at it later.

The Advantages of Organic Listings

Truth be told, many people who do a web search will not click on a paid ad. Many will look at both the paid and organic listings but click on an organic listing simply because they distrust ads.

In that sense, it’s great to have both because many will look to see if there are businesses who show on the first page of the results and have a paid ad. It’s like having Google’s stamp of approval – sure, you paid for an ad, but Google likes you enough to show you on the first page as well.

The Advantages of Both

Let’s say you rank on page one for one keyword and you show up in the paid ads section for another keyword. Many people will conduct a search using one keyword and then try another to see if they get different or better results. The more you’re ranking (or at least appearing) for, the more people will respect and trust your name. Your odds of getting a real lead go up significantly.

At the end of the day, if you’re getting leads from each, you should continue to do both. There are few exceptions to the rule – unless your industry is one in which people simply browse a lot and organic is the only way to go. The truth is that most businesses benefit most from a careful combination of both PPC and organic marketing techniques. It’s definitely worth considering both, even if you have a small marketing budget.