The Marketing Mix: Google SEO vs Google Adsense vs Twitter vs Facebook vs Blogging

Back in the old country (not geographically–two decades ago in the 90′s), there was one brand of mobile phone, there were two brands of jeans, vaccines were definitely good for you, and you could do advertising or you could do marketing. Life was simple.

If you were going to do some advertising for you business, you’d consider magazines, tv, newspapers, or the yellow pages. On the outside chance you were big enough, you’d sprinkle in there some billboard ads.

If you were going to do some marketing, you hire a PR person to get you writeups in those same magazines and papers you are considering advertising in. You’d go to some entrepreneurs’ round table, you’d go to trade shows, and you’d mingle. This was marketing.

Today, prospective clients ask my team for marketing help. And frankly, I’m not really sure what that means.

If you ask us for marketing help and then tell us that you want to market via Twitter and Facebook, which are social environments but then tell us that you have nobody on staff who can write and be a full time web customer service rep, that’s like saying, I want to go to a big industry trade show for networking and I have nobody to send (yes, can can hire out but it’s much more cost effective to do it inhouse).

So here are the pros and cons; strengths and weaknesses of each medium of communication and each of their requirements for successful implementation. Special thanks to Orange County’s Top Solar Panel Installer for inspiring this post!

The Pros and Cons: Google SEO vs Google Adsense vs Twitter vs Facebook vs Blogging vs Forums vs Banner Ads

Google Adsense
Pros: Instant Traffic, Precise Measurement

Cons: $1-$5 per click, conservatively 800 clicks per sale (Do the math)

Requirements: Just sign up with a credit card

Google Organic Search
Pros: High credibility and conversion rates (lower every year due to SEO spammers);  generally 1200% higher conversion rates than Adwords Sponsored Results; long term residual traffic

Cons: None, if you’re already a leading reference site for your niche. If not, Cons: significant labor and strategy required to secure page one position; if done incorrectly, you could end up being sand-boxed or blacklisted

Requirements: A good honest writer; Finding and paying for a very experienced Google Strategy Team (avoid SEO people. many tend to be Sleezy. See SEO is a SCAM); picking keyword terms that people will actually click (trickier than you imagine See #2: Nine Dark Google SEO Trade Secrets)

Twitter
Pros: Immediate direct access to millions of users internationally; Bio search to precisely target location and demographic; Direct two way communication; Unlimited messaging; Strong mobile penetration; Direct penetration to SMS text for many users; Real Time Search: Eaves dropping on live conversations by key word (How useful would it be to know what people are saying about you, your competitor, your products, theirs, etc in real time?); High impression to CRT ratio

Cons: Direct two way communications; People can arbitrarily report you as spam; You can only message a practical maximum of 5 people per message; ZERO Google Page Rank Value (links don’t help your Google rank–practically SEE LINK); Easy to acquire hundreds of demographically precise followers daily (labor intensive)

Requirements: Highly senior customer service person; Skilled terse writer; 10 minute response time; Availability 12 hours a day for non international companies; Consulting from an experienced Twitter culture consultant or every book ever written about Twitter; A Tweet lasts about 60 minutes before it disappears downstream; Impression rate is very low at about 4% of total follower base. More: http://journik.www.youtube.com/watch?v=y13-uqJG0_Y/tag/twitter

Facebook (Organic)
Pros: Impression rate is high at about 70% of friend base; Instant response is generally less necessary than Twitter; Low maintenance;

Cons: High resistance to acquiring new friends and “Likes”; More challenging than Twitter to precisely target by demographics

Requirements: None if you’re happy with low volume reach. If not, you’ll need an experienced marketing team to build your Facebook friend count (See: Facebook Marketing Trade Secrets)

Facebook (Ads)
Pros: Near instant release and traffic; Absolutely the most precise demographic targeting system on the web; Pay per click; Generally less expensive than Google Adwords

Cons: Low click through rates compared to Google Adwords and much lower than Organic Google. Generally even lower CTR than Twitter; Second most costly PPC medium next to Google Adwords

Requirements: Experienced marketeer to pinpoint target demographics or web savvy business owner; Understanding of value of a “Like” vs direct click through to destination site; credit card

Advertising on Discussion Forums and Blogs

Banner Ads PPC (Pay Per Click)
Pros: You can precisely target which readership you want by making a direct deal with a blog or forum owner; Relatively inexpensive per impression; You can create deep branding impact and messaging inexpensively if you pay per click and design the banners to prevent click throughs (Why you would do it is the subject of another post)

Cons: Low conversion rate; Moderate cost

Requirements: A very senior and experienced direct response copy writer; very experienced designer; blog and forum stats/media kit; Relationship with Blog and Forum Owner

Banner Ads PPI (Pay Per Impression)
Pros: If you design a banner with a touchdown call to action, you can double or triple your click thrus while paying a flat rate per impression. Each click through is calculated to cost you about a dollar and occur at about every 700 impressions. So if you design your ad correctly, you can get a click every 200 impressions and still be paying the same amount. This math also applies to Facebook Ads.

Cons: No matter how high your CRT (Click Through Rate) is, your conversion to sale will be low. After all, this is still just a cold ad with no rapport of credibility.

Requirements:
A very senior and experienced direct response copy writer; very experienced designer; blog and forum stats/media kit; Relationship with Blog and Forum Owner

Youtube Marketing
Youtube always get preferential Google positioning. This is because Google owns Youtube. This is also because Google wants to start selling Google TVs. So if you have a Youtube video with exactly the same content as a blog post, your Youtube video will be on Broadway while your blog post is off-off-off-Broadway.

But Youtube and is a huge topic. So we’ve focused and expanded on it exclusively here: Youtube Forcast and Trend Watch: How to Double Your Sales With Youtube

Build Your Own Blog and Discussion Forum Empire

Building Your Own Discussion Forum
Pros: You don’t have to pay a forum owner to advertise on his website; You have full control over conversational direction; You wield adminstrator / moderator influence

Cons: You’ve got to build the forum

Requirements: Forum builder; Forum moderator; Forum admin; Marketing to drive traffic to forum

Building Your Own Blog
Pros: You don’t have to pay any other bloggers to advertise on their blog; You have full control of content (See http://journik.www.youtube.com/watch?v=y13-uqJG0_Y/tag/blogging )

Cons: You’ve got to blog twice daily;

Requirements: A+ Level Blogger; Designer

So now that you’re totally confused, let’s take you back to the old country. Back then, there was advertising, marketing and sales. That was it and everyone knew what was what. Now, not so much.

So to give you an industry veteran perspective of all your choices today, just think of Advertising as a shotgun blast. If you shoot often enough, you’ll hit somebody when they’re in the market to buy. But advertising doesn’t do a good job of building rapport and credibility. There’s no good-will associated with advertising.

People buy on rapport (relationship depth) and credibility (demonstrated expertise). That’s why people buy from friends and celebrities.

So here’s where marketing comes in. Marketing is designed to bring you to your market in an intimate way. Marketing builds relationships. Your marketing is what generates referral business. I don’t know the last time anybody email forwarded a buddy an ad. Finally, Marketing is what gets that phone to ring on your salesman’s desk.

So by this historic definition, Google Search Engine Marketing isn’t marketing at all. It’s just advertising. All it does is make you available should a prospect be looking for what you sell. Marketing develops relationships. And this difference is critical when you’re goal is to develop the least expensive immediate lowest hanging fruit sales and create long term relationships that deliver long term recurring business. One pays your bills. The other builds your empire.

InfoGraphic To Clarify All This Coming Up… To be alerted when our infographic is up and ready, just subscribe to our RSS feed http://journik.www.youtube.com/watch?v=y13-uqJG0_Y/rss and follow us at http://twitter.com/journik

Now, the issue becomes which medium of outreach is the best fit for you? To discuss marketing with the author of this post, “Google SEO vs Google Adwords vs Twitter vs Facebook vs Blogging…” see http://sparkah.com/marketing.php

Also: Why A Powerful Marketing Strategy Incorporates Them All To Some Extent: The Tao of Making Tough Decisions (Business Philosophy)

Posted via email from Social Media Marketing Strategies for the Closet Revolutionary