PPC, Social Media, Organic SEO Need to Work Together
There have been a lot of successful marketing campaigns in history, and those success stories stick in our minds. Many of us can remember ad campaigns like “Got Milk?” and – one of the most successful comeback stories in marketing history – Jack in the Box’s revival of the “Jack Box” character after the company came dangerously close to bankruptcy following E Coli deaths traced back to its restaurants.
What made these campaigns so successful was that the marketing ideas were well thought out, strategically planned, and aspects of the campaigns were overseen by a single and dedicated group of marketers. Would these campaigns have been as successful if they outsourced their TV commercial marketing to one company, and then had another group work on messaging and advertising in the restaurants?
Consistency is a big part of any successful marketing strategy, and in the modern age – where a business needs to consolidate their marketing efforts in a growing number of platforms, social media sites, and ad vehicles – it is even more important to keep consistency.
All of the Moving Parts of a Marketing Campaign Must Work Together
The first thing we need to do is identify all of the marketing channels that today’s small businesses need to utilize, in order to be successful. This could include the following:
- PPC Search Engine Ads (Through Bing, Google, Yahoo, and Other Search Engines)
- Organic Search Engine Search Engine Results (Non-paid, natural rankings in Bing, Google, Yahoo, and Other Search Engines)
- Social Media Organic Visibility (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.)
- Social Media Paid Visibility (Paid ads that appear on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. and have boosted reach and visibility to consumers)
- Traditional Marketing Avenues (Print Design and Marketing, Mailer Marketing, TV and Radio Ads, etc.)
The above are just a few of the more important channels for marketing that businesses need today. The issue with having so many different channels in-which marketing campaigns will be run, is that far too many business owners are interested in treating each channel as its own campaign. This can lead to a disconnect between the different channels, and a disconnect in the messaging between from one platform to the next.
Inconsistent messaging can easily lead to consumer frustration and a lack of understanding of your brand by your customers, which in-turn can lead to lost revenue. Keeping the messaging consistent is extremely important in business branding and supporting brand marketing campaigns.
Reasons Why Businesses Have Inconsistent Marketing Campaigns
The biggest reason for inconsistencies in marketing online for businesses these days is because too many businesses segment their marketing channels, with little or no concern for the “big picture” of the marketing strategy. An example of this would be outsourcing blogs used for marketing purposes to one company, and outsourcing the offsite marketing to another team or company.
With this setup, there is very little chance that the strategy for the blogs matches with the offsite marketing strategy. When these two channels don’t line up, you have a broken overall marketing strategy. The blog content will not meet the needs that the offsite marketing team has, and the offsite marketing team will run into problems with not having marketable asset blogs to use in their efforts.
Inconsistencies Between PPC and Organic Marketing
A PPC strategy not aligning with an organic marketing strategy is one of the most serious mistakes that can be easily avoided. Many companies may think it is a good idea to have one team work on PPC marketing, while another team works on organic marketing efforts.
Again, the two strategies must align to be successful, but in this case the strategies need to align for technical reasons. PPC ad campaigns like pay-per-click ads from Google search results work on a bidding system. The cost per click can either be higher or lower for certain keywords, depending on a list of factors.
One big factor is relevance. If you are targeting “Luxury Rehab” for a PPC term, and not using a landing page that is optimized for that term, or has no mention of/relevance to that term whatsoever, you will see higher costs per click, and those clicks may not even convert after the click. Likewise, the organic marketing team needs to know the overall PPC strategy so that they can create an organic marketing strategy that aligns with what the PPC strategy is going to be. This way they can create content and landing pages that are set up to receive the traffic from PPC clicks.
Inconsistencies Between Social Media Marketing and Organic Marketing
With social media playing a bigger role in the consumer mindset these days, it is growing increasingly important to have your social media strategy align with your organic marketing strategy. Too many businesses see social media as secondary to other platforms, when social media is truly your most client-facing platform.
Management of Facebook profiles, Twitter accounts, and other social profiles should not be left to a “friend who knows Facebook,” a family member who set up the account, or a “company that can post once per month for a cheap price.” Even if you – as a business owner – are not familiar with social media, your customers are very familiar with it, and unprofessional management of the profiles can easily be seen by your customers and can negatively affect their view of your business.
The social media profiles also need to be set up for success with other marketing channels as well. Just as in our example of how PPC and organic must align. Your social media efforts must align with both your PPC and organic SEO and marketing efforts.
How Can I Get A Managed Solution for PPC, Social Media and Organic Marketing Consistency?
The best way to ensure consistency between all channels of marketing is to trust your marketing plan to a company that offers fully managed solutions of all channels and forms of marketing. A good SEO and marketing agency should always offer their management services for all channels of marketing.
Don’t expect fully managed solution results from a pieced together strategy. If you are trying to build a full marketing strategy out of one team of PPC specialists, an organic SEO company, and a social media team, and those teams don’t work directly with each other, it will be incredibly difficult maximize the results from the campaign as a whole.
Addiction Rep always offers full solutions to meet the needs of our clients. It is our philosophy that in order to provide your clients with a valuable product, you need to be able to guarantee the quality of every part that makes up that product.
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