Working Towards Consistency in Online Marketing, Part II

In the last post we talked about the fundamental difference between pay per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO).

PPC is a very effective marketing technique that allows for immediate results in that you pay the price for the program and earn instant placement on the search engines. But once payment stops, the placement is lost.

Search engine optimization provides for longer term exposure because the web site will have reached its ranking in the search engines organically. It takes longer to achieve results with SEO but the results hold up as long as someone is focused on the task at hand. The web site optimization firm offers this kind of focus.

Take, for instance, the difference between advertising and public relations. With advertising you pay for product placement – through an ad, a billboard, or whatever the case may be. You hire advertising experts to help you secure that space and to create an advertisement that will get people’s attention in whatever method you choose to advertise. The results are quick – your ad appears in the spot that you intended it to run and the audience that you intended to see it does indeed see it. The ad remains there for the amount of time for which the space was purchased.

In public relations you are counting on professionals to place your company in organic positions so that it is noticed – i.e. getting the attention of editors on a particular story angle so that they want to run an in depth editorial piece on the company, getting news coverage on television, and so forth. Just like advertising, public relations requires focused effort from professionals who understand the game.

In the same vein, it is important to hire professionals who specialize in each component of online marketing to achieve the best results for your web site.