When it comes to attracting buyers to our businesses, many of us spend a huge amount of time and energy considering the correct approach to take. Should we spend our resources on social media marketing, or on SEO? Or should we spread them between both? Lucky for us, Artios has done the market research – so what do people focus on the most? Search rankings or word of mouth? In this article we reveal prospective customers’ views and provide a rundown of the pros and cons of both SEO and social media marketing.
Which Marketing Strategy Should I Focus On?
Keeping up with what customers want to see can be the biggest challenge for small businesses. How can you make sure that your company’s website will be the one to stand out from the rest, secure clicks and generate traffic? How do you know what prospective customers want to see on your socials?
Appealing to your target clientele is an ever-changing and endless process that takes a lot of time and focus. The main question you’ll find yourself asking is where you should focus your marketing – SEO or social media?
The simple answer is both! Neglecting social media to focus on SEO (and vice versa!) will only alienate your potential customers. The best strategy is to pay attention to both – but which should you prioritise?
Artios found that a massive 42% of consumers will look to search engines to find products and services – nearly half of the population! That makes SEO the best way to reach your target market. It’s also more than twice the amount that will look for goods and services on social media. That’s not to say that social media is not important – 20% is still a huge number of potential customers to be reachable through your brand accounts!
Who Can I Reach Through Social Media vs SEO?
As with all search habits, different demographics can be reached in different ways – so who can you reach on social media, and who are you more likely to reach via SEO?
46% of adults over 55 will use search engines to find what they need. That means if your business is directed towards the older demographic, your best bet is SEO. Only 1 in 10 adults in this age group (13%) will be checking social media. As a rule, the younger your target audience is, the more success you’re likely to have through marketing on social media.
Artios revealed that the main crowd reachable through social media are more likely to be between the ages of 24 and 34 – they’re even 4% more likely to browse social media sites than young adults are!
While social media is more likely to reach certain age groups and demographics, SEO can be better for reaching your target audience, especially if your business is local. In fact, nearly half (46%) of all searches conducted on Google are searching for local services!
Additionally, searches on mobile devices for establishments ‘near me’ grew by 200% between 2017 and 2019, making now a better time to build local awareness of your business through SEO than ever before.
Which is More Valuable to My Business, Social Media or SEO?
That’s up to you, and will be determined by what you’re selling and who your target audience is. Many small businesses have made themselves into cult classics through popular social media campaigns, and many have become staples through their focus on SEO. To help you decide what to invest in, we’ve put together the pros and cons of search vs social.
Pros of social media:
- Engagement: Social media is great for allowing customers and prospective customers to engage with your brand. Social accounts allow your business to communicate directly with your audience and to hear questions and concerns that could help to improve the appeal of your company.
- Brand awareness: A popular social media campaign can familiarise your brand and your logo with a much wider audience. This can help spread awareness of your company among people who may not have heard of it before.
Cons of social media:
- Uncertain outcome: Despite this, it’s important to note that unless a campaign goes viral, companies can find themselves pumping a lot of time and money into social media activities for very little payoff. This is partly because of the nature of social media: while it can attract people to your content, the people seeing your posts will most likely be users that already follow your account.
- Ambiguous audience: Even if your campaigns do go viral, you can frequently end up targeting people who may not be interested in your brand. Viral campaigns appeal to users interested in viewing the content and not necessarily the company.
Pros of SEO:
- Targeted audience: SEO will help to promote your business to prospective customers searching for goods and services relevant to what your company is offering. This means that SEO is usually able to reach your intended audience.
- Comparable to competition: Unlike social media, SEO will place your company’s website clearly beside its competitors. This allows you to gauge the areas your business is doing well in and where improvement is necessary.
- Consistent results: SEO is a tried and tested method of gaining traffic for generating traffic to your website. Therefore, focusing on content that will appeal to both your target audience and search engines is more likely to give your company a consistent boost.
Cons of SEO:
- It takes time: SEO can be an incredibly competitive area, and if your business is new or less established it can take a long time to build links and traffic through search engine algorithms.
- Less engagement opportunity: If your focus is only on SEO, you’ll miss out on engaging directly with both customers and potential customers.
Whether you want to appeal to older or younger generations, the whole world or just a very targeted niche in your local area, social media and SEO both have their perks. While SEO is more dependable for gaining customers, social media is great for engaging with the community and communicating with people interested in your business. It’s important not to put all of your eggs in one basket – both social media and SEO can benefit your business!
