PPC and SEO are both fantastic forms of marketing. But what happens when you integrate them? Is there really any benefit?

We live in an age where people no longer go to their trusted store and just purchase something. The general UK consumer now goes to ‘market places’ to buy things, where they can compare all the facts. Take a camera for example, which has many statistics that the buyer can compare against other cameras, such as megapixels, battery life, accessibility, warrantee, cost, delivery cost, delivery time…etc.

Some of the more popular ‘market places’ are:

Google Shopping
Amazon
Money Supermarket
Compare the Market
Ebay

So how does this affect Search? Well, it’s all about touchpoints!

Touchpoints - When a potential buyer comes into communication with a brand through any medium. It could be anything from a face-to-face product demonstration, through to a mention in the local newspaper or TV.

PPC and SEO are both separate touchpoints, but on the same channels (Google, Bing & Yahoo). We believe that these need to integrate to get the best performance, and here are a few reasons why:

1. Different ads / listings can give off completely different messages to customers. For example, an advert may highlight a 50% discount offer but the natural listing does not. Therefore, your traffic is going to come through your ads and cost you more.

2. Natural listings tend to be quite shallow in their linking due to ‘SEO Juice’, however ads can often be linking to a much deeper landing page. This is important to take into account when comparing the performance of each channel.

3. Messaging is key to a customer’s journey. If all creative assets, ads and Social channels are very colourful and descriptive, your customers may become confused by a very factual Natural Listing on a Search Engine.

4. Brands with a very specific tone of voice need to be even more careful about using multiple parties or agencies to manage different services. It is likely that some find it easier than others to use the tone of voice, and therefore could create embarrassing inconsistencies in messaging across different channels.

In conclusion, we believe that having a single expert to run Search Marketing, as a service in itself, is the most optimal way of boosting performance from Search Campaigns. If possible, it is best to turn to an integrated agency to manage all communications to provide continuity across all channels.

 

By Nick Trueman, Collider. 

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