Both SEO and social media promotion are important sales channels. Do I have to choose between them?
Printed 2024-04-20
Both search engine promotion (SEO) and social media promotion (SMM) are important sales channels. Do I have to choose between them? What are the differences between these advertising methods?
Differences and similarities between SMM and SEO
- Competition
- Speed __
- Sales Strategy
-first, there is still much less competition in social networks than in SEO. In the search results of Yandex or Google, you are likely to see dozens of competitors who have been there for more than a year and are constantly engaged in strengthening their positions. There is no such ranking on social networks: a user can be subscribed to both you and your competitor - and then only the quality of your goods and services, the quality of published content and the quality of the USP itself will determine who will be the winner in the “battle for the customer".
Timing differences. Hot queries in SEO are more difficult to promote, informational ones do not immediately give sales. Social media targeting is fast, and engaging subscribers has a delayed effect, but still faster than SEO.
Unlike SEO-promotion, which takes a very noticeable time until the moment when your site appears in the Yandex and Google TOP, in the case of promotion on social networks the situation is simpler and the customer's path to purchase will be faster. SEO optimization takes at least three, and usually about six months, in order to get at least some reasonable traffic. If we talk about SMM, then you can get customers right away! The term will be one day (it will be required to configure and launch a targeted advertising campaign).
When you move to SEO, you can receive customers by hot requests - that is, those who are already looking for your product or service. In SMM promotion, a different strategy is usually used: first you need to introduce the client to the company, its products and services, give him some time to think about it and to get used to you and “warm up”. And then, when you are already familiar and the client looked at several of your posts, found out how you work, what kind of product you have, and so on, it becomes “hot” and you can sell it.
Thus, in SMM, it takes time to turn a “hot one” or “warm” customer into a ready-to-buy one. But this period is usually not three or six months: in most niches, this period can be of the order of several weeks. This leads to the conclusion that when promoting on social networks, it takes one to two months to at least somehow adequately assess its effectiveness.