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SEO vs. PPC: Which is better?

As a search marketing agency, we get asked about SEO vs. PPC a lot. Of course, what we recommend completely depends on the client and their industry, and there are many things to consider before we look to recommend either channel.

In this guide, we’ve gone back to basics about what each of the processes involve (feel free to skip ahead if you’ve already got some understanding), how they can work together and the pros and cons of each.

What do SEO and PPC stand for?

SEO stands for ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ and PPC stands for ‘Pay Per Click’.

Search Engine Optimisation isn’t just a case of optimising your pages once and never looking at them again. Due to constantly changing search algorithms, site infrastructure updates, your competitor’s activity and much more, you constantly need to be on the ball to make your site as search engine friendly as possible. This is done through a mixture of technical SEOcontent marketing and digital PR.

The three pillars of SEO: technical, content and link building

PPC refers to the ads that you see at the top of Google search results. As a business you will pay per every click received on your ad. It’s not a case of paying the highest, although this is a factor – rather, it’s all about the quality of your landing page experience, ad copy quality along with a whole host of other factors.

Example of Google Ads

What is the difference between SEO and PPC?

There are a few differences between SEO and PPC to bear in mind:

The positioning on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

First and foremost, the most obvious difference between the two is their positioning on the SERP. The paid ads are the first results you see and are labelled as ads, as shown in the graphic above.

The organic results are shown from that point onwards and are what search engines believe to be the best match to a user’s query, starting from the best match and descending from there.

The goal for both search channels

With SEO, it’s likely that you want to boost the site’s visibility in the search results, which is a great investment in the overall value of a business. There are a number of advantages to SEO, improving your keyword rankings, increasing your domain rating through gaining links, improving site traffic, bringing more site visitors that will lead to more sales and leads.

SEO is best viewed as a long term investment in your business, it can take some time and considerable investment to make major gains in organic search but the value keeps building over an extended period.

With PPC, you’re normally directing your site visitors to one page (often a particular service page you’d like to push, or a contact form we term a landing page) with the aim being to get users to take an action – ideally, buy a certain product or contact you for more information.

We wouldn’t recommend starting a PPC campaign without having a very focused landing page, or set of landing pages, depending on the campaign and number of ad sets you are running.

The time frame

SEO is a long-term strategy and investment in your businesses long term lifespan.

Creating a new piece of content, whether a blog or new service page, goes live, you will need to wait till the search engines ‘index’ the page.

This can be sped up to an extent, but it completely depends on your website’s authority and how important the search engines see your website. It can take 3-6 months before you start seeing traffic to the page – in fact, the average time a URL takes to hit page one is over 12 months, according to Ahrefs. On the other hand, paid ads are live immediately and can start generating results quickly when done correctly.

The sort of visitors you will bring to the site

Having managed PPC for a wide variety of clients, alongside undertaking SEO work, we have certainly noticed a difference in the sort of leads that each one will bring in.

With SEO, you’re likely to attract the sorts of visitors who may be at the top of the sales funnel. For example, if you’re a craft insurance business, many small craft businesses won’t know exactly what they need to cover them from claims – these sorts of visitors are at the top of the sales funnel.

Say for example they search a question such as: ‘What sort of insurance do I need for craft fairs?’. They may come across your piece of content, a guide to showcasing at a craft fair. After reading the guide and finding out the sort of insurance their business needs, they may request a quote from you as you have positioned yourself as an expert. (p.s. – you can also read our guide for more information on how to use Google searches to create content that answers user’s questions).

If you did want to target people who are more towards the bottom of the funnel, perhaps you want to create a highly targeted piece of content around getting a quote for insurance. SEO can target both top of funnel and bottom of funnel users, it all depends on the content produced and the competition for the terms.

With PPC you can attract visitors much further down the sales funnel who are either looking to make a purchase now or are looking for very quick results – e.g. someone who has left organising their car insurance until the last minute and is looking for a quote as soon as possible.

They may fill in forms from several of your competitors in order to see who responds first. This means that you may have to filter through more leads to see who is seriously considering buying your product or using your services.

In some instances, you may want to target further up the sales funnel, like promoting a piece of content or a guide, but typically we do see PPC being used for bottom of the funnel purposes.

The sales funnel by Tao Digital Marketing. From top to bottom: reach, act, convert and engage

How SEO and PPC work together

Although SEO and PPC do have their differences, you can seriously reap the benefits of using both together.

Getting greater target audience insights

PPC can give you invaluable data about your target audience. Once your ads have gone live, Google collects information about who is clicking on your ads, such as their age, gender, industry, job role, the area they live in, etc.

This data can help you to refine your next projects as part of ongoing SEO. For example, if you are a business coach and you see that owners of insurance businesses are clicking on your ads, you might want to create a piece of content or a service page around ‘Business Coaching for the Insurance Industry’. This can help you to continue bringing in leads through your PPC work and also attracting those leads organically too – it’s a win-win situation as you start to dominate the SERP!

Increased brand awareness

Using both together also boosts brand awareness. For example, someone might be carrying out some quick research about your industry, and once they visit your landing page from an ad they get a general idea of your offerings and who you are. They may get distracted and leave the site.

However, when that person searches again, or really does need your product this time, they will remember your name and click on your organic listing this time. Or, you could even use remarketing list search ads on Google and make sure you are there for both organic and paid ads.

Testing what works and using it in your SEO efforts

You can also test new keywords that can help with your SEO. Choose a word or phrase that you think you could potentially rank highly for and use it in your PPC ads. If you see great results, this is a sign that you should start to include this keyword in your content.

You can also review statistics such as time spent on the site and bounce rates to see what is working on your landing page and what isn’t – for example, are people getting tired of reading a huge piece of content, or is a call to action too far down? This can help you avoid the same mistake in other pieces of content across the whole site.

Does PPC affect SEO?

Not directly, but as we’ve touched on, you can use the insights to better your SEO. It can be part of your overall SEO strategy, but it’s not essential to your efforts, especially if you have a smaller budget starting out.

What are the pros and cons of SEO and PPC?

SEO: Pros

  • Increase traffic, leads and brand awareness

  • It often isn’t as costly as PPC can be

  • Visitors who view your site are likely to have a higher level of trust as search engines have suggested you as the best match to their query, rather than paying to get there

  • You can easily attract local traffic to your site by taking advantage of Google My Business and other local listings

  • You can become an authority figure in your industry as people search your site for information and guides

  • One great piece of content can consistently bring in leads – we’ve seen this with some of our client’s top performing pages

SEO: Cons

  • SEO takes longer to see results, so return on investment isn’t instant and needs a consistent budget

  • In some extremely competitive industries, SEO needs a vast amount of resources to compete. You may need to use PPC as well to generate results in the shorter term

  • There are no guarantees with SEO – algorithms change constantly

  • You can suddenly go down in rankings due to a variety of factors, such as competitor activity, the toxicity of the sites that have been linking to you, algorithms etc.

  • The organic results aren’t as high up on the SERP

Pros and cons of Search Engine Optimization by Tao Digital Marketing

PPC: Pros

  • Generates almost instant results

  • Return on investment is very clear

  • Can feed into your SEO strategy and give insights that are more difficult to find through SEO

  • Gets you to the top of the SERP immediately, compared to months or even years of effort with SEO

  • Targets people who are at the bottom of the sales funnel, and so are looking to buy NOW

  • You can set a maximum daily budget to make sure you aren’t spending too much

PPC: Cons

  • Once your competitors catch onto you efforts, you could face a bidding war where essentially the price per click consistently increases

  • Many people don’t trust ads as much as they know businesses have paid to get there – 97% of all clicks go to organic search results.

  • Money can be burned up quickly if it isn’t done correctly – we’ve spoken to many business owners and marketing managers that have tried their hand and spent so much with little ROI!

  • You can get caught up in ‘click fraud’, a process where people or certain pieces of software constantly click on your ads to use up your money

  • The data can be complex to understand for those who are new to PPC

Pros and cons of Google Ads by Tao Digital Marketing

So, which is better overall?

Sorry to go for the typical SEO answer here, but really… it depends (yes, we can hear you booing over there).

If you want quick results and know how to optimise a campaign as best you can, PPC might be the best option for you.

However, if you want to put the effort into an SEO strategy over time and bring in consistent organic results, that could be a better choice.

In our honest opinion, a combination of both works really well due to the insights you can get. For the clients we do this for, we are constantly reviewing PPC campaigns to see what’s working and what isn’t, then implementing this into their content.

If you want great results that will take your business to the next level, get in touch with us today. All of our clients receive monthly video reports that prove real return on investment and growth over time.

marketing attribution

Marketing Attribution: It’s so important to your business, here’s why!

“You wouldn’t drive a car without a dashboard so why drive your marketing without one?”

Businesses in the UK were estimated to have spent £13.4bn in 2018 advertising through online marketing channels it shows just how important marketing attribution is to the UK economy.

I worked with a business person a number of years ago who used to sell call centre solutions; one of his go-to phrases was “you wouldn’t drive a car without a dashboard, so why drive your business”. I still think about this phrase to this day.

From a digital marketing attribution point of view, so many businesses spend a lot of money to generate awareness, sales leads etc. why would you not want to be able to see each and every touch point they took along the journey to end up in your database?

47% of buyers viewed 3 – 5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep (Demand Gen Report 2016), so which piece of your content is the most important for you and your business. Without full attribution it could be very easy to attribute your marketing budget to the wrong areas.

Why is it so often an afterthought?

Marketing Attribution, is sometimes the last thing people think about when starting a marketing campaign.

The problem is, this is like driving a car without a dashboard.

How do you know if the money you’re spending on marketing is actually turning into leads, sales or phone calls?

If you don’t understand what campaign is driving the sales you won’t be able to make the correct decisions down the line when it comes time to start building the next month or years marketing strategy.

How did your content perform towards your goals?

Which keyword or search phrase contributed most to your overall leads pool?

As John Wanamaker once said “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

We now have access to more data than we have ever had, and for some reason some companies are still happy to plough cash into marketing without properly measuring the returns.

Marketing Attribution software

We use a piece of software to help us understand the whole journey.

Ruler Analytics, it’s an analytics platform similar to Google Analytics but will enable you to understand where your form fills are coming from, you can see what the first click was right through to the last click.

Google Analytics is set to default to the last click but think about the journey a prospect now goes on before they make contact.

You want to know where they originally became aware of your website/brand and you can then start to invest more into that particular channel.

Ruler Analytics Dashboard

Along with knowing where the form fill came from, Ruler also allows you to track where your phone calls come from.

Some of our clients get more phone calls due to the nature of the business they work in, this means that normally there would be no way to understand if the call came from a piece of content, and organic search or a paid advert.

Using the Ruler Analytics call tracking we are able to attribute these sales calls to the right channels and reinvest in those.

By the way, using this for one of our clients who sell photocopiers allowed us to prove that the best leads were coming from our SEO services.

Multiple touch points now lead to a conversion

I today’s connected world the number of devices people can find your website from is incredible.

Add to this that most B2B buyers now look at an average of 12 pieces of content before even making contact with a potential supplier now and you can see how different attribution models can give you very different pictures of where that sale came from.

Make sure you’re not throwing money away on your marketing by upping your attribution game! We can help too, just give us a shout and we can help implement Ruler Analytics in your business.

Sources:

https://www.marketingweek.com/online-ad-market-spend-uk-2020/

https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics

https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/inbound-marketing/measuring-marketing-performance/

How to check your competitors backlinks featured image

How to check competitor backlinks [Full Guide]

In this guide we’ll be talking you through the exact steps we take when researching our competitors backlinks and the competitors of our SEO clients.

It’s not massively complicated to do, you just need the right tools and time. We’ll show you how to use these tools and how to evaluate the backlinks you find.

Wh​​​​​​y are backlinks important?

In pretty much every report on SEO you read, backlinks are always one of the most important organic ranking factors.

In all the research conducted that we have seen over the years, backlinks are up there in the top 3 most important factors everytime.

Not all backlinks are created equal though.

Making sure that links you gain or earn are highly relevant and can be trusted is now more imperative than ever.

The type of links are also really important too. Everyone can set-up social media profiles and gain links back from the profile pages. (Please do this if you haven’t yet!)

So you need to make sure you are gaining a real variety of links to your site.

Doing research into your competitors and your wider industry will help you invest in the right areas when looking to gain links.

The type of content sites are linking out to is great for your strategy going forward. If you can replicate that style of content and make a better job of it you should be able to gain links from other sites similar to those linking to your competitors.

How to see a competitors backlinks

There’s a number of tools on the market to help you do this. Our favourite tool SEMRush.

Both these SEO tools do a very good job at providing link information and make is really easy to export the information and manipulate it.

They will provide you with all the metrics you’ll need to make an informed decision on whether to add a specific site to your list of outreach targets.

For this article we’ll be focusing on Serpstat backlinks checker and how you use it.

Quick steps for more advanced users are:

  1. Copy the URL of the competitor you want to find backlinks of
  2. Paste the URL into the search bar on the homepage of Serpstat (link here) and click search
  3. Select “Backlink Analysis” from the menu on the left hand side of the screen
  4. Once the dropdown opens, select the “referring domains” option
  5. This will give you a list of all the referring domains your competitor has
  6. Export this list out to Excel and manipulate the data

Below is a more step by step guide to finding competitor backlinks

The first thing you want to do is to find out which competitors rank above your website in the search results for your chosen keyword or search query.

To make sure you do this without any personal cookie settings being used on your web browsers we suggest using the Google Chrome Incognito window to search Google.

Google Incognito window

Firefox also has a function similar to the Incognito window but it is called “private window”.

On Google Chrome you will find the Incognito window by clicking the 3 dots on the far right of the address box, the same place you would change settings, add extensions etc. You can select “New incognito window” from the dropdown menu.

Once your new window opens, enter the Google URL specific to your country, we’re google.co.uk.

Google Search box

Enter the keyword you are looking to rank for and this will give you a list of all the competitors you want to be checking out the backlinks of.

Once you have a list of competitors URL’s you want to find the backlinks for we can then go to the Serpstat front page.

Serpstat Growth hacking tool for SEO

Enter the competitors URL into the search box and click search. We’re going to use the website www.edp-uk.com for this example as we know they have a good backlink portfolio.

You will land on a page which is a domain overview (great for all types of SEO research and PPC research too!) but for backlinks you want to select the “Backlink Analysis” tab from the menu on the left hand side of the screen.

You have 5 options on the dropdown. Below is a brief overview of what each does:

Backlink Dashboard

This section is an overview page which gives you the top level statistics for each section. Amongst other bits of information this area shows you the Page rank and Trust rank of the URL you entered.

Page Rank and Trust Rank information from Serpstat

In our opinion and many others if you can have a trust rank higher than your page rank its a good sign that your website is moving in the right direction.

Referring Domains

This section will go into details on the top level referring domains that are pointing at the URL you have entered. Some of this information is the most crucial when you analyse competitor backlinks.

You have to be able to look into which links are giving them link power or link equity and which ones are not. Even more importantly, you don’t want to go out building links that are not going to help you rank higher or even worse might get you penalised by Google.

Referring Domains Dashboard free backlink checker

Referring Pages

The referring pages section breaks down the actual pages which contain the backlinks.

This is great when you are researching the type of sites you need to be gaining links from and the type of content which is proving popular for your competitor. It can really help you with your link building strategy.

Tip: click on the link and it will take you to the page

Referring Pages Dashboard

Anchors

Does exactly what it says on the tin really.

This section will give you a breakdown of all the anchor text for the URL in question.

Along with the estimated link flow metrics for you to gauge whether or not you need to be competing on a similar anchor text and the best way to go about it.

Anchor text ratio has never been so important so this information is like gold dust when used in the right way.

Serpstat Anchors Dashboard

Top Pages

Lists all the pages on the website in order of the most amount of backlinks. This will also allow you to export the information into excel where you can manipulate the data to your heart’s content.

A great way to do this is to filter by flow metrics and see which pages are likely to rank higher than others.

Top Page by number of backlinks

How we use this information to check competitor backlinks

Once we have gone through the above and can now use the backlink analysis section. The process is reasonably simple but is a job which is not quick to do. And you need to keep a keen eye on the data.

Sadly, one flaw with Serpstat is that it still doesn’t give you the option to filter the links by the metrics within the software itself.

As a default it shows the referring domains at the top that refer the highest number of pages to the site. This is not the best way of doing it in my mind, just because a site has more links it doesn’t make it the best domain to gain links from.

Instead we export all of the information into excel.

Export competitor backlinks into Excel

From there we will use the filter option on the top row which contains the titles. The information that is exported includes Domain, Number of backlinks, Serpstat Trust Rank, Serpstat Page Rank, the date the link was first found and the Alexa rank for the website.

Excel sheet with backlinks exported from Serpstat

In the image above we have made the titles bold and increased the font size to help read it better.

By filtering the information you can sort the columns by either the Page Rank or Trust Rank. The one we always look at first is the Trust Rank. This is because it gives you a better understanding of the topical relevance of the links.

Select the top ones, we normally look to build a list of websites that have a trust rank or page rank above 30. This does completely depend on the industry too as you may need to build a much stronger backlink profile to compete in your SERP.

Perfect example is the SEO industry. SEO services is probably the hardest to compete in as most people looking to rank for it are normally working in SEO themselves.

Alexa rank is also something to look at. The alexa rank is based on the most popular websites online. A site in the top 1 million should be able to generate you traffic just by them linking to you, whether they are dofollow backlinks or no-follow backlinks.

Why analyse competitor backlinks?

So we have all the of the information on where your competitor backlinks are coming from. Why should we worry about this?

Well one of the main ranking factors to Google, Bing and other search engines is site authority.

What do we mean by site authority?

If you were looking for someone to replace your UPVC windows on your home before the internet existed and possibly still now, the first place you would go is to a friend or a trusted source to recommend a UPVC installation firm to you.

This recommendation would carry more weight if you trusted this person, they were a close friend or a trusted figure in your mind rather than a random bloke who you had never met in the pub who just told you they were great.

If you then hear the same thing from family members, other close friends and trusted people then it gives the recommended company lots more credit and psychologically gives you permission to make a purchase with them or to at least get a quote.

It works in very much the same way with backlinks and your backlink profile. The more backlinks from trusted and relevant sources the more credit Google and other search engines will give you when looking where to rank you against your competitors.

The more relevant, topically trusted backlinks you have to your website, the better the websites authority or domain authority.

If you know you need to build more links and want someone to help then get in touch with us or find out more about our link building services here.

Why The Avengers: Endgame Marketing Is Genius

Iron man, Thor and Captain Amercia

The time has come.

After years of character building and countless superhero battles, April 26th will bring fans together to marvel at a true spectacle: Avengers Endgame.

Endgame is a true culmination of the 21 films that have preceded it, the final chapter of the saga that’s set to break box office history.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a pure force of nature (even if it is comprised of mostly CGI). Since 2008, Marvel has gathered a colossal and dedicated fanbase that stretches right across the world.

Avengers Infinity War took everyone on an emotional roller coaster, the follow up to that film looks to do exactly the same but on an even bigger scale.

Avengers Endgame Marketing Graphic

The ending of Infinity War left audiences shell shocked. A true cliffhanger has had millions of people speculating, theorising and predicting how the next instalment is going to follow it.

The marketing of Avengers: Infinity War was epic in many ways. Trailers showed huge action set pieces, new characters coming together and brand new settings never seen before.

While this built a huge amount of hype, and saw Infinity War make a whopping $2 billion, there were certain fans who thought the trailers showed too much.

It’s a common issue among moviegoers today.

Studios will aim to sell tickets by showing epic set pieces in marketing materials but in doing so, it spoils the natural surprise fans would have got if they hadn’t been exposed to it.

This is where Marvel has excelled with Avengers: Endgame marketing. Here’s our breakdown of how Marvel has used different platforms and strategies to build even more hype around the film.

Trailers

Less is more

So far, there has been around three trailers released for Endgame. However, pretty much all the trailers have only shown the first 20 minutes of the film.

This is a smart move for many reasons. Not only does it protect fans from spoilers, it also leaves audiences eager to buy tickets to the film out of sheer curiosity.

Focusing on story and character development in the trailers, instead of spoiling the action, only builds even more anticipation.

Going into a film and not knowing how it’s going to pan out, or what scenes are going to be shown, is very rare these days.

Showing very little story and action sequences also encourages audiences to speculate how the film is going to turn out. This leads to masses of people producing speculative content for sites like YouTube, indirectly marketing the film from a user generation point of view.

One YouTuber in particular, Deffinition, gives a breakdown of the first, second and third Endgame trailer, connecting the dots that others may have missed.

Deffinitions channel

You can check his channel out here: https://www.youtube.com/user/definition1988/videos

Nostalgic feels

The trailer’s have done a great job at evoking nostalgic feelings within audiences by scattering them with clips from previous films.

In the second trailer, we get shots from the first Iron Man through to the first Captain America, this takes people down memory lane and highlights where this journey started.

The throwbacks to previous films works perfectly for Endgame since it is the final chapter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Adding the older films to the trailers really builds background context to the events whilst also showing how far the individual characters have come.

Cross Promotion

As well as promoting the actual film, the Endgame trailer also effectively promotes the movie that has come before it: Captain Marvel.

Captain Marvel receives the spotlight in the second trailer through her interaction with Chris Hemsworth’s Thor.

As Captain Marvel is still showing in the cinemas, this is a clever move by Marvel as it gives people a reason to go and watch the movie so they are prepared for her appearance in Endgame.

Marvel’s Social Media

A Multi Channel Approach

With 32.5 million followers on Instagram, Marvel has a well established platform to publish content on.

They have catered their marketing materials specifically to individual channels, for example, using condensed snippets of their trailers on Instagram with a link to the full trailer on YouTube.

Marvel has also stayed consistent with the #AvengersEndgame hashtag being used on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Many iterations of poster designs for the movie can be seen on Marvel’s Instagram, Twitter and Facebook too. The stylish poster designs work perfectly on social media to engage fans and visually showcase the actors/characters in the films.

Avengers End Game poster

*Spoilers from Infinity War ahead*

*Are you sure you want to carry on?*

*We’ve warned you..*

After the infamous “snap” from Thanos, we saw half the marvel universe dusted. That big purple b*stard.

To capitalise on the audiences bereavement, Marvel has produced a series of images for social media juxtaposing the characters who survived with the ones who were sadly snapped out of existence (The trauma is still very real).

A very simple idea but one that builds up anticipation as to whether the dusted characters will return or not and drives huge engagement.

Dusted Super HeroAlive Superhero

Actor’s and Director’s Social Media

A Communal Effort

Not only have marvel done a fantastic job at filling our feeds with superhero goodness, the actors and directors from Endgame have also done a great job at promoting the film.

The Russo Brothers, who have directed Infinity War and Endgame, have populated their social media feeds with relevant marketing materials from the film, as well as behind the scenes images.

It shows how much the directors care about their creation and how proud they are to see their ideas come to fruition. As a fan, its encouraging to see directors so passionate about their work and gives people more reason to care about this movie.

Russo Brothers Instagram

This leads us to our next point: The casts social media.

Endgame is filled with some huge stars. From Chris Hemsworth and Robert Downy Jr to Bradley Cooper and Scarlett Johansson. The 5 main stars of the Avengers have a collective audience of around 35 million on Twitter and 50 Million on Instagram.

This gives Marvel the ability to leverage their actor’s social media platforms to again build anticipation for the film and drive ticket sales.

A great example of the actors getting involved was tweeting the recurring line from the trailers: “Whatever it takes”. The constant repetition of this line sticks in peoples heads and really drives home the message that this is a film where the stakes are incredibly high.

End Game actor tweet 2

End Game actor tweet 4

End Game actor tweet

End Game actor tweet 3

 

Avengers: End Game Marketing Budget

Marvel isn’t exactly shy of money. So, you can expect that their marketing budgets for each film are usually pretty high. For some background context, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 had a marketing budget of $80 million while Spider-Man: Homecoming came in at an impressive $140 million. Avengers: Infinity War increased on Homecomings budget by $10 million, with Marvel spending $150 million on End Games predecessor. With all that considered, how much do you think they spent on marketing their biggest film to date?

Over a whopping $200 million. Yes, you read that correctly. The Avengers End Game Marketing Budget is actually higher than the average Hollywood movie budget. Marvel partnered with some huge brands to promote the film such as Audi, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Google, General Mills and Ziploc. So with a staggering budget and the right partners, you’d expect a big return, right?

Avengers: End Game Box Office

After months of anticipation, End Game finally released on April the 26th and raked in a huge $1.48 billion worldwide. Within only a week of releasing, End game has risen to the 8th highest grossing movie of all time. For a movie that contains a talking racoon, that is impressive.

Endgame has rocked the world by providing a satisfying conclusion to the epic adventure that Iron Man started us on.

The way Marvel has marketed the film has been refreshing, especially in a world that contains so many spoiler ridden trailers. Marvel has used mystery, curiosity and leveraged their own stars platform’s to generate a buzz.

End Game now sits at third position for the highest grossing Marvel movie, with Infinity War and the first Avengers edging above.

But with looking at how things are currently going, End Game will soon over-take both.

What’s The Difference Between Traditional PR and Digital PR?

PR is PR, right?

Well, not exactly. Not anymore. There are two main types of PR now; traditional and digital.

Fundamentally, the mission of traditional PR and digital PR is the same. The core objective of both is to build brand awareness, whilst putting together a positive message, to help engage the most relevant audiences.

Traditional Newspaper PR versus Digital PR Tablet news

That said, public relations has moved on dramatically in the last 15, or so, years. Digital marketing is becoming an ever-important part of outreach. The use of online media in communications is on the rise too.

Do you want to know the biggest difference between these two types of public relations? It’s the fact digital PR needs to be considered as part of a wider online marketing strategy. Traditional PR doesn’t.

We get asked “what’s the difference between traditional PR and digital PR” all the time. Let’s explore, in more detail, some of the things we get asked most frequently. These questions include:

  • What does digital PR do that traditional PR doesn’t?
  • Are the messages the same?
  • Any differences in terms of audience interaction?
  • What different channels and tools are commonly used?
  • How do you measure a PR campaign’s success?

What Does Digital PR Do That Traditional PR Doesn’t?

Digital PR is designed to align public relations with your wider online strategy including SEO, lead generation and inbound marketing.

SEO and improved search rankings are two areas in particular that traditional PR simply can’t help with. Done well, digital PR will drive performance improvements across the whole online profile of your business.

Digital PR can help you gain quality backlinks from higher authority domains, build a useable sales funnel via your content output, increase the value of PPC campaigns and leverage all the engagement opportunities that social media can provide.In a nutshell, you can do so much more than bog-standard PR, with digital PR. If you do it well, that is.

Traditional PR versus Digital PR - Whats the difference?

Are The Messages The Same?

When it comes to digital PR the message can often be much more subtle than traditional PR. When working with bloggers and online influencers there’s a higher level of focus on creating quality content around a specific subject. A subject that their audience will appreciate, whilst also somehow relating to your brand.

You have to be cleverer with your content output, otherwise the likelihood is it won’t get published. If your content isn’t published then you won’t get those all-important backlinks or improve your SEO.

Traditional PR will tend to be more direct. Perhaps a corporate communication that speaks directly to the target audience about the brand or a product. It can often be a bit more ‘salesy’ too. However, the message won’t be able to be shared, or engaged with, in the same way as a strong piece of digital PR.

Any Differences In Terms Of Audience Interaction?

With traditional PR, interactions with the audience tend to be a one-way-street. A press release in an industry paper, for example, or details of a new product launch; these are the sorts of things that get a message out there, without offering any level of interaction. The ‘shareability’ of the content released will also be more limited.

Digital PR on the other hand will generally provide more scope for feedback and engagement. Website blogs and posts on social media sites are two good examples. By giving your audience a voice, interaction levels will rise.

Also, with users having additional functionality such as being able to ‘like’ and ‘share’ content, you can grow your audience. The potential is there to reach new prospects that you weren’t originally targeting. This can help extend your campaign’s reach at no extra cost.

What Different Channels and Tools Are Commonly Used?

Traditional PR tends to focus on channels such as the general press, niche printed publications, TV and radio. Digital PR on the other hand has a multitude of other channels available. These include websites, social media platforms, blogs, influencer campaigns, online news and video portals.

Just like the channels available, there are also big differences in the tools that need to be used, when comparing traditional PR and digital PR.

To do digital PR correctly, tools such as SEO software, marketing automation services, website analysis (including Google Analytics), social media solutions and many others should be used concurrently for greatest effect.

How Do You Measure A PR Campaign’s Success?

This is an area in which a huge difference can be seen. Digital PR, done properly, can offer far more in the way of metrics to decide how good a public relations campaign has been.

With the right tools in place you can track every aspect of a digital PR project. Important metrics such as impressions, click-through rates, the time users spend on a piece of content, social shares and cold, hard, sales, are all measurable.

With traditional PR the main way of measuring cost is with something called AVE (Advertising Value Equivalent). This basically means measuring the column inches of an article and comparing how much that space is worth according to the publications advertising rate card.

This is old-fashioned and doesn’t provide any tangible evidence of success or cost-effectiveness. That doesn’t mean it isn’t still used by traditional PR firms today though!With digital PR having much more precise metrics in place, an actual ROI (Return On Investment) can be worked out. You’ll be able to better understand which campaigns have worked well, which ones haven’t and ultimately improve things accordingly.

Summary – Does Your Business Need Traditional PR Or Digital PR?

Pretty much all businesses would benefit from having a strong and consistent approach to PR. There are significant benefits to both types of public relations we’ve spoken about here. In our opinion, if budgets permit, a firm should have a good mix of traditional PR and digital PR in place to maximise their exposure.

There’s no denying the world is becoming increasingly online though and this is demonstrated by the number of traditional PR agencies that have moved into the world of digital PR. Mind you, not all of them are well-versed in the finer details of digital marketing. This lack of understanding about the bigger online picture can have a dramatic impact on the overall effectiveness of a digital PR campaign.

Digital PR is perfect if you want to ramp up engagement, measure performance and ROI more effectively and enhance your business’s overall online presence. With most firms wanting to improve their online profile, digital PR is something that should definitely be detailed in your marketing plan.

Get your contacts in the Cookie Jar!

We all have a contact database, people we’ve met over the years. Maybe out networking, at lunch with a business contact or even down the local pub.

But how can you capitalise on this within your companies marketing. The last thing you want to do is annoy those new found contacts with cold sales calls.

Get them in the cookie jar! Then provide them some value.

Remarketing to your cookie jar

The first and most underutilised way of using a website cookie is remarketing.

You can use your list of contacts on a number of platforms to build a custom audience of people you want to get your brand in front of.

What is remarketing?

Facebook custom audiences, Google custom audiences, Twitter custom audiences, Linkedin custom audiences to name a few platforms allow you to add your contact data and put your adverts in front of them.

It is such a cost effective way of having your contacts see your brand as they browse round the world wide web.

Even if they take no action, your brand is being reinforced over again.

It is of course very important not to overdo this and create a negative brand impression. But this can be carefully managed by defining the right campaign settings.

Understanding your contacts needs and requirements

We now have access to some great technology when it comes to utilising the information a website cookie can give a webmaster or business owner.

I’m sure we have all seen Google Analytics data? If not, 1, where have you been? 2, get it set-up right this minute!

But did you know you could use the same information to build up a profile of what your website visitors are interested in? What pages have they visited?

We work with a marketing automation platform called Active Campaign. Using this software we can create lead scores based on what a contact has done on the website.

For example:

If a contact clicks through from an email sent using Active Campaign we install a website cookie. They click on a training course information page, then they click through to a specific course page and then look at the pricing and dates page for the course.

We can use this data to add points to their lead score. Once this threshold is reached we email the contact information through to the sales team. They can then contact the lead.

This has 2 benefits for the business, first they aren’t wasting time on people who have accidentally clicked through from the email but have no interest in the service and secondly they know that when they do call the contact, they will know who they are and a bit about what they’re talking about.

It’s a warm lead rather than a cold lead.

Summary

It’s really important in business these days to take advantage of all opportunities to get your business in front of people. You never know when they might need your services.

Utilising cookies and your existing contact data can help you do this and for not a massive cost.

If you feel the above might be something your business needs to get in place but worried you don’t have the time or the resource in house to set it up. We can help, just give us a shout.

What does GDPR mean to your digital marketing strategy

If, like me you’re now fed up of people using the four letter word; GDPR! You’re probably asking yourself, how do we actually market our business to suspects past the 25th May 2018? 

We’re getting all these emails about updated privacy policies and asking us to re-subscribe to an email marketing list. People are going on about it like its doomsday for businesses.

The new rules will prevent certain aspects of business that have been practiced since business first started marketing, but, there are some major positives to take from this legislation.

And yes, we’re bound to say this as it puts us in a great standing as we’re the experts in inbound marketing. But, what can you actually do to keep on the right side of the rules and keep your marketing moving?

What are the positives of GDPR?

As a marketer I feel this is a positive move, in general, towards a better and easier life. I mean we get so many unsolicited emails, phone calls, direct mail etc. that it sometimes becomes a bit overwhelming.

I subscribe to people I find interesting or companies that I have a vested interest in or thinking about purchasing from or even sometimes just for the fun of it.

GDPR and your digital marketing strategy

I want to be able to read about what these people and businesses offer form time to time and happily ask them to do so.

I do however find that a lot of time is spent deleting emails rather than reading them. I’m concentrating on email here because it is something we do a lot of for our clients.

Being very busy I regularly just purge the lot as the time I want to read I spend time deleting unsolicited SPAM.

I am very hopeful I get lots of time back from those SPAM vampires when the GDPR comes into effect.

Will it work? I doubt it, but I’m very hopeful!

Anyways, what marketing can you do and what should you be doing better?

Email Marketing! But much better, and the way it should really have been done before GDPR.

Yes, email is still one of the best tools to move a prospect from a newcomer to your brand, into a full on evangelist for your business.

When I say better, I mean by using either a checkbox on your forms or by using double opt-in. It’s easy, so why aren’t you doing it? If you are then what you worrying about.

You will, in fact, definitely won’t gain as many people into your marketing database but do you really want people in your database that aren’t really looking for information from you or your business? I would argue it’s wasted energy, and money if you’re using a tool based on number of contacts such as Active Campaign (p.s we’re a reseller!).

How do you get people into your marketing database?

Inbound marketing or content marketing, call it what you want. It works! Look at Hubspot, the worlds best inbound marketing company in my humble opinion. They appear in pretty much anything you search for around their niche.

You can too!

Anyone who spends any time online will know the scenario, you are searching for a solution to your problem and suddenly you find yourself reading an article on “how to attract the right customer” finding it really engaging and a nice slide in box or in content box pops up asking if you would like more information?

Yes, you would as the content you are so engrossed in means that there must be more you don’t have time to read now but want to. So you fill in your email address.

Within a few weeks, or months you’re proposing the solution or service of said company to the boss or your line manager. You’ve become an evangelist for the brand who you didn’t even know about a few weeks or months before.

This is inbound marketing at its best. And it’s much easier than you think to do.

Need help with inbound marketing, give us a shout we don’t mind saying we’re pretty good at it!

So what does Inbound marketing consist of?

Just to set expectations, we’re not looking to produce an exhaustive list here. We’re simply looking to help with a few ideas which might be common place in certain industry sectors.

Here are a few types of inbound marketing we’d suggest starting right away:

Subject leading articles – Most people don’t know as much as you do about your industry, service or product. Write about it, not from a sales point of view but from the view of the user. What will they gain and why is the service or product a good thing for them in general?

Ultimate guides – You might think that telling someone how to do the actual service you offer is counterintuitive. But it really isn’t. There are lots of people who just want to know you can complete the job they would like you to do. Plus, an ultimate guide should give you an enormous amount of exposure. Hopefully leading to subscribers and those all important links from other websites.

Case Studies – Producing engaging case studies are great for lead generation. People will actively look for these on your site and in any marketing literature they have before they make a decision. They can also be great for SEO and can often be found by people searching for your service. Perfect opportunity to bring in new prospects.

Videos – If you aren’t using video as part of your marketing strategy at the minute you should be! The growth of video is massive and just keeps on growing. The world’s second biggest search engine is Youtube, and they now show as tiles within relevant searches on Google! Get on it if you haven’t already!

Like I said above, I’m not going to go on about too many types of content for your inbound marketing. Just try a few at first! 

Make sure you have a way of converting those site visitors into subscribers or prospects! A great tool for this, if you’re using WordPress is Thrive Leads. If you’ve read this far you will, no doubt, have seen a perfectly designed opt-in section or slide in. It’s perfect and integrates via API into Active Campaign to help build a seamless inbound marketing platform.

Anyways, that’s where we’ll end this one. Hope you enjoyed reading it.