In this episode of the Engaging Marketeer, I wanted to talk about something which is a question I was asked recently at a networking meeting. That was “how do you know the right type of marketing to use for your business?”
When I say the right type of marketing, I’m talking about whether you should you use SEO (search engine optimisation), should you use Google, should you use Facebook Ads, should you use email marketing; how do you know what’s right for you? There’s lots of different methods you could choose and quite often people will go with the first one that they’ve heard of or the first one that they’ve read about. In some cases, it’ll be the first one that somebody else has tried to sell them as a service, they won’t necessarily know anything about it themselves.
So how do you know what’s right for you? The answer, unfortunately, kind of comes down to a little bit of experience and an industry understanding. I’ve been in this industry since the 90s and Engage Web has been running since 2009, so we’ve worked with a lot of industries over the years and there are different types of industries that work better for different types of marketing. Firstly, let’s look at look at Google Ads.
Google Ads themselves can be quite expensive as an ad platform, so Google Ads are only really going to work for you if there’s search volume for the type of product or service that you are selling. If your product or service is particularly niche or particularly new, then it’s not going to work because you need people to be looking for what you do. If they don’t know that your service exists, they don’t know that your product exists, then the search volume isn’t going to be there so it’s never going to work in the first place. You need to educate your potential client base, your potential customer, on the solution that you have so that they know that it is a thing. Facebook Ads will be a lot better for that because with Facebook Ads you can put something as a solution to a problem in front of people who are your ideal target audience, if that makes sense. If there is a high search volume already for a problem that you solve, then Google Ads has a better chance of working for you. But equally, you need to be competitive, either in terms of in terms of price or in terms of conveying the value, because with Google Ads you’re going to be alongside other people advertising the same thing. If you are a lot more expensive than them, then you need to be able to demonstrate why, and if you can’t demonstrate why with your ad and with your landing page, then it’s very easy for someone to just click back and go to the next person who’s going to appear to be better value than you as their prices are cheaper. So, if you’re not competitive – if you are, say, £10/£15 more expensive than your next competitor and it’s essentially the same product or the same service without any additional upsell in value, then Google Ads is not going to work for you because you’re going to be right next to everybody else.
Now, Facebook Ads. There are certain things you cannot advertise on Facebook, even if you wanted to. Facebook’s got a big ‘no no’ on MLM (multi-level marketing). When I say multi-level marketing, I mean things like Utility Warehouse or Avon or Arbonne or Juice Plus or Tropic Skincare. It doesn’t allow any of those types of products and services to be advertised on Facebook Ads. That’s not to say people haven’t done it, because they do sometimes and it slips through the net and they get away with it. But you can’t set that as a long-term strategy for Facebook Ads because Facebook, by its definition, doesn’t permit those kinds of ads. Equally, if your product is of a sexual nature, not for health purposes but for enjoyment purposes. For example, we’ve worked with a sex toys retailer in the past – very, very exciting, very, very great content. We had to write for that; very eye opening, in more ways than one I can assure you. That wouldn’t work as a Facebook ad because it’s not permitted. If you look at some of the big sex toy retailers – Love Honey, for example – advertise on TV, they don’t advertise the products on Facebook because it’s not permitted, or at least it wasn’t at the time of recording this podcast. If your product, let’s say, is particularly dry – let’s say your product is insurance or will writing – they are more matter-of-fact products and tend to work better on Google Ads, unless you apply in the fear factor of will writing or the Fear Factor of insurance, in which case you can make that work as a Facebook Ad. It can also be very difficult to get the wording right on a Facebook Ad without falling for all of Facebook’s rules, so there’s lots of different things to think about with the type of service and the type of product that you’re advertising and the type of advertising that you’re going to do.
SEO. Search engine optimisation will work for pretty much any industry, assuming you have the budget and the time to make that work for you. But that’s the key, it’s the time. Because when you do SEO, it’s not a quick fix. It’s not an overnight sensation, it’s not suddenly going to change your website and make it incredible and get you loads of traffic. It is something that builds over time. If you are trying to get sales within the next two to three months, then SEO is not going to cut it for you. If you’re trying to get sales within the next six months, SEO probably isn’t going to work for you. You need to use SEO as a as a long-term strategy, as a strategy to build for the future. But boy, does it work if you build for the future. Some of our most successful clients have been with us over 10 years because, and this is something we’ve started talking about in presentations, SEO has something of a compound interest impact. So if you start to do it over the first six months, over the first year, over the first two years it’s getting little results very little result but it starts to get stronger as your website starts to get stronger, starts to get more impact, starts to get more links, starts to get better rankings for a variety of different terms across a variety of different sectors. And that gets to a point where you see the compound interest effect of having SEO over the long term. However, if you’re thinking ‘I just want this business to work for six months or for 12 months and then I want out’ then SEO is not going to work for you. It’s not like turning on a tap.
It all depends on how long term you want your marketing to be, and essentially what you want to get out of it. The best marketing campaigns would involve a combination of several different styles of advertising. If you put everything into Google Ads, for example, as soon as you stop paying for Google Ads, all your business stops because you’ve turned them off. Equally with Facebook Ads, you put everything into Facebook Ads – you turn it off, all your business stops. It’s not a strategy for a secure stream of revenue, of sales and leads. But if you do a combination that is the best way to do it.
So maybe it’s not really an answer of what is the best platform for you. Really, it’s a combination of all of them, and I’m afraid that’s the best answer I can give. So, on that bombshell, thank you very much for listening to this episode of the Engaging Marketeer. If you liked it, then please give me a subscribe, give me a follow on whatever platform you are listening or watching this on. If you’re on iTunes, please give me a five-star rating and leave a review, I would love to know what you think. I will catch you on the next podcast.