Let’s say you own coworking spaces in Los Angeles and you want to market them. Should you start by advertising on Facebook or investing in SEO?
The answer is a little complicated, but I’ll break it down for you in this blog post.
Facebook ads vs SEO: Uncover the effective strategy, Gain insights into the pros and cons of each strategy to make informed marketing decisions.
Facebook and Google are the two most influential platforms for marketers to reach customers. Choosing which one is the best for your business can be tricky.
Over the past few years, Facebook has taken a lot of heat for not being an effective marketing tool.
Considering its popularity, there’s no denying that Facebook is a valuable platform for businesses.
But is it better than SEO?
In this post, we’ll discuss each strategy in detail so that you can make an informed decision for the same.
Facebook Ads
There’s no denying that Facebook ads can be a great way to grow your business. They are relatively simple to set up, easy to target, and have a huge potential reach.
A recent study from Socialbakers looked at over 1.5 million Facebook campaigns across various industries and found that, on average, companies saw more engagement in their posts when they used paid ads.
However, Facebook advertising is not all sunshine and rainbows. A couple of things can cause your spending to go much higher than expected.
First up is being too broad with your targeting options. Let’s say that you own an e-commerce store and want to promote a new product line.
You could place an ad in the Facebook feed of people interested in shopping or fashion, but who knows if this will be interested in your products?
At the very least, you’ll be wasting money by not targeting correctly.
The second big mistake is not optimizing your landing page. While the image in your ad will show up on people’s news feeds, they won’t know where it’ll lead them unless they click through to see it!
So, if you’re advertising a new product line, make sure that your landing page has all the information.
However, Facebook and other networks are meant to build relationships with your audience and communicate valuable content that will build trust and drive sales (rather than just driving traffic).
That’s why Facebook spent so much time and money developing its algorithm for surfacing content that people will spend time with vs. click-bait headlines or links to external sites.
They want you to post compelling stories that keep people engaged in your Facebook community instead of directing them off to your Instagram profile or website.
What does this mean for you? You should always be using social media as a way to improve relationships with existing customers and potential prospects, not as a “lead gen” tool.
But if you’re relying heavily on social media to drive traffic to your site, you may be losing sight of its true purpose, which is building relationships.
SEO Capability
At its most basic, search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or web page in a search engine’s natural or unpaid (“organic”) search results.
Search engines calculate rankings through an integral algorithm, which considers both the authority of a website and the popularity and quality of the content.
The goal of SEO is to produce high-ranking results relevant to the searcher’s query so that they will click on an organic link, thus making money for the website hosting the content.
In general, the earlier and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users. You can then convert these visitors into customers.
here are some SEO tips you can use to improve the visibility of your website:
1. Authority
When starting with SEO, it is important to learn how to optimize your content for keywords and select appropriate titles and meta descriptions.
And of course, create an effective XML sitemap, and submit your website to different directories and article submission sites.
2. Link Building
One of the most effective ways to improve your ranking is link-building.
Link building includes creating links that point back to your site from other authoritative sites.
However, you should keep in mind that link building may be time-consuming as it requires patience and careful planning.
SEO And Facebook Ads, how do they compare?
Here are factors to consider when comparing the two marketing giants.
1. Cost
Facebook ads are cheaper than SEO. If you start with your business with a tight budget, Facebook ads may make more sense than SEO.
Most experts agree that you should start with a two-pronged approach that includes both types of marketing to get the biggest bang for your buck.
2. Skill level
If you are an experienced marketer and have done some SEO work already, it will probably be easy for you to implement paid search engine strategies on Facebook.
On the other hand, if this is your first time working in SEO, it will take some time and research to learn how to use Facebook prominently within your marketing plan.
So, who wins? To be clear, I’m not a fan of either Facebook or Google. They both have an Orwellian “big brother” feel to them.
Google is trying to become the central clearinghouse for all information, and Facebook wants to determine what you read, watch, and listen to.
Truly independent news outlets are becoming increasingly rare. The old saying was, “There’s a lie, a big lie, and then there’s the official lie.” Now there’s just the official lie.
Both Facebook and Google want their users to become complacent, inert, lethargic, and docile drones of uniform opinion, who will then offer their freedoms without protest.
This is because they no longer care about anything beyond how many likes they got on their last cat video.
Final Thoughts
Facebook ads are just as effective as SEO when getting new clients, sales, and conversions; they both have their ups and downs.
You need to compare the whole process and decide which one is more convenient for you.
Luckily, At Get Catalyzed we can speed up your marketing and growth by offering the same entities at a fair price. Contact us today for quotations.
