Combining PPC & Inbound Marketing

In this article, we will discuss the benefits and drawbacks of two popular forms of digital marketing, PPC and Inbound. Both work and you are about to find out more about them, which will help you decide which one is right for your business. Let’s go!

PPC Works Fast

With Pay Per Click ads, there’s no wait time. You set them up, and they show in front of your target audience, that simple. No need to rank anything, you pay, and they show. If you carefully set up your PPC campaign, you will get your ads in front of the right people, which can make them very effective.

This effectiveness is what PPC is all about, and it is the most significant advantage of this system. What’s more, because you have to pay for the ad only if a person clicks on the ad, you can get a lot for your dollar if you set up the campaign right. So it’s not like ads on TV, radio or in newspapers where you pay for the media to show the ad. Here, you only pay when a real person clicks on it.

PPC Is Temporary

The issue with them is that they are still ads, and people are reluctant to trust them. So even if they click on them, it is only the first step, and you are haven’t yet gained their trust. So even if the right person clicks on the ad, it will still take sales skills to convert.

Plus, a lot of people nowadays use adblockers, which will prevent your ads from showing in front of them in the first place. And even if they do, many people just skip the ad section or don’t look at it at all.

And there’s also a group of people that’s allergic to any kind of ads, and will only start hating your company for pushing hard on this type of campaign.

Once You Stop Paying For PPC, Your Campaign Dies

Your PPC campaign is only good if your pocket is full. Once you stop paying for ads, they vanish, as simple as that. While it’s true that they will re-appear once you start spending again, the fact that you have to pour money in continually is a big no-no for small business owners.

Inbound Marketing Is Evergreen

If done right, inbound marketing will keep bringing eyes to your site and products for a long time.

Take a good blog post as an example. You write the in-depth content on a topic that will stay relevant for years to come. Once it ranks, it will keep showing on Google, attracting visitors. The more time it remains relevant, the better the ROI of inbound marketing is. That’s why you should update your content with current information from time to time.

Inbound Marketing Is About Building Trust

The whole point of inbound marketing is slowly but surely gaining the trust of the people who are consuming your content. This doesn’t happen overnight, and it does require a lot of effort. You need to produce great content on a regular basis.

But, by doing that, you will position yourself as an expert in the field, who is willing to share the knowledge with the community. That will buy you audience trust, which is something precious.

Later on, when those people find themselves in need of services that are similar to the ones you provide, you will be the first to come to their minds. Because you already gained their trust through great content, they won’t have any second thoughts when deciding to buy your products.

Inbound Marketing Is Very Affordable

While you can pay someone to write blog posts or make videos for you, you can do it yourself, if you are short on money. Therefore, inbound marketing doesn’t have to cost you any money, only time. This is the primary reason why any business should consider at least some kind of inbound marketing strategy.

What’s more, because inbound marketing generates traffic for years, it actually pays itself off multiple times. The longer it stays relevant, the more viewers it will attract, which will make it a better investment.

Inbound Marketing Attracts Random Traffic

While it’s true that evergreen content attracts a lot of traffic over a long period of time, not all of that traffic is quality, far from it.

Anyone can read your post, and it is hard to know exactly the reasons why they ended up on your blog. Yes, some of those leads will convert into sales. But more often than not blogs with a considerable following find it hard to convert, and their revenue is less than what you would anticipate when looking at the traffic generated.

Inbound Marketing Is Time Consuming

There’s no denying this, it takes a lot of time to produce content and gain trust. In fact, anything less than one piece of content per week is probably not enough. Yes, you can try to boost content visibility via social media and email lists, but even that takes time. The best approach to inbound marketing is to produce more content.

However, you can’t sacrifice quality. You need to have the consistency of both quantity and quality. That’s why most people opt for hiring writers and editors, as it is very hard to stay consistent and to produce in-depth content.

Inbound Marketing Requires Patience

Inbound marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. Inbound marketing primarily relies on search engine traffic from ideal customers researching in the early stages of their buyer’s journey. That means that your persona-driven blog posts must add value and actionable takeaways. And once it does, don’t expect miracles overnight. Inbound marketing is all about building trust, and it’s a process. If you want quick results, this type of marketing is not for you.

Conclusion

As you can see, inbound marketing and PPC ads are very different concepts. However, that means you don’t have to choose sides, you can use both.

If you are just starting out, and you have a new site, pay for ads, and publish content along the way. Ads will bring in the traffic immediately, which will bridge the gap fresh content would create. Once your content starts ranking, you can slowly cut down the ads budget. This will create a win-win situation, as you will both have an immediate presence and longterm evergreen traffic magnets.

Tell us in the comments below what is your approach to digital marketing, PPC, inbound, or both?