The rise of digital marketing has enabled millions of businesses to grow their potential customers exponentially over the years. Regardless of the business industry, the different tools of digital marketing can help you achieve your marketing and sales goals effectively. With so many tools available, business owners are often caught in confusion about which tool or strategy they should use to establish a strong online business market. If you happened to come across the same concern, we may have some information that can help you out in choosing the right strategy for your business. It is safe to establish that the key objectives of any business are to get potential leads, grow sales, and stay high on the search engine result pages (SERP). The majority of small as well as large businesses tend to rely on local SEO services, paid ads, and organic search rankings. However, it still becomes a bit difficult to understand the differences between Google My Business or GMB, Google Ads, and organic SEO. In this article, we will point out the key differences with the pros and cons of each tool to help you decide which strategy can serve your business the best way possible.
Basic Facts to Consider
Before we go into the details, it is important to understand that nearly 90% of the total online traffic starts with a search engine. More importantly, about 75% of this total traffic comes through Google. Therefore, using Google’s marketing tools and strategies can directly put you on the radar of your desired customers.
Google My Business (GMB) puts your business on Google Maps, the Local 3-Pack, and Local Finder making it easy for the audiences with a local search intent to find your business.
Google AdWords helps to place custom advertising for your business at the top of relevant searches (keywords) to get your website clicks and conversions.
Organic SEO plays a key role in the overall marketing strategy (with the aid of best SEO practices) including link building, improving your search engine rankings, and increasing your website traffic.
Now, let’s dig deep into the objectives of each strategy and find out how they can be useful in the growth of your business.
Google My Business (GMB)
To put it simply, Google My Business or GMB is a free service to put your local business on the radar of your nearby customers. By creating your GMB profile, you can appear on Google Maps, local searches, and in the local 3-pack. If you have searched for a local business on Google with keywords like “Fast food restaurants near me”, you might have seen a box of nearby food shops appearing at the top of organic search results. This box represents the local listings of nearby businesses relevant to your searched keywords. You can find important details including pin location, contact info, days and hours of operation, customer reviews and ratings, and other important details depending on the type of business.
Pros:
GMB is free of cost. This means that you can expect a 100% ROI by creating and optimizing your GMB profile. It helps local businesses including small shops and startups to increase the number of their in-door visits and online potential leads. If you are in the phase where you want your business to be noticed and promoted by the customers themselves, GMB can help you achieve that. Moreover, setting up your Google My Business profile is very easy. Your customers can directly contact you on your email or phone number with just a single click from your GMB profile that appears as a result of locally searched (but relevant) keywords. You can also add media such as photos and videos of your local shop to attract your web audience.
Cons:
To be able to enjoy the fruits of your GMB profile, you will need to complete your profile with the most searched and relevant keywords. Moreover, you need to ensure that your business profile is 100% complete and accurate, including your contact information, hours of operation, detailed description of your products or services, areas of operation, and other important details. You may also need to update any changes made to your business such as operation hours, location updates, etc.
Google AdWords
Google AdWords or Google Ads is an advertising tool that enables businesses to market their products or services through ad placements across the search engine’s network. The ads appear on the top of organic and local search results attracting those who are most likely looking to make a purchase. You can use filters and narrow targeting tactics to get the most out of your Google Ads campaign with the help of a particular budget.
Pros:
Google Ads are placed at the top of search result pages. This means that those looking to make a purchase have a great chance of clicking your ad and becoming your customer. If you have a large amount of budget for your advertising campaigns, you can create multiple ad sets against different keywords to maximize the number of conversions. Moreover, Google Ads can also be placed on Google partner websites where your desired targeted audiences might be.
Cons:
Although Google Ads is a great tool, it takes time to master it due to its complexity. You may need to make additional efforts like working on an effective SEO strategy alongside to make the best use of your ad campaigns. It is also important to create the right ad copies for your Google Ads to target the right audience. Moreover, you may need to run several test campaigns to dig out the best ad set that meets your marketing objectives. Google AdWords service is not free of cost. You need to spend an advertising budget to make your campaigns work.
Organic SEO
Organic SEO is an overall effective marketing strategy to promote your business and grow your sales. The key goal of SEO is to improve your website’s rankings on SERP to increase the traffic to your website. Regardless of other marketing tools, if you are using the right SEO strategy that pays off, you may compensate for the absence of other strategies like Google Ads. The growing website traffic indicates growing chances of conversions and sales.
Pros:
Organic SEO can start from the most basic and cost-effective steps including keyword searches and creating optimized content for your web pages. You can compare the traffic and keywords of your website with your competitors to find gaps in your strategy. You can play as much as you like with your relevant keywords by creating a blog related to your business to regulate the flow of organic traffic. Moreover, using buy backlinks can help you generate potential traffic to your website leading to conversions.
Cons:
Organic SEO takes time to show results. This time can vary from weeks to months, and months to years, depending upon the type of keywords you are ranking for. You need to commit yourself to following a timeline to create new content for your website and/or blog to reap the fruits of your SEO efforts. More importantly, you will need to strictly adhere to the policies of Google to rank your website among the top search results. Failing to do so can result in dropping your website’s rank.
