In my initial meetings with potential clients the same questions keep on coming up…
- Which online marketing strategy should I implement given my annual marketing budget?
- I have a limited budget, which digital strategy will generate the best returns?
The first step is clearly to take into account your client’s online needs – are they pushing brand awareness, wanting to sell more products or services or simply looking for newsletter sign-ups?
Every online need can be matched by multitude of online strategies but the big question is:
Which is the best overall online strategy when it comes to generating the best returns?
As a specialist Search Engine Optimisation/SEO company we will clearly push our primary product above others. The truth is that in the pre-sale chat to potential clients I often say SEO will give you a greater return in the long-run in comparison to other products such as Paid Traffic and Affiliate Traffic. I say this through experience – not through greed. Over the years I have seen SEO-orientated clients get better returns against other online marketing mediums.
The bottom-line and well known fact is that 80% to 90% of a website’s traffic originates from the Search Engines, with the organic results (SEO) taking the majority of the available Search Engine traffic. To put this big debate to rest, I ran my own profit analysis against different digital strategies.
So, which digital strategy is the fairest of them all – SEO, PPC Management or Affiliate Marketing,?
The results I am about to present are based on five months of data, allowing each campaign to be refined, tweaked and optimised for best performance. The client is one of the largest sports retailers in Europe. The SEO and PPC campaigns are being managed by us, while the affiliate marketing campaign is managed by a leading international digital marketing company.
How did I select a winner? I decided to look at the Average Cost per Sale for each campaign. In other words, I looked at which campaign was the most cost effective in terms of generating additional sales (all things being equal).
Not surprisingly, SEO was the clear winner, with the average cost per sale being €7.98, while PPC and affiliate marketing had an average cost per sale of €14.18 and €15.30 respectively. It’s important to note that on average, SEO generated more sales and revenue per month against the other digital strategies.
This result more than justifies why SEO is considered the best long term digital strategy in terms of generating sales online. It is almost twice as effective as other strategies when it comes to generating online sales. At the same time, I don’t believe SEO is a mutually exclusive strategy, and a well-rounded digital campaign requires a host of online marketing strategies that reach various digital segments and satisfy a range of client needs. This is why R.O.I Media aims to deliver all-round online marketing solutions for a greater return on investment for our clients, across the board.
