Advertising vs. Marketing: Instant Gratification versus Momentum Building.

There are two types of online lead generation: Advertising and Marketing.

Advertising is the bread and butter for companies like Google, Facebook, and Zillow. 

Marketing is the "free" or "organic" efforts made through writing content that search engines can find.

The two strategies both work when it comes down to generating leads or sales for your product/service.

What it comes down to is, do you want instant gratification via advertising or build up your foundation over time for results that pay dividends for many years?

Right now you're thinking, ughhh why do I have to choose one over the other.

The quick answer: You don't.

Our approach: Get aggressive in both.

Okay... We understand not every company can afford an aggressive approach with advertising and marketing, but at a minimum you can be aggressive with one approach and experiment with the other.

Let me lay out the pros and cons between advertising and marketing for you.

Advertising:
Pros:
-Start getting leads, calls or sales right away.
-Ability to target and test ideas quickly.
-Instant brand recognition.

Cons:
-You forever have to spend money to keep leads pouring in.
-It takes a good amount of time to create, launch, test and optimize campaigns. 
-If you're inexperienced with setting up advertising campaigns, you can waste a lot of money.

Marketing (SEO):
Pros:
-Efforts made over time can pay off for years.
-You can get started with no cash out of your pocket (it does take time, though!)
-You can receive huge boosts if you have connections in your industry.

Cons:
-It's not "free" like many people think unless your time is not valuable.
-With all the work, your competitors could be working harder and outrank you. It's not guaranteed.
-Takes extensive knowledge on great content writing skills, keyword analysis, backlink building and page optimization.
-It can take several months to realize ROI.

As you can see, advertising and marketing are two different beasts, but both have an end goal of getting your business more customers.