Clicks Vs Followers

When you own a business you have to make some pretty tough choices. You do not have the money to waste on trying things out. You need results and you need every penny you spend to count for something. This is especially true when it comes to marketing and there is a debate between what’s more valuable, followers or clicks? Whether you want to put your budget behind social media, pay per click or email marketing the bottom line is it has to work, it has to get results. Unfortunately, the answer isn’t as cut and dry as one would think and the truth is that the answer of followers Vs clicks depends more on what you do than which method you are using.

Industry Vs Platform

Understanding how each platform has its advantages and disadvantages and how that relates to your business is the key to getting more bang for your buck. Being at the top of Google is only valuable if thousands of people are searching for what you do. An auto dealership is going to have more of an advantage with pay per click and email marketing than a fish store will. A fish store would be better off with building their social media following up. Email, SMM and PPC are all great for promotion and increasing traffic but you have to find what works best for your industry.

Email Marketing & PPC For Clicks

If your business is having a big sale coming up or needs a quick boost in traffic there is no better way to do it than with email and PPC. A pay per click campaign works great because you can skip the line on Google searches and be found right at the top. Email marketing works great because it’s cost effective, sends you right to the consumer and can be done on a monthly basis to keep people interested and updated.

Social Media Marketing For Followers

A great example of a business that thrives from SMM is a restaurant. PPC would not necessarily work great in this case. What key words are you going to target? However, a strong social media campaign puts you directly in front of people in your area, people who have an interest in eating which is a very large segment of the population according to recent studies. The other advantage of SMM is that your customers can tag themselves at your location, share your information, invite their friends and family to follow you and really interact with your business. As a follower they can see your updates on a platform they use constantly throughout the day. Every time you post something a percentage of your followers will see it.

Branding

When it’s all said and done there is nothing wrong with doing a little of everything because it all goes towards branding.  Branding is the most underutilized part of advertising today because companies are so concerned with being found among their competitors. Get ranked on Google, make sure you have profiles and pages on all these directory sites, have your products listed on Amazon. Sound familiar? If your competition is getting traffic from a source you need to do what you can to tap into that source. However, do not underestimate the value in building up your own name.

When it comes to establishing which is more valuable; followers or clicks, you have to look at your own industry. An auto dealership would benefit more from clicks while a restaurant needs to have more followers. When you figure out which platform has more value for your company you can then focus the majority of your budget towards that platform but do not put all your eggs in one basket. Make sure you have a great website, incorporate SEO, PPC, and regular email blasts to new and existing customers, have a social media presence and constantly produce new content. That’s the only way you can truly develop a strong web presence.