Is combining PP with SEO the most effective form of online marketing?

Pay per click (PPC) campaigns and natural Search engine optimisation (SEO) have long been segregated by the search engine optimisation industry.
Search engine optimisation purists have tended to add the management of PPC campaigns as an afterthought or even avoided it alltogether when advertising their services or speaking at search engine events. This is probably due to the widely held misconception that a PPC campaign requires little skill or knowledge. This is untrue. Managing a succesful PPC campaign can involve just as much effort as managing a successful SEO campaign, reducing spend and increasing profits is an art in itself.

Despite the above statement, the two forms of online marketing have never been natural bedfellows however, a small number of SEO companies including ourselves have long realised the benefits of combining the two disciplines to potentiate the eficacy of our clients campaigns.

To show how this works I've provided three examples below, each demonstrates the typical course of the relationship between client and SEO firm. The first scenario is based on a PPC campaign, the second on a natural SEO campaign and the third on our combined approach.

Scenario 1 - PPC campaign:

The client

Typical client needs leads fast! The client is impatient for results and doesn't have the time to explore the benefits of a well managed long term SEO strategy, they want to be number 1 in Google and they want it yesterday!

The results

Client signs off the invoice wearily, not too trusting (quite rightly) of the profits he may reap but willing to try anything at this point. The campaign then goes one of two ways:

A - The clients website is a converter and gets him / her a good few leads in the first trial period, client is incredibly happy with you and asks you to keep running the campaign. A good few months down the line, the client is still doing well but the accountant isn't happy!

"What's all this money we're spending on Google then?" they ask.

By this time the client has forgotten the fact that although they're spending X on Google, theu're actually making XXXXX out of it. hey agree with the accountant that they should cut costs and give you a call to reduce the spend or cancel the account altogether. You oblige, sales drop off and then they think it must be because of the colour of the website so they go out and spend thousands (with another company) on getting a re-design and still no visitors. They can be heard down the pub moaning that they "tried internet marketing for a while but it didn't work out/the firm I hired stopped getting me leads/people stopped searching for my product on the internet"

B - They website couldn't convert a desperate shopaholic (as you tried to warn them subtly whilst their son/brother/cat who designed the site was sat in the meeting) and nothing happens ... que excuses of outcome A

Scenario 2 - SEO campaign

The client knows a little about search engines and how they work, they are keen to get someone to have a go at it for them but shocked at the amount of time (money) is involved in getting them to the top of Google for a competetive (profit making) keyword. They then either:

A - Kick you out of the door and go with a company down the road who promises to get them to number 1 in a week for 300 (for the highly competetive keyword "blue trainers for sale in west bromwich on tuesday afternoon".
Perversely the client is extremely happy with this and spends countless hours contacting freinds, familly, clients etc boring them to tears with how his website is number 1 in Google for "blue trainers for sale in west bromwich on tuesday afternoon" and gets cross when they type in trainers and his site ranks on page 1,567

B - They glumly agree to the campaign and spend the next three months constantly on the phone to you asking why they aren't at number one for obscure phrases or their best friends cat"s name even though you've spent hours carefully selecting profitable keywords that will shortly make them rich beyond their wildest dreams and had explained that it would take a good long time for results to show. If they do stick with you for long enough for the results to show, the increased sales are inevitably put down to the fact that they changed their profile picture on the about us page to capture their kindly aspect and not to the fact that you've spent the last few months slaving away at their on and offsite SEO using the most up to date techniques gleaned from detailed analysis of hidden codes in Matt Cutt's blog and a few sneaky secrets only you and your close companions know of.

Scenario 3 - SEO & PPC combo!

Well, if you've read the last two scenarios then you can guess where this is probably heading. For those clients smart enough to take the combined approach, the rewards are plenty. Instant traffic and leads followed up with free traffic three months down the line when they start to get fidgety at the amount they're spending on "internet advertising" something they neither know or trust even after it's made them a small fortune in increased profits and established them on the map. They early profits take the sting out of paying for the natrual SEO campaign and everyone's happy, especially us, the SEO firms as we get to use the data from the PPC campaign as real time statistics which help us immensely with creating a brilliant natural SEO campaign.

Summary

Although this post seems alittle cynical, it is intentionally so to bring a bit of light humour to an otherwise dry and frustrating subject of SEO. Of course not all clienjavascript:void(0)ts fall into the categories above and the vast majority of our clients appreciate our work. I'm hust empahasising the negative thoughts that must (reasonably) cross their minds when they hand over their website and monthly purchase orders to a firm they know little about that performs a service they know of even less.