SEO, SEM, Content Marketing – What is Best?
It’s been a very strange week, at least in my world.
One saving grace is that I’ve had some interesting conversations about marketing – my personal nirvana.
Based on what I’ve seen and heard, I thought it might be a good idea to write about some of the more common trendy jargon being bandied about so far in 2016.
Marketing has always been largely subjective. That’s not to say that there aren’t true fundamentals that result in success, but the steps that one takes to achieve success can vary greatly. It really boils down to experimenting with things until you flesh out certain approaches that suit your brand to a “T”.
In the realm of search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), and content marketing, the possibility of misinterpretation is massive.
Which is why setting expectations is so critical. It’s okay if my client thinks that SEO is something completely different to what I believe – the important part here is actually talking about all of the aspects each party believes it to encompass and coming to a mutual understanding of what exactly that deliverable will look like.
We’re not rewriting Merriam-Webster’s here, people; we are trying to market businesses!
The fact of the matter is that every approach, misused tho the jargon may be, is valid to a certain degree. SEO might not be for everyone, but in competitive industries, I would have no problem recommending it to a client, because I’ve seen it work. When I say SEO, I’m referring to “non-black hat” SEO, meaning improving rankings via link building and other tactics. I’m not getting into them all, because I am admittedly not an SEO expert, I’m a marketer. I’m the one who knows how to bring all of these little marketing gems together to form a broader marketing strategy that is going to propel your business into the online stratosphere! (Remember what I said about managing expectations?)
SEM is a variation of SEO, but it’s more “grassroots”, at least in my definition. SEM involves measures that I, the lowly marketer, can take in order to optimize your website. Content marketing is my absolute favourite because it involves communicating with the end user. Again, these are my own personal definitions from years in the industry, so please don’t bombard me with all the reasons why I am wrong…
Content marketing is about creating rich, relevant, valid, and useful content that your customers will actually utilize to help solve a problem they are experiencing, and ultimately drive profitable customer action.
In my experience, if you run into someone who throws around jargon and phrases without talking about deliverables and without asking you pointed, specific questions about your business, they may not be the expert they claim to be. Good marketing proves itself and is not proven by jargon alone.
Others might talk the talk, but we walk the walk, so if you need online marketing help of any definition, contact us.
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