A Search Marketing Only Approach

While it is somewhat of an oxymoron to use the adjective “traditional” in the context of digital marketing I’d suggest that search marketing is “traditional” when it comes to digital marketing. Search marketing is where it all started and is or still should be a fundamental aspect of your digital marketing efforts.

As opposed to the broader aspect of content marketing that gets into looking at what kind of information is important to your target prospects or personas and the work to reach them by publishing that type of information and making it discoverable, search marketing in the “traditional” sense is aimed at being found for the specific products or services you sell at the time that someone is looking for a source of those products or services. It is also focused primarily around directing people to the product and services pages of your company’s website.

If you are doing both “traditional” search marketing and content marketing I would describe that as being a “comprehensive” digital marketing strategy. However, if investing in a comprehensive digital marketing strategy is unrealistic due to the cost and internal resources required to manage it, a great place to start is to focus on “traditional search marketing”.

Start With Traditional Search Marketing

The reason I would suggest you start with traditional search marketing, especially if you are unable to invest in a more comprehensive digital marketing strategy is twofold. One is that it is still one of the most profitable forms of digital marketing. Investing in being found when people are looking to do business with a company like yours is golden. Secondly, while some upfront collaboration with your partner provider is required it does not require near the amount of time and internal resources from your team that is required to deploy a significant content marketing effort.

A Traditional Search Marketing Effort Will Involve Three Core Elements

• Your website
• Ongoing SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• Paid Search (PPC, Google Adwords, Bing Ads, etc.)