It’s September and you know what that means: School is starting up and the housing market is slowing down! While pencils and backpacks are easy to find, leads are harder to come by. In honor of the back-to-school season, we are going back to the basics of driving traffic for lead generation in our September Mastermind webinar.
Pop Quiz: Which is Better for Lead Gen: Paid or Organic Traffic?
Trick question! Neither one is better than the other. Paid and organic traffic are two sides of the same coin, search. They actually work together and complement each other to provide you with successful lead generation. Teamwork makes the dream work!
Driving traffic to your site can come in several different forms, but in this month’s Mastermind we will be discussing the two we like best, Pay-Per-Click (paid) and Search Engine Optimization (organic). (You’ve probably heard these terms from your talented, smart, and beautiful marketing specialists 😉 )
Compare and Contrast: SEO vs PPC
Remember doing those dreaded compare and contrast essays from middle school English class? Don’t worry, today we did the work for you. While paid traffic and organic traffic share the same goal, they do have a few key differences.
Speed
Think of PPC as a sprint and SEO as a marathon. Once you set up your PPC campaign, it can drive traffic to your site almost immediately. SEO, on the other hand, takes months of work to develop. That’s why it’s very important to set 
realistic expectations and not give up too soon.
Cost
PPC is a form of paid traffic so, of course, it costs money. How much? That depends on your target market, but you’ll often see a high return on investment. As a form of organic traffic, SEO is free! It only requires an investment of your time.
Control
Pay-Per-Click offers you a lot of control over your campaign, from your ad text to your budget, your keywords, and more. With SEO, Google is in control. Google uses a secret algorithm to determine which webpages rank highest. While we have some insight, the ranking factors are not particularly straight forward, they’re constantly changing, and some are entirely out of our control.
Moral of the Story
PPC and SEO are better together. Their strengths and weaknesses balance each other. That’s why we always recommend using them in tandem. While you’re in the long process of building up your SEO, PPC will make sure that you are still getting traffic to your site in the meantime.
Now Accepting New Students
Want to join the fun? Our Pro & Premium clients enjoy exclusive access to our monthly Mastermind webinars. If you’re interested in accessing all of our Mastermind sessions, or would like to learn more about SEO and PPC, please contact our sales team at (919) 877-8511 to talk about pricing for our marketing packages.