With so many things you got your hands in, some are for short-term goals and achievements, some are to check off a box, and some are investments for a bigger prize you don’t see just yet.
Can you tell the difference? Do you know what you actually want to achieve?
You can run a certain campaign, generating leads, hitting your KPIs, and then run the same campaign next week to hit your numbers again. That could be the right call, or it could be you’re working your way up cause you got bigger fish to fry.
On the surface, we can look at two marketing activities as examples of the long game or a one-off with SEO and PPC, respectively.
With PPC, you’re spending money quickly to gain immediate results such as visits, leads, users, increased awareness, and spreading the word around per your targets and needs.
With SEO, you’re investing money now for results that will only come later on down the line, be it a few months or much longer.
If you ask experienced marketers, many would swear that SEO brings in more relevant (organic) traffic which leads to better results…better leads, better users, and better outcomes; in short, better Return-on-investment, but it takes time for those efforts to reap those positive rewards.
Now with your marketing goals and activities, you cannot really choose whether you do PPC or SEO, cause you will likely need to do both. The call comes down to how much you will invest in each in terms of budget, time, resources, effort, and more.
Do you see your startup relying on quick, short-term wins, or will it require bigger, long-term results for growth? You will do both, just the weight and effort will change.
Determine your short and long-term aspirations and invest your time, energy, and budget accordingly.
Heck, you will also invest energy in many one-off projects to just get started, experiment, and fail fast in order to get you the data, feedback, and results to optimize and improve your long-game plans.