Search Engine Optimization vs Traditional Promotion: The Power of Words
Posted by Ahmad Barirani in 
Lets take a look at the promotion pyramid from Ames:
As we go from the bottom to the top of the pyramid, the cost per contact goes high. Now, the good thing with the Internet is that it covers all these promotion channels but at lower costs. This is most true for lower level channels such as Media advertising, public relations and direct mails, but it is especially advantageous for the top channels.
In my opinion, SEO is similar to personal selling. This is so be cause of the aggregation power of search engines. When people land on your website through a search engine, it is because there is a good chance that they are looking for your service. Why? because you are using the same words that visitors are searching for. Since the customer is fed by information that he is looking for, the effect is the same as in personal sales: messages are precisely targeted to the customer and a kind of interaction occurs between the customer and the website.
Now, the real advantage of SEO relies in the fact that it offers great economies of scale compared to direct sale. SEO effort is spent once for all potential customers, while personal sales effort is spent every time for a client. Of course, SEO effort needs to be maintained but every time, it is scaled to all customers. Some would argue that SEO will not be able to offer the same kind of sales potential and it is entirely true. An experienced sales representative will be able to do things that programmed applications will not be able to do. But there is one thing that SEO can do with economies of scale: cut costs, which is the best incentive to buy.
From now on, the challenge in marketing is in targeting the right words as well as expressing the right ideas. In doing so, both service supplier and client will save costs.
