Abstract
SEO and SEM are two important digital marketing terms that decide the outcome of your marketing strategy. Where B2B SEO reflects the digital marketing strategy type that assists websites to increase the ranking of the search engine results, driving the targeted organic traffic from the same. B2B SEM mainly emphasizes generating leads for a business rather than generating organic traffic, whereas B2B SEO focuses on the promotional parts of the websites on the search engines to extract targeted traffic with the buying intentions.
Top 8 differences between B2B SEO and B2B SEM
- The Hassle
Comparatively, B2B SEM usage is simpler and is instant outcome driven as it requires setup time for advertising on search engines such as Google, Bing, etc, generating paid traffic to the websites. Meanwhile, B2B SEO is difficult as it requires expertise in search engines, target audiences, products to get leads by SEO effectively. The results of the B2B SEO take a longer time than the B2B SEM.
- Appearance in the Search Result
Mainly, the search engines are categorized into two sections- the advertisement section on the top depending on the demand for the keyword. To make your content to be on the top, marketers have to rent this position from search engines relying on numerous factors such as bidding, ads quality, and landing pages.
The second part is for organic ranking where the SEO expertise works and it totally depends on the quality of content you have published.
- Traffic on the Website
B2B SEO and B2B SEM both work for traffic generation in digital marketing strategies that eventually convert that traffic into potential leads for the business. But the process of using both is kind of different.
Like via content creations such as blogs, videos, products pages, etc, generate traffic through B2B SEO. The no. of traffic on your site through these shows the potential of the content you have created. That is why there are various alternative presents that can drive high-quality traffic on the website by nailing the marketing funnel at every stage to get potential prospects from each stage of the B2B buyer journey.
On the other side, the traffic B2B SEM is generating is directly proportional to the budget you have invested. Hence, the options are limited.
- Cost
Another big factor between these two strategies is the cost a marketer has to spend. Both require investment if the interest is in the effectiveness. The B2B SEM depends majorly on the budget you have for the investment as it needs the gain rights of buying or renting the advertisement spot on the search engine platforms like Google and would be inflated expense during the entire B2B SEM campaign.
The second cost you are paying for using the tools like landing page builder or PPC management to keep on track of the budget, ensuring it to be not get wasted. Buying these tools is not obligatory but is highly recommended to have a successful B2B SEM campaign.
B2B SEO can be done free of cost, but for a better experience, investing is not a terrible option. The investment that B2B SEO campaigns require starts from agencies hiring that can help get positive results. These are quite affordable.
Another pay is for a subscription to some SEO tools that get the website’s optimization work done.
- Targeting
Reaching the right audience is an important strategy that requires successful execution and knowing your target rightly should be on your do list. SEO can drive traffic to the website by having quality content creation and using SEO tactics for optimization. In SEO, keywords play a vital role in driving potential customers through content creation.
The B2B SEM gives more options for targeting the right keywords and audience to attract. SEM has the feature of filtering out the keywords by targeting demographically, age, gender, interest, and many more. This spends the money in the right place and drives the website traffic, only that has a high probability of conversion.
The AI technology-based platforms, such as Google AdWords, etc analyze the data and serve with insights helping marketers extract most of the advertising budget. Therefore, B2B SEM generates a higher value to the website traffic.
- Potency
Both SEO and SEM have different metrics and goals on which their impact is measured. The reason behind this is the prospects’ targeting differs in both. While B2B SEO targets prospects in every stage of the Buyer’s journey but B2B SEM can activate the targeting prospects in the middle and bottom of the funnel. Therefore, the effectiveness criteria differ between the two.
- Investment Value
With this term, we refer to the investment in the strategy and the value it is adding in terms of ROI. The B2B SEM is a short-term strategy as its results stop with the investment. The longer the investment, the longer the campaign will run. Once the campaign under B2B SEM stops, there would be no more lead generation and traffic could get until the investment is added again.
Meanwhile, B2B SEO is perfect for long-term investment. The results can be seen late to show meaningful results but the results would be better and worth waiting. As the results last longer than the SEM.
- Lead Generation
The lead generation outcome in terms of B2B SEO and B2B SEM depends. If your business has an established website already with high domain authority, B2B SEO will work most effectively for lead generation.
But if the website is new and is unknown to the clients, then adopting B2B SEO will take a longer time and maybe get an unsteady lead generation but SEM can get instant results if used with the right execution.
Therefore, SEM is for immediate outcome, but SEO is like an investment that will reach its maturity over time.
Conclusion
Be a smart marketer and add both the digital strategies in your marketing tactics as both have their own benefit of goods and can make you grow in your industry as per your goals. For the long term, SEO is good, but SEM is for short and instant results.
So choose your goals and choose your strategies as per your requirement.
