Digital marketing · January 20, 2020

SEO vs Traditional Marketing: Which is Best for Construction?

Should You Use SEO or Traditional Marketing for Your Construction Business?

The past two decades have seen the digitalization of both advertising and marketing. Before that, it was more common to use traditional marketing like brochures, billboards, telemarketing, direct mail, and television. And businesses still choose to use traditional marketing to promote their products and services, in spite of the many advantages that SEO and more modern digital marketing techniques provide. While more popular now, many businesses are still not making use of SEO. In the debate of SEO vs traditional marketing, which is best for construction? Well, it depends.

While considered by some to be an outdated way to market a business, traditional marketing still dominates the marketing sphere for many businesses. It is especially common for construction companies since the industry as a whole is usually quite slow at adopting new digital technologies. Also known as “disruptive marketing,” traditional marketing promotes products and services to a large untargeted audience with the hope that someone would buy what they were promoting.

Know more: The Best Types of Digital Marketing for Your Construction Business

What is search engine optimization?

Search engine optimization or SEO is the process of optimizing content to get more organic traffic from search engines. All search engines show the most relevant results to their users. So that your website ranks higher in search results, it will need to have backlinks, optimized off-page and on-page SEO, keyword optimization, fast page speed, good quality content, high page authority, and be mobile friendly.

Which is best, SEO or traditional marketing?

SEO and traditional marketing are two very different types of marketing. Traditional marketing does not focus on the customer while SEO does. The latter gives the consumer the ability to look for a business, as opposed to traditional marketing wherein businesses randomly target consumers.

Regardless of which type of marketing you think works better, it is best to consider the advantages and disadvantages of both.

Read more: 7 Best SEO Strategies for Construction Companies that Work Wonders

Focused targeting

SEO focuses on targeted inbound traffic, while traditional marketing is broader in its reach. This makes it ideal if you want to reach a wider audience, whether they are in different cities or even in other countries. What makes SEO work is its ability to draw in prospects that are looking for what you have to offer. With traditional marketing, on the other hand, your audience may or may not be looking for what you are offering. It works best if you are trying to reach a regional, local, or new audience.

Cost of messaging

The cost of SEO marketing is, without a doubt, less than traditional marketing, since it is free. So, your return on investment (ROI) will automatically be much higher. Traditional marketing, on the other hand, can be quite expensive, especially with television and newspaper advertising. There is also no guarantee that your message will reach the right audience or be seen by them at all.

Ease of updation

Once your message is out there, it will be challenging to change in the case of traditional marketing. For example, if you pay for a newspaper ad and there is a typo or mistake in a figure, you will be unable to edit the content. SEO, on the other hand, can be immediately changed. You can even go back and update old website and blog content so that you can increase traffic to your website. In the long run, what you push out in traditional marketing will not require updation, while SEO requires consistent upkeep.

Engagement with audience

Traditional marketing, unlike SEO, does not allow for engagement between a business and its customers or audience. The message pushed out is also very static, making engagement with prospects extremely difficult. But with SEO, you can work to increase engagement through ways. You can speed up your site, make it more responsive, add video and audio elements, include a site search option, add a chatbot, and create clear call-to-actions.

Targeting older audiences

Traditional marketing has been around for decades, making it easy for older prospects to understand. Traditional marketing materials like brochures, print ads, and billboards are all very straightforward, and the reader will easily understand what they are for. SEO has only been around for a decade and is easy for younger generations to understand. Older audiences tend to give higher priority to traditional communication and personal contact.

Easily measure results

When you put up a billboard, send out direct mail or pass out brochures, there is no way to measure the results of your traditional marketing efforts. With SEO, you can keep track of certain metrics like keyword ranking, organic traffic, time spent on page, bound rate click-through-rate (CTR), and more. All of these will allow you to measure SEO success thanks to SEO tools. The metrics important to your business will depend on your business, website and your audience.

While it may seem like you should choose over the other, both SEO marketing and traditional marketing methods have their own advantages and advantages. How you choose to use them depends highly on your business, your goals, and your audience. Traditional marketing is excellent if you want to reach an audience that does not spend a lot of time online, whereas SEO is great when the audience is more tech-savvy and digital conscious.

Whether you want to use SEO marketing or traditional marketing methods, CMGurus suggests using a mix of the two to reach all kinds of customers. We offer affordable SEO services for construction marketing and provide the best SEO for construction companies to help them achieve their SEO goals. This along with our other construction marketing services, will make your marketing efforts more well-rounded.