SEO and AdWords are certainly important when it comes to marketing; however, they can supplement traditional marketing, but not replace it.

Very often companies get too euphoric about these tools, because they seem to show very clear black & white results. This feedback comes on request on a daily or even hourly basis. Furthermore they are reasonably priced. But SEO and AdWords alone cannot build a reputation for a company. Just because the search engines find a business fast and one gets clicks because of AdWords does not necessarily mean a good impression has been made. It depends of course, on the product or service that is offered. If you sell books or DVD's, such an approach may be enough. Even if the visitor has never heard about the brand or company name, he is likely to buy such a product if the price is competitive. But if you provide a complicated and demanding surface treatment or service, just the fact that they find a particular home page will not sell the equipment, unless they know the company from somewhere else. It is too easy to make a good online impression, so for a capital investment, it needs more than that.

Furthermore the numbers of clicks may be very misleading. Assume one gets "x" clicks via AdWords. Is that only solely because one spent EURO 200 for AdWords, or could it also be connected to the fact that the same organization just spent EURO 8000 for participating in an international exhibition, publishing articles and a print ad, and visiting potential clients? Nobody can prove that someone using a search engine looks at a web page because he recognized the name, read about it, saw it on an exhibition, or was influenced by SEO. Mainly, the decision for a "click" is likely to be a mix of everything.

A successful marketing campaign comes from a combination of different means, starting from the design of a company logo, mailings, publications, exhibitions, etc. Use your marketing tools wisely, and don't think that SEO and AdWords will solve all your marketing problems at a very cheap price.

(*): Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or un-paid ("organic") search results.

(**): AdWords is an online advertising service that places advertising copy at the top or bottom of, or beside, the list of results that are replaced displays for a particular search query.

Best Regards
Andrzej Wojtas (Ph.D.), Chief Editor of MFN, E-mail: andrzej@mfn.li

Author: Andrzej Wojtas