Free and Paid Online Advertising: What’s the Difference?
We’ve already talked about how having a strategy for your social media campaigns can significantly benefit your business. Indeed, effective social media advertising is a great way to boost your online presence, expand your customer base through organic traffic, and improve overall brand awareness.
Given how important it is to maintain your online presence, you need to make sure that you know all about the different types of marketing and advertising strategies that can help you grow your business. It’s in your best interest to learn all you can about free and paid online advertising. These are both powerful tools that can help your business achieve long-term growth and success.
If this is something you’re interested in, read on as we break down the differences between free and paid online advertising.
What is Free Online Advertising?
To put it simply, free online advertising involves tools that you can utilize with no costs attached to them. These tools are often geared towards increasing traffic. They also allow you to crawl and index your website to ensure that it shows up in search engines.
Here are some free online advertising tools that you can use:
- Website indexing directories
- Search engine submission websites
- Blog directories
- Affiliate networks
- Social media
Free online advertising is also sometimes referred to as organic marketing. This is because these efforts don’t rely on any paid strategies to boost your online reach. It’s important to note that free online advertising requires a lot of time, effort, and resources to get substantial results.
What is Paid Online Advertising?
Paid advertising or pay-per-click (PPC) is a form of online advertising wherein advertisers boost traffic through sponsored ads and posts. The way this works is simple: every time an online consumer clicks on an ad, the advertisers must pay a specific amount of money.
The best examples of these PPC ads are the ads and website banners that you see on websites. Aside from this, paid online advertising also manifests in the form of search engine results. Paid results show up at the top of the search engine rankings, ensuring that people see their website first whenever users enter certain search terms.
Which is Better?
When it comes to which option is “better”, it’s important to understand that both free and paid online advertising play essential roles in helping you generate more leads.
PPC is an effective way to boost your brand, as it allows you to reach more people in a shorter period of time. They also allow you to focus on your target market, as PPC offers a higher level of control as compared to free online advertising.
On the other hand, free online advertising is also vital as it will help you rank organically on search engine result pages. This means that more people will find your website without the need for intrusive paid ads. Optimizing your site in this way allows you to continue generating leads and steadily increasing organic traffic, which allows for the sustained growth of your online platforms.
Conclusion
We hope this information proves beneficial when it comes to helping you optimize your business’s online platforms. At the end of the day, it will take both free online advertising and PPC to help you achieve your business goals.
Are you looking for advertising and social media marketing services? Flat Rate Social Media is a digital marketing and social media agency in Australia dedicated to assisting business owners worldwide to build their online presence through tailor-made social media solutions. Get in touch with us today to learn more about our plans!
