Marketer's Dilemma : Paid Search or Social Media

The recent news of Facebook beating Google to become the most visited site in US raises new questions for internet marketing, the most prominent one being - where to invest the next marketing dollars : paid search(and organic search) or social media(particularly facebook) ?

The rise of Social Media has been consistently fast-paced ever since 2006. But even today, for most of the firms, majority of internet marketing budget is spent over Search(SEO+SEM), followed by PPC and affiliate marketing. Social Media marketing gets a very small chunk of the budget, and the investment is mostly considered experimental. However, this landscape is rapidly changing, and an increasing number of firms are investing considerably in Social Media, which is also evident from the increasing number of social media marketing firms opening every month.

A few key differences between these two marketing media are listed below. In case you feel any major difference has been left out, do mention it as a comment.

	Paid Search	Social Media
Art vs. Science	An almost perfect science	A mix of both – creativity is important
Targeting	Usually nothing, at best location-based	Much better targeting, based on personal interests, social groups, age, etc.
Order of Events	Customers come to your site looking for something, and then you provide them a good experience	You provide customers a good experience(through social media interaction), and if they like it, they come to your site
Quality of Traffic	Poor. Conversion rate usually low.	Higher than Paid Search(and lower than Direct Traffic)
Click-fraud protection	Robust	Yet to see some good examples here
Tracking consumer activity	Limited information	Lot of information
Success Metrics	Well defined	Not so well defined
Additional capabilities		CRM, Market Research

Thus, it is very important that next time you pen down your internet marketing budget, do compare paid search with social media with respect to your goals, and do a strategic allocation. It is equally important to integrate all these marketing efforts with a coherent theme, and a clear, concise, and consistent message.

Times have changed - you no longer have the control of communication with customers, least so on the internet. Consumers decide how to interact with you - you need to understand that, and establish your presence where your customers are looking for you. So, the Paid Search vs. Social Media debate for you essentially boils down to where your customers are !