Why SEO & Social Media Is Beneficial According to Economics

Making decisions can be one of the most difficult processes in business. It is sometimes just plain scary to commit to a specific choice that will surely cost you time and money. Though this is a necessary process of building your enterprise, it is always tough to face the opportunity cost of your choices.

Opportunity cost is an economical tool used to define the cost of a decision based on what must be given up as a result of that decision. We exercise it daily in our choices – Should I snooze the alarm for 10 more minutes and sacrifice the time to make lunch for work? Should I buy a nice new work suit or save and use the money for a much needed weekend getaway? It focuses on comparing your action with the next best alternative to that action.

Opportunity cost is often used to evaluate the comparative loss of time or money from a decision, and when running a business no one wants to sacrifice a large amount of either of these things. There are a slew of marketing options out there professionals and entrepreneurs can choose to optimise their business, however, now more than ever it is becoming more important to focus on a digital marketing strategy – after all, who hasn’t used Google in the past 24 hours.

Digital marketing techniques such as SEO & Social Media are low on both cost and money, yet high on return, so when thinking about what elements of a traditional marketing campaign you should replace (YellowPages, magazine advertising) with a digital equivelant, the choice should be easy. It’s a comforting to know marketing tools exist that can save you time and money you can spend elsewhere, reducing the amount of ‘either-or’ decisions you have to face.

Now how exactly does online marketing reduce these costs? Well to start off when you create an ad online you are able to monitor it easily to see if you are reaching your target goals (cost per sale, cost per conversion etc.). You can easily reach the specific target audience you desire to market to with a couple clicks of the mouse, saving you money on wasted time and traditional advertising. If it is not making the cut you can simply change it for free, not to mention you can track real time results.

There are so many platforms with online marketing where you have the option to reach your target audience in a number of different ways. From blog posts to videos, with a bit of creativity it is unlikely that your efforts will go unseen.

These modern marketing tools enable you to show the personality behind your company/brand and converse with your target audience, creating a loyalty and relationship between them and your brand. If you’re asking yourself how using all these disparate tools is going to cut down your time spent marketing, well the solution lies within either using a social media dashboard application such as Tweet Deck to organise and configure your accounts or another social marketing suit application such as the Wildfire app. These tools help in monitoring social progress and organisation.

Another benefit from digital marketing rests in the mobile movement we are currently undertaking. Since the birth of smartphones it is possible to be on the go while managing your marketing. While vice versa your consumer can be out and about while engaging with your business.

SEO tactics provide your company with instant effects and long term sustainability. Between the process of PPC campaigns and the work SEO teams do to ensure organic optimisation there is no gamble in this investment. Your business will surely be visited by some of the targeted individuals from the 2 billion plus internet users in the world.

So when weighing the opportunity cost of your next marketing tactic, be sure to factor in online marketing tactics to your decision and weigh it within the comparative trade off.