If you need customers this month, start with PPC. If you can wait three to six months and want a lower cost per lead for years, start with SEO. Most small businesses end up using both, but the order matters when money is tight.
What each channel does best
PPC buys visibility immediately. Your ad can appear within days, and you can switch it off just as fast. The cost is ongoing: when you stop paying, the leads stop.
SEO builds visibility you do not pay for per click. It takes longer, but a page that ranks keeps producing leads long after the work is done.
Three questions to ask
- How soon do you need leads? Under two months points to PPC.
- Do people already search for what you sell? If yes, both channels work. If not, paid social may be a better start than either.
- Is your website ready? A slow or confusing site wastes money in both channels, so fix that first.
A sensible sequence
Run a small PPC campaign for two or three months and track which keywords produce paying customers. Then point your SEO work at exactly those keywords. You avoid guessing, and each channel makes the other more efficient.
A worked example
Suppose a contractor spends $1,000 on ads and gets ten leads, three of which become jobs. That tells them which services people search for and what a lead is worth. With that information, building pages for the top two services is a far safer SEO investment than starting blind.
See how we combine them on our digital marketing services page, or compare PPC packages.