Marketing tends to conform to the principle that there’s “no free lunch”. The things that get results tend to cost you – either they cost money, or they require hard-won (or expensively hired) expertise.
Marketing Sherpa recently conducted a survey to find out which marketing methods people use, how effective they are, and the degree of difficulty involved.
You can read about the survey and its results here:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/seo-tactic-lead-gen#
They summed up the results in this very telling graphic:
I don’t know about you, but when I look at this, my takeaway is that SEO, while effective, offers a worse “effectiveness v ease” ratio than PPC or email marketing.
(And that most businesses still haven’t figured out what they’re doing with Social Media.)
Steve