Facebook Ads vs SEO - Fitness Marketing Showdown

As a personal trainer, obtaining new clients is essential, and a steady stream of new leads is vital to your business success.

With that in mind, we'll be exploring two of the most popular marketing strategies that reside at the opposite ends of time Vs return on investment spectrum: SEO and Facebook ads.

In an ideal world you'd have the capacity to do both Facebook Ads and search engine marketing but that's usually not the case. If you've only got the budget for one, which is the best to use and when is the best time to use it?

Let's compare.

Which One Will Get Clients the Quickest?

Most personal trainers who are keen to get their fitness website up and running are usually concerned by one thing: how fast do these options work for their personal trainer marketing?

When broken down, SEO and Facebook ads can actually be categorised in the following ways:

• PPC ads across various services like Google, with paid SEO
• Facebook ads - these are paid for on Facebook
• Facebook marketing that is done through posting quality content across groups and pages
  
• Content marketing, growth hacks - using SEO organically for free

Some people will say that organic Facebook marketing isn't something to be concerned with, and they're right. Organic Facebook marketing takes time to build up, and it's harder to grow a web presence for your personal trainer website on Facebook without looking at paid ads.

And let's be honest: paid Facebook ads are fantastic. You can hit almost 2 billion people, and that is quite the reach! Along with this, you can set your own targeting options to target the audience that you really want to reach in the fitness industry.

You get the chance to have a huge influence over your growth and one of the best things about Facebook is that you don't have to spend a lot to do this. Facebook advertising is some of the best around, and if you want quick responses and a good reach to the right audience, Facebook ads are the way to go.

On the flipside, you have organic SEO. Unlike Facebook ads that are to the point, reaching out to the audience quickly and ready to help you to get noticed, organic SEO is a slow builder for your personal training website.

A great campaign can take time to show results that will be valuable to your business, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Slow burners often mean they are reliable options, with no limit on how much it can progress and help you to expand your brand message.

The winner?

When it comes to speed and getting clients ASAP, turn to Facebook ads for your first fitness marketing campaign.

Organic SEO can come a little later should you wish, but Facebook allows for instant results. Facebook first, then organic SEO in tandem; short term gains are achieved with Facebook and long term gains with organic SEO.

How Much Do They Cost?

Estimating the costs of marketing is quite impossible, as there are so many factors that contribute to whether you are successful in your campaigns.

The cost of one thing can influence the cost of another, and so on. The one certainty that you could guarantee for your fitness marketing is that Facebook is going to cost you money - but it's money you want to spend.

Home-grown SEO is what you do yourself, but the cost here is mostly out of your time. You spend time posting and writing fitness articles, and this is a real consideration when you have a business to run.

The winner?

The starting price on SEO is zero dollars so if you're a new personal training business with no money, SEO could be a great option to invest some of your spare time in to. The returns aren't instant but the added benefits are comparable to a high interest savings account.

What About Conversions?

None of your chosen marketing avenues will matter a jot if you they don't convert leads in to clients. Building your following on social media is an excellent way to reach a broader market, but you can easily have a million followers and no paying customers.

It's far better for you to end up with a smaller following who click your links, make you money and share your website to all of their friends. That's how organic SEO works.

The winner?

Between Facebook and organic SEO, SEO will win in the numbers when it comes to conversions. People who find you on Facebook by clicking one of your ads don't always buy anything from that click; they just want to read your content.

However, when it comes to organic SEO, these leads are much warmer as you've targeted people with the right intentions when they visit you.

They're usually looking for your service and have clicked through to you based on their current browsing habits, and the rate of conversion can be up to ten times higher from search than they would be from social media marketing.

What About Targeting?

This is something that is somewhat restrictive in the marketing world. You're restricted to paid ads only, but unless you're on Facebook, you're limited to the platforms that you can use.

Facebook is packed to the brim with data, so for fitness marketing experts, it's the Holy Grail for harvesting as much information about users as possible.

For organic SEO, it's not the same targeting. You have topic choices and keywords to help guide potential clients to your content, but there's nothing as specific as Facebook ads. Organic SEO relies on you putting the information out there and hoping that people will find it.

On Facebook, you NEED targeting for it to be effective. You need to increase how visible you are, growing your audience in a specific way. Without learning to target, you're going to hurt your brand eventually.

The winner?

Overall, Facebook is the winners when it comes to your personal trainer website.

Wrapping Up

Everyone loves a statistic, right? In marketing, statistics matter the most. So, let's take a look at some of the data that you need to know about marketing techniques for your personal trainer website.

• 84% of businesses are on Facebook, but 96% of marketers use SEO.
• SEO is older than Facebook, and it's something viewed as essential for businesses.
• Facebook is still not taken as seriously as it should be by businesses who haven't got the time to learn about social media and how powerful it will be for their business.
• 38% of people who use the internet are on Facebook. This equates to 1.6 billion active Facebook users.
• Half of all usage on Facebook is done via smartphone, with people spending more time scrolling Facebook than any other social media site.
• It's important to note that Facebook is not a source of commerce, but a place for brand awareness. This means that you need to ensure that you direct people to your website, too.
• Facebook is brilliant for growing your customer base - and your reach.
• The most purchases and conversions come from actual web searches with targeted keywords.
  
• 81% of business to business purchases begin with a web search.
  

Overall, Facebook and organic SEO must go hand in hand for the most success. Balancing the short term with the long term is the only way to cover your bases and be better off.