Three Marketing Approaches: SEO, Growth Hacking and Earned Media

Search engine optimization or SEO has always been known as the process to increase awareness or visibility of a business or website when people do keyword searches on the search engines (especially Google and Yahoo for Hong Kong businesses). The main role/job of a local SEO company in Hong Kong is to ensure your business website (and its web pages) appear among the top unpaid (or natural) search results on Google and Yahoo (in HK).

SEO is effective for HK companies working in B2B as it can continue to evolve by keeping up pace with mobile and Hon Kong local search. SEO when it is implemented correctly with the input of an expert or consultant, it is a cost-effective way to keep your brand competitive with many other bigger brands in your industry. It is natural and simple for local Hong Kong users (or your target audience) to search on Google/Yahoo for your product.

There has been a common misperception when people think SEO is a stand-alone marketing tactic, even in Hong Kong. In fact it is not like that. The successful of a local Hong Kong SEO campaign should be achieved by many tactics together. It is set up to be the central hub for an effective inbound marketing strategy.

In growth hacking, all decisions are informed and driven by the opportunities for a possible growth. Traditionally, your product is defined as something (or items) to sell to the end consumers. But in the growth hacking concept, all products are tools for the next stages of growth. Similar to SEO in Hong Kong, growth hacking when it is done right, it is one of the methods with lowest cost. That is why growth hacking has become popular in recent years and that is why it is effective. Growth hacking is increasingly important in internet marketing because sales funnel is transforming into more customer-centric.

Often growth hacking is used mainly by startup companies (including Hong Kong startups). Many I.T. startups have made it a successful case. One main reason is that the startups mostly would have very limited marketing budget. Growth hacking doesn’t heavily rely on the amount of the actual monetary budget, but it borrows the product itself as a marketing tool. It combines creativity, analytical thinking and social metrics to sell products and gain exposure. The initial end result is often the quick growth for acquiring the first 1,000 users for a specific product. Experienced growth hackers often make very good use of social media, viral marketing and other low-cost marketing alternatives.

Earned Media is often known as free PR or free media. It is about earning the publicity. The publicity is created through efforts other than paid advertising, and may take many forms. For example, a social media testimonial, a word of mouth, a local Hong Kong newspaper article or mention, etc are all earned media. The drawback is that earned media can only be gained organically, so it may initially take a long time to build. Earned media is believed to be effective because it comes through free advertising channels (or it is like a concept of free traffic).