Ads: Depends on your niche and where you are in your growth. If you're competing in a big pond, search-related ads + owned content for lead capture and some retargeting once you have the visit/lead is likely going to be faster and maybe cheaper than the longer (and, for some phrases/niches, impossible) slog of establishing SEO dominance.
I'm a big fan of the cheap, audacious ad move to get a foot in the door. Know where the decision maker for your next enterprise sale works out every morning? Geo-fence very specific-to-him mobile ads around the building while he works out. That kind of thing. No ad is going to get you a sale; but ad ad can get you attention that leads to a conversation.
(Yes, that's marketing blah-blah -- send me an email at gregb(at)west-third.com if you want to talk through it. I won't try and turn you into a client; those days are behind me. Just trying to be helpful.)
Content: Content marketing has gone from a silver bullet about five years ago to being like a business card today -- you pretty much have to do it for baseline credibility, but a lot of people (particularly in B2B environments) aren't doing a great job. Their copy is too technical, too promotional, too focused on a shock-and-awe feature set instead of really talking about the problem their prospects have and how their (your) solution is a 10x improvement.
I said in a comment a couple of weeks ago: Marketing is nothing more than delivering value (education, expertise on how a technical problem fits into the larger business, a path to growth, etc.) in order to capture value (the sale). If you think about it that way and enforce it in the organization, you tend to produce content -- well, marketing across the board -- that's more effective. Don't strip mine the audience by just trying to capture value without delivering anything of value.
I'm a big fan of the cheap, audacious ad move to get a foot in the door. Know where the decision maker for your next enterprise sale works out every morning? Geo-fence very specific-to-him mobile ads around the building while he works out. That kind of thing. No ad is going to get you a sale; but ad ad can get you attention that leads to a conversation.
(Yes, that's marketing blah-blah -- send me an email at gregb(at)west-third.com if you want to talk through it. I won't try and turn you into a client; those days are behind me. Just trying to be helpful.)
Content: Content marketing has gone from a silver bullet about five years ago to being like a business card today -- you pretty much have to do it for baseline credibility, but a lot of people (particularly in B2B environments) aren't doing a great job. Their copy is too technical, too promotional, too focused on a shock-and-awe feature set instead of really talking about the problem their prospects have and how their (your) solution is a 10x improvement.
I said in a comment a couple of weeks ago: Marketing is nothing more than delivering value (education, expertise on how a technical problem fits into the larger business, a path to growth, etc.) in order to capture value (the sale). If you think about it that way and enforce it in the organization, you tend to produce content -- well, marketing across the board -- that's more effective. Don't strip mine the audience by just trying to capture value without delivering anything of value.