Cinderella

You may have set foot amidst the process of PPC (pay-per-click) advertising because you heard, while your business is working day and night, you could get on the ball more quickly, leveraging PPC services (such as Google's AdWords - Is your brand using AdWords for keyword research?  Proceed with caution says Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz.)  While the idea of attracting the attention of target markets seems immediately charming, the associated costs could be a harsh reality, especially without experience.  The process warrants diligence, the kind of attention a lot of small outfits can't address on a daily basis.  Pay-per-click specialists devote full-time attention to your PPC campaign, allowing brands to enjoy surefooted outcomes.

Three Little Pigs

As the latest Comscore data reveals, Google is still tops in search.  2011 experienced a number of Panda visits, a Google-unleashed penalization system influencing online rankings.  You may have heard a number of suggestions regarding upcoming Google updates.  It's like Google's Panda is the big bad wolf from the Three Little Pigs story.  You have to constantly build a better online 'property' to meet the Panda's demands and capricious temper.  You could wait, riddled with anxiety, for the next update or align your brand with help.  Experienced professionals swear by the hairs on their (chinny chin) chins to keep abreast of ongoing changes and best-practice implementation.

The Tortoise and the Hare

You have the same end goals as your competitors in the race toward customer attention and revenue acquisition.  There are parallels between SEO and the Tortoise and Hare tale.  Sure, there are immediate changes, which can be performed by SEO professionals (fix SEO technical problems in less than one hour!) allowing for improvements but the process of search engine optimization is a slow-and-steady race, a marathon and not a sprint.  Each brand has areas of needed improvement but quick fixes could lead to ironic long hauls.  The process of online success requires a lot of in-industry understanding as more opportunities proliferate.  Take a look at Neil Patel's link building tactics; attracting attention requires knowledge of technical, social, copywriting, and other aspects of online marketing.  Making quick-and-hasty, in-house decisions is not the way to win the race for consumer attention; slow, steady, experienced, and methodical approaches win in the end.

Rip Van Winkle

Are you sleeping on lines of communication with your target market?  While executives are busy, focused with a tunnel-vision-like concentration on business processes and numbers, they can lose sight of target markets, their consumers.  Is your brand dreaming of better brand-to-consumer engagement?  Don't neglect the 'social' aspect of online marketing; numbers in this Mashable post reflect social sites accounted for over 16% of browsers' online time in 2011.  As with PPC above, social media usage is immediately beneficial, but inexperience comes at a cost.  Social media is great for branding and reputation management purposes but is best left to those with experience regarding trends and best practices.  It's no tale, SEOs tailor your business to the Web, making adjustments as your business continues to grow.