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Digital Marketing, Thought Leaders

How Organic Marketing Benefits Businesses

November 7, 2019

by Daniel Klein, PMP CSP 6σBB

Founder, Joseph Studios

In today’s ever-changing marketing industry, there are a ton of different marketing strategies. Two of the biggest types of marketing are organic marketing and paid marketing. Both of these strategies have benefits, but it really comes down to your long-term marketing goals and how much time and money you want to spend.

    

Updated 05/16/2023

Paid marketing is when you pay to have your ads appear in front of users. This approach works best if you have the extra money to spend and need quick, short-term results. 

Conversely, organic marketing is when you get customers to come to you naturally over time, rather than “artificially” via paid links or boosted posts. This approach will produce long-term results that help you maintain your audience. 

Organic marketing is so successful because it acts like word-of-mouth recommendations; if people are hearing about it or seeing it from other people, they are more likely to be interested. 

Recently, in the industry, we’ve seen a spike in paid social media marketing, but there are still many benefits of organic marketing on social media.

Build an Authentic Audience

Social media has become crowded with paid sponsorships and paid advertisements. As a result, consumers have started to catch on.

 Social media is the easiest way to deliver messages to an audience, but it is also the most organic channels available to businesses. Consumers are now starting to disconnect from brands and companies that seem to be “inauthentic.” 

Organic marketing allows a company to build credibility because it isn’t paying for a spot on the internet to get in front of its audience. In the long run, this will allow it to continue to succeed. 

With organic social media marketing, you can easily measure how engaged your audience is. 

For example, you can use the Insights function of Facebook to see how many people interacted with your content and page in a specific time range. 

Most social media platforms offer analytics on the content you share.

Measuring your followers’ engagement with your organic marketing content can give you a good sense of how successful your brand is with your followers, since it’s your brand itself driving people to view posts and like your page and not because you paid Facebook to promote your content. 

Over time, you will gain followers and customers who trust your company, and trust can’t be bought.

Seek Authentic Platforms in Content Marketing Efforts

There’s space for authenticity across platforms depending on a brand’s audience and goals, but spending time thinking about where to share content is a big part of making organic marketing efforts work.

For instance, let’s consider organic blog content vs. PPC. While search engine ads will appear at the top of search results, they often direct users to a landing page that funnels traffic directly to conversion. While this may help boost conversion rates, it’s also important to consider longer-term brand awareness through authentic organic content.

Blog content may include guest posts, infographics, case studies, and videos that build thought leadership while engaging and delighting an audience about a brand. While this content will rely on search engine optimization (SEO) to be found in search results, this type of content can engage top-of-funnel organic traffic more easily and educate buyers on complex topics.

In addition to traditional blog content, many brands have been met with success in creating podcasts or building new social media platforms, like TikTok, into their digital marketing strategies. Even long-standing platforms like LinkedIn give individuals an avenue to uniquely position themselves by posting organic and engaging content.  

Organic Marketing Is Budget Friendly

Everyone is caught up with the “pay-per-click” method and while this method is effective and puts your company’s product and name in front of everyone else, it can get expensive. 

Organic marketing, however, is cost-effective since you’re not paying to get your marketing materials “seen” on platforms. Instead, you’ll be investing your resources into great content that will naturally attract views. 

This will put you ahead of your competitors and allow your company to save money. 

User-Generated Content Builds Free Brand Awareness

To showcase how organic content is effective without breaking the bank, let’s examine user-generated content campaigns. While still a relatively new trend, small businesses and enterprises have adopted UGC to craft quality content promoting customer loyalty.

UGC is one of many examples of organic marketing with very little marketing budget impact. UGC means that users create branded content that the brand uses for social media or evergreen content.

While user-generated posts are often very high-quality, they also are key for their ability to create an emotional connection between brands and their audience. Consider the style of UGC posts compared to branded content for Starbucks.

most users surveyed like Starbucks UGC more than branded content

Source: Visual Objects

The majority of potential customers liked the UGC content even more than the content created by Starbucks’ internal team. Unlike content produced by influencers or lead generation teams, UGC is an effective organic marketing that reflects customer interests for little to no cost.  

Your Consumers Aren’t Homogenous 

Each one of your site visitors ended up there differently. 

Perhaps you were recommended to them by word-of-mouth which is impossible to track. Or perhaps they clicked through a paid advertisement or a search engine. 

Businesses can track their site’s visitor behavior through Google Analytics. Google constantly analyzes user behavior such as when they search for specific keywords or phrases and how long they stay on your site. 

By tracking organic search traffic to your page and how your site’s visitor behave on your website, you can maximize your company’s visibility on search engine results pages. 

Build Relationships With Your Followers

Genuine connections cannot be bought, rather they are built over time through trust and experience. You can not buy your customers’ trust, but you can build trust through organic marketing. 

Businesses that create relevant, valuable content build a rapport with customers and establish their brand as a thought leader in their industry. 

By hosting contests, giveaways, or even a simple reply or shout-out to a happy customer can create ripple effects and demonstrate that your business values a two-way relationship.

Become More Trustworthy on Google

The top ad in Google only gets two percent of clicks, while the top organic spot gets nearly 20 times that. 

This is because consumers can tell it’s a paid ad which makes them trust it less. Instead, people trust what Google delivers to them for the most relevant search. 

However, organically ranking on Google is not always an easy task. It can take months to earn the top organic spot on Google, while it takes only minutes to pay for an ad to get placed. 

Although paid ads will produce faster results, organic search marketing will be more beneficial to your company in the long run. 

Inform Your Audience While Boosting Web Traffic

Creating innovative content and posting it regularly to your site will bring tremendous benefits to your company when it comes to website traffic. 

If you give your audience information they care about, they will give you engagement.

You could also do an A/B test to see what types of content your audience prefers. 

For example, if one month you share one type of content and then the next content cycle you share a different type of content and see a spike in post reach, it could be a good indicator that your audience prefers that type of content. 

On Facebook, you can see the number of people your posts reach. 
On social media platforms such as Facebook, you can access charts that measure how well your posts did at certain times of the month. This makes it easier to track the progress of your organic marketing tactics. 

If you produce informative, innovative content such as blogs, social media posts, or emails, it will get shared and passed along to other consumers. 

Posting valuable content is natural and something a consumer wants to be a part of. Content provides value to consumers, whereas paid marketing provides zero value to the consumer other than clogging their newsfeed. 

This organic marketing strategy will bring benefits to both your business and its audience. 

Improve Online Reviews and Rankings

Organic marketing can also help you collect more positive reviews because you’re giving your audience what they want and need. 

Consumers rely so heavily on reviews in today’s world because it is so simple to read about someone else’s experience with a product or business. Everyone loves a five-star review with great comments. 

Going the extra mile to build relationships with your consumers and taking the time rather than a quick pay will earn the good reviews you are looking for. 

Personalize Your Messages and Content

Organic marketing also benefits your business by allowing you to personalize your message whether its email marketing or social media you can target by gender, location, and age.  

By personalizing your message, you are reaching more consumers that are more likely to be interested in your company. With paid advertising, it is not the case. 

You pay to target a large number of people, most of whom are not interested. Personalizing your message will produce better results, benefitting your company. 

Capitalize on the Benefits of Organic Marketing and See Long-Term Results 

While paid marketing will help you get in front of people faster, organic marketing will allow you to build credibility and trust with your target audience. 

Businesses can take advantage of the opportunities organic marketing offers by:

  • Knowing what their audience needs
  • Tailoring content to address those needs
  • Optimizing their content for social media and search engines
  • Tracking the progress of their marketing campaigns

If you want to learn more about organic marketing and how it can benefit your company, contact one of the top digital marketing agencies

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