With the ever-changing landscape of digital marketing, it can be difficult to know what’s best for your brand. You want to drive website traffic and conversions, but what’s the best way to do that? One way is posting to social media channels to drive brand awareness and engage with your audience. But then there are digital ads that can drive a large amount of people to your site quickly. So what should you use for your business? Well, there’s not a one-size-fits-all answer to that question. The age-old battle of paid vs. organic marketing has been around almost as long as digital marketing. It can be challenging to make both of these work collaboratively for your brand so you get the most out of both your paid and organic content. Let’s look at the difference between the two and how they can work in tandem to help your business grow.
What is organic marketing?
Organic marketing is anything you do that’s free. Making sure your website is optimized for SEO, posting blogs and articles, posting to social media, and email marketing, are all forms of organic marketing. Your organic marketing should be less about making sales and more about building trust and credibility with your audience. You can show off behind-the-scenes content, updates about your business, meeting your team, and other content that will help engage your audience.
One of the downfalls of organic marketing is it can take a long time to reach your goal. Algorithms that affect rankings and social media can have a big impact on your marketing efforts, meaning you might have to wait a year or more to reach your goals if you rely solely on organic marketing. It also takes a lot of time to have an effective organic marketing strategy. It’s constantly making sure your website is optimized, engaging with your audience on social media, researching and writing blogs and articles, and more. While it does take longer, the audience you build with organic marketing is likely to include your most loyal customers.
What is paid marketing?
Paid marketing is driving traffic to your business through any paid effort. This can be through digital ads on Google, social media, or streaming services. Your paid marketing should push sales, promotions, and your products. This is a great way to drive a lot of traffic and conversions to your website. It gets your brand in front of the right people at the right time and can be very beneficial to help revenue. When you understand your audience and know who and how to target, this can bring accelerated growth to your business.
One of the cons of paid marketing is that you do need a budget set aside that will keep you competitive in the market. When you pay for digital ads, you’re in an auction between every other company that is targeting the same audience and bidding on the same keywords. If you don’t have the right budget, your website isn’t optimized for user experience, or you don’t target correctly, your paid marketing can actually work against you.
Should you use paid or organic marketing?
The short answer to this question is you should use both. When you combine your paid and organic marketing, it can be a powerhouse that drives results, enhances brand exposure, builds credibility, and increases revenue. When your website, social media, and other organic marketing avenues are optimized to cultivate relationships with your audience, and your paid marketing is targeting the right people with captivating and enticing ads, you’ll see your business take off to new heights.
As you build your marketing strategy, you need to think about your goals, both short-term and long-term, and what platforms will work best for your brand. Any outstanding marketing campaign regardless of paid or organic, starts with a strong foundation and strategy. It can be difficult to find a good balance between these two types of marketing. You need to test, analyze, and be ready to pivot if something isn’t working. But, you also need to be patient and give your campaigns time to work before you decide to make a change.
If you want to build a well-rounded marketing strategy that includes optimized organic and paid marketing, reach out to Hexcode today! We have a team of experts in every corner of marketing who are ready to dive into your business and develop a strategy that gives your business what it needs to sustain its success and drive growth. Are you ready to increase revenue, foster an online community, and see your brand grow? We are too, so let’s chat.
