Saturday, December 9, 2023
Latest:
Marketing

How to stay organic in the era of paid ads

Dominic Lill ,  ,  , 

Every company – whether it’s just a startup or a multinational enterprise – needs to take their organic marketing into consideration and pay close attention to it.

Not too many companies have the funds to buy traffic and visibility for themselves, at least not in the volume they desire. Even if they manage to get the traffic and visibility, it’s highly unlikely that neglecting organic methods is sustainable.

organic traffic

To neglect organic traffic is not a good idea – to put it mildly. But why is this so important for all areas – social, search engine, content and reputation? Why does it have such a huge asset value?

Well, organic marketing is the base of any website because it delivers valuable and relevant audience that is interested in those products and services. This earns you returning visitors, fans, leads and so on.

If you want to find out how to focus on the organic advertising rather than on paid advertising, read on.

Organic vs paid

There are different media types. They usually divide in three categories:

  • Earned
  • Owned
  • Paid

The only property you have at the beginning of your business is the owned media which is your website, mailing list, blog, social media profiles and pages. The social media is a bit tricky because this is not ever going to be yours and you could lose these assets if social media platform changes or goes out of business or simply has different plans. This is the aspect you can’t control.

The Owned properties are your main assets and the ones you need to focus your attention on if you want to increase the value you have to offer.

Earned assets require effort by their very definition. However, not only effort will earn you results but rather the brading, your unique selling proposition and your user experience. When you focus on digital marketing, it’s an important effort to focus on content, organic search, social media marketing and so on. This can earn you trust, authority, reputation and so on.

Paid media is very effective and it rarely builds true fans and assets. This is especially true if you are a startup or a small business and you have limited funding. Paid media is like renting while organic media means you are paying off your mortgage.

Organic marketing components

Your brand plays a major role in earned media. When you look at the big picture, you have to have some sort of USP. This could be anything from problem solving, new and helpful technologies, a great product or anything else. If you don’t have these, marketing can’t do anything for you, at least not in any meaningful sense.

So, what do you need to increase your asset value?

Content

Often referred to as the cornerstone of digital marketing, it’s essential if you want a successful digital marketing strategy. When you start with content, your aim is to go for the best value per page with relevant, valuable, unique and high quality content that is in demand both at the moment and in the long run.

So, you can solve popular problems and answer popular questions and go for the evergreen content. Why is this so important? Well, with each new blog post o content piece, yuget new people on your page. This means organic traffic from search engine, followers for your social media channels, engagement from your audience and so on.

Ideally, you want to produce as much organic content as possible. Evergreen content generates visitors all the time and for free and gives you a great opportunity to share and reshare from time to time to get more traffic.

Not only does this drive more visitors but it also puts you on top of search engines which is amazing. It gives you more visitors and the more quality pages the better. Your cost per click reduces for every visitor you get. Your website’s value goes up.

Optimizing for search

You need high quality content if you want to rank high. You also need to target keywords in a smart way because you want to demonstrate intent from your audience that is in line with your preposition. You shouldn’t go for many keywords or terms that are overly generic because it would cost you too much time and effort  and expose your site to issues if Google algorithm changes. Go for long-tail keywords and structure your website ina good way. You should also target for optimization or you could lose traffic.

The more you target, the less you are at the mercy of search engines.

SEO is definitely not an optional thing. There is no excuse for not using SEO, especially with all of the advice and free information on it out there. More than 42% of your traffic will come from search engines. When you have an optimized website, you can get more audience, more organic visitors and so on. So, it’s best to always remain focused on SEO practices that will get you to the top of search engine rankings.

Social media

Social media has to be operated with more caution because you never really own it, as we mentioned. Social media will affect your value in a more indirect way, but it will affect it nevertheless, so it needs to be discussed. This is why you need to avoid allocating your entire budget to social media advertising.

“You need to be efficient and find a good reason for using every social media channel. You should also analyse your desired outcomes and then choose the network that works best for you and your goals,” says Kate Bufford, a social media expert at Next Coursework and Australia 2 write.

When you are ready and you finish all of the important analytics, you should build your social channels and start targeting your ideal audience on these channels. Find your perfect social media channel by analysing where your target audience is because it makes no sense to post on Facebook if your audience is namely on Instagram or Twitter. So, find a social media where your social media is and then go for it, post relevant and engaging content and attract an audience that you want. For B2B, it’s best to go for Twitter or LinkedIn because that’s where B2B companies are.

Don’t focus only on social media because this is not an only way to get an audience. Being popular on social media is not your goal. Social media is just a tool to build a great brand and achieve success in areas where it really matters – driving traffic to your website where you can control it and monitor it, not to mention earn from it. Remember that you don’t own your social media pages, you are just a guest there. This is why you shouldn’t use your website traffic to build your social pages. It should be the other way around. Get your audience to your website from social. Your content is still important here and it will help you build your social media pages and audience. Share content and link to your website. It’s all about engagement, shares, interaction and reaching more people. Because everything is so interlinked, you will need it to improve your traffic and promote your website.

Here is how it goes:

  • Bad content means no shares or engagement.
  • Bad reach means no audience.
  • No audience means no engagement.
  • Good content means social engagement means better rankings.

Drive traffic with outreach

This is very important in any business. Networking and reaching to people and partners can make you more successful in general. With a great outreach strategy, you can find great links, get more traffic from similar websites, get mentions from influencers and so on. You can even get traditional media exposure on news or paper media and on their digital pandans which are digital news and blogs.

It can help you connect with more people and open your doors to more traffic and revenue. A great listing on a forum generates traffic. Similar appearances too.

So, how do you get traffic this way?

Start a conversation and make yourself known to other people. Show your content and prove that you are a valuable asset. It can come from social mentions, well placed content, referrals, affiliate partnerships an so on.

“When you have this strategy, you can figure out what is the value of your asset. This is difficult to define and it depends on USPs, technology, opportunity, market and so on,” says Marina Bell, a marketing consultant at 1 Day 2 write and Brit student.

Your organic marketing is one of the most efficient ways to build an online presence and become an important asset to your audience. It takes a lot more work than paid traffic and paid assets but it also brings way more value. Good content is crucial and finding ways to make this content seen is as well. You need to focus on your content strategy and on your organic marketing strategy as well. Make sure that you are doing this the right way, by following some of these tips.

Ellen Lawton works as a writer and editor in marketing at Phd Kingdom and Academic Brits, because she wants to help companies create effective marketing strategies. She is passionate about sharing her knowledge and expertise and writes for blogs and online magazines like Origin Writings.