Organic v's Paid Marketing: The Pro's And Con's - The main difference between organic and paid marketing is that organic marketing focuses on attracting traffic for free while paid marketing involves paying for traffic, both are very useful and both can work very well.
Organic Marketing
Organic marketing is the process of attracting traffic to a website or social media platform without using paid advertising. It commonly involves creating and distributing valuable content to attract an audience.
Examples of organic Marketing are SEO and Social Media Marketing
Paid Marketing
Paid marketing is the process of attracting traffic from paid advertising. It commonly involves buying clicks from platforms like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, sponsored posts, and banner ads. Examples of paid marketing are Facebook ads, Google Ads and Linkedin Ads.
So Which Is Better?
The simple answer is… neither is better than the other, they are both solid marketing efforts that can be used for different purposes and integrated together to make one solid marketing strategy
There are pros and cons to both, so let's look at the main differences and what the benefits and challenges are for each
Paid Advertising Pros
The main advantage of paid marketing is speed, paid marketing allows more people to see your business quicker than using organic marketing strategies alone.
With paid marketing, you can expand your reach and it allows you to reach target customers whom you might not otherwise have had access to through organic methods.
You can cast a wider net for potential customers, increasing your overall visibility. This is a great way to attract new consumers and increase your social media following.
Paid Marketing Increases Brand Awareness
Paid campaigns can increase your brand awareness among both new and existing customers. Each time someone sees your ad, your brand becomes top of mind. Providing valuable content through your paid channels
Paid Marketing Can Be Customised to Retarget customers
Many platforms, such as Facebook, give you the ability to customise your ads based on consumer behavior. For example, if a user visits a certain webpage or product, you can target them with an ad related to that experience. This is a great way to re-target potential customers and get them in your purchasing funnel.
Paid Advertising Cons
One of the main challenges of paid marketing for many businesses is cost. Social Media Marketing is actually one of the least expensive types of paid advertising, but you need to know what you're doing! Or have a company like ours do it for you. If not set up correctly paid ads can be a bottomless money pit, you will end up spending money on advertising but not getting a return on your investment simply because they are not set up correctly
Paid Marketing Is Competitive.
There is only a finite amount of ad space available to reach each consumer, and with a high demand for visibility, the cost of getting your ads prioritised over the competition can add up. This can be challenging for a company with a limited budget.
Paid Marketing Requires A Skilled Campaign Manager
If you’re putting money into your marketing campaign, it’s important you have a skilled marketer (or team) running your campaign for you. This means not only hiring someone with the skills and experience to be successful but also ensuring they understand your target audience and the best ways to reach them. You don’t want to spend all your efforts advertising on Facebook if your target demographic is primarily on Linkedin.
Paid Marketing Can Become Repetitive To Your Audience
Filling your audience’s news feeds with ads about your product or service can annoy them and cause them to skip over your advertisements, diluting your paid effort, so it's important to have a paid marketing strategy to get the most ROAS for your budget.
Finding The Right Balance
An inclusive strategy would ideally integrate some level of both paid and organic marketing. For example, paid social media can be a great way to attract new customers, and then organic efforts can be used to engage existing consumers and nurture long-term relationships.
Businesses new to social media or those with limited funding can also start with marketing strategies that focus primarily on organic social media and then add paid efforts when their budget allows and they are comfortable using the platform and its features.
It can be helpful to hire a marketing expert to manage your campaigns for you.
It’s important to track your marketing results over time to see what’s working and what isn’t. With paid social media marketing campaigns in particular, marketers should be tracking results that justify ad spending and demonstrate ROI for the company. Then you can adjust your paid and organic strategy accordingly.
If you don't know where to start when it comes to your paid or organic marketing, we can help! We offer a variety of services from power hours to help you upskill on a particular topic, to full social media management where we create the strategy and content leaving you free to focus on the things that are important to you, like working IN your business.
We also offer full ad management services, so if you want to incorporate paid ads into your marketing but don't have the skill or desire to do it yourself, we can do it for you.
You can drop us an email on rachael@rachaelhover.com for more information and to book a no-obligation compatibility call (Please note full paid ads management requires a minimum ad spend of £15 per day)