Organic vs. Paid Social Media Marketing: Which Is Better?
As social media marketing continues to evolve, brands need to be ready to pivot their strategies. This includes considering organic social media marketing versus paid social media marketing. While closely associated, these two strategies require brands to think about and spend time engaging in different techniques, which makes it essential to find the perfect balance between the two. That balance starts with a clear idea of what each of these social marketing strategies is and how to optimize them to produce returns on your marketing time and budget.
The Debate of Organic vs. Paid Social Media Marketing: Which Is Best for Your Business in 2023?
Before we dive too deeply into the specifics of organic social media marketing and paid social media marketing strategies, it’s important to establish that neither of these marketing approaches is necessarily better than the other. They are merely different, with each one requiring different input from a business and each producing different results. In an ideal scenario, paid and organic social media marketing work together to help your business. The trick is to find the right hybrid social media strategy for your business that works with your industry, time, and budget.
Understanding the Basics of Organic Social Media Marketing
As its name implies, organic social media marketing refers to marketing activities that originate naturally, either from the business itself or from its fans and customers. Notably, organic social media marketing promotes the business without costing money, although businesses sometimes choose to pay people to write and post their organic content. This could be a social media manager or a marketing agency, such as Elevation Ten Thousand.
An Overview of Paid Social Media Advertising
On the other hand, paid social media marketing is better understood as paid social media advertising. Basically, this type of marketing occurs when businesses pay social media platforms to share content with a targeted audience. Brands can engage in paid social media marketing by “boosting” their organic posts, producing posts made specifically for advertising, or implementing a combination of these two tactics. Cost-per-click (CPC) ads are a popular form of paid social media advertising.
The Advantages of Organic Social Media Marketing
Clearly, many businesses look at the free price tag of organic social media marketing as its major benefit, and that element is certainly a plus. However, organic social media marketing is about more than posting regular updates on your business’ pages. It’s an important aspect of a business’s overall marketing strategy for several reasons, including:
- Establishing a brand “voice” in an authentic way
- Building relationships with followers through content
- Reaching a wider audience
- Keeping customers engaged
- Providing customer service
This is why engaging in a conscious organic content strategy is so important. Businesses need to strategically consider what they are posting, where they post it, and who they are trying to reach to get the most out of their organic social media strategy. Let’s take a closer look at some of the advantages.
The Cost-Effective Nature of Organic Social Media Marketing
Whether you write it and post it yourself or you reshare posts, comments, and reviews from other users, the main difference between organic and paid social media marketing is that there is no need to pay for organic content. However, most businesses that are successful in social media marketing pay in some way for their organic content, either by dedicating work hours to producing, posting, and managing content in-house or by paying someone else to do it.
These same businesses must pay for the creation of paid social media ads, as well, and possibly pay even more to post and boost those ads. As a result, organic social media marketing is a more cost-effective choice than paid social advertising.
The Ability to Reach a Wider Audience with Organic Social Media
One of the cornerstones of paid social media advertising is its targeted nature. Businesses pay for social platforms to show their ads to specific people who are targeted based on data. Organic social media marketing, on the other hand, is more widely available to all viewers. For example, any current fan or follower of your business’ social media sites has the opportunity to see organic posts, as they live on the business’ page forever unless you remove them.
This could mean that your organic social posts reach an even wider audience of potential customers who land on your social pages, either through web searches or via friends who recommend your business. In fact, one study found that approximately 51% of customers visit a brand’s social media sites before making a purchase. In this way, organic social media marketing has the potential to reach a wider audience than paid advertising on social media.
The Benefits of Building Relationships and Engaging with Your Audience Through Organic Social Media
One final, notable benefit of organic social media marketing is the way that it serves as a connection between a brand and its customers, helping to build and nurture relationships through direct engagement. Indeed, by controlling the voice of organic posts, planning their frequency, and managing replies to customers’ responses, businesses become more real and human to their customers. Ideally, organic social media content should focus on sharing information and engaging and entertaining the audience, rather than acting as a promotion. This offers the brand a chance to promote its values and unique voice by literally speaking to its loyal fans in a real, direct way.
The Benefits of Paid Social Media Advertising
Paid social media marketing often has peaks and valleys in its overall effectiveness, primarily due to changing algorithms as well as how the public views social media at any given time. However, there are also clear benefits to integrating at least some measure of paid social media advertising into your overall marketing strategy. These benefits include:
- Boosting brand awareness among people who do not know your business
- Promoting special deals and incentives and measuring the effectiveness of campaigns
- Scaling your reach to generate sales leads
Any business that wants to engage in a full digital marketing strategy needs to consider paid social media advertising as an important aspect of that strategy. Let’s unpack the reasons in a bit more detail.
The Quick Reach and Targeted Approach of Paid Social Media Advertising
More people are making purchases based on targeted social media ads. According to a recent Survey Monkey survey, nearly half of all social media users (48%) admitted to making purchases based on the ads they encounter. Among female users and millennials, the number goes up to 56% and 53%, respectively. In other words, paid social media advertising works. The quick, targeted nature of social media advertising makes it easier than ever to get your product or business in front of the people most likely to be interested in it.
The Ability to Measurably Track and Analyze Campaign Results with Paid Social Media Advertising
For the data lovers out there, the biggest benefit of paid social media advertising is the ability to quantify its results. The targeted nature and coding of social media advertising make it possible to track everything from views and click-throughs to purchases and resales in a clear and measurable way. This volume of data allows businesses to clearly see which ads, which promotions, which products, and which markets are most effective, so they can maximize those elements. On the flip side, brands can also see what isn’t working and quickly pivot their approaches.
The Possibility of Scaling Your Reach with Paid Social Media Advertising
While organic content may live on a business’ page forever, the only way that a potential customer will see it is if they choose to go to that page. Advertising, on the other hand, brings a business to the attention of those who may not otherwise find it, especially when businesses broaden their target audiences for ads. Although this strategy can be hit and miss, there is no doubt that it can be effective in scaling a business’ reach and generating sales leads that can then grow through other marketing strategies, including organic posts and email marketing.
Determining the Right Mix of Organic and Paid Social Media for Your Business
Used on their own, organic and paid social media marketing can result in positive effects for a business; however, both methods are enhanced when used alongside each other. In other words, it’s best to employ a balance of paid vs. organic social media marketing through the use of conscious marketing strategies. Determining what that balance looks like for each unique business isn’t always easy, but you can start by taking into consideration a few key elements.
Assessing Your Business Goals and Objectives
While all businesses need to grow to stay solvent, it’s possible to grow too much too quickly. That’s why it’s important to understand the core business’ ability to scale up production or deliver additional services before being too aggressive with social media marketing. Starting with a clear idea of the business’ goals and objectives with social media marketing as well as its projected growth can help with building a solid marketing plan that provides realistic, manageable growth over time to meet those goals.
Understanding Your Target Audience and Their Social Media Habits
Part of any solid business plan is an assessment of its target market(s), and that needs to include those markets’ social media habits as well. Businesses catering to younger customers, such as millennials and Gen Z, will be far more successful using social media campaigns than those catering solely to retirees, and this is just an example of one demographic factor. Once you understand your audience and its nuances and that audience’s experience with social media, it’s easier to build a more effective social media marketing campaign and figure out a good organic vs. paid social media marketing balance.
Balancing Your Marketing Budget and Resources
One final consideration to make before engaging too deeply in a social media marketing strategy is how social media fits into your business’ overall marketing plan and budget. Remember, social media marketing is a full-time job for many people; it can easily take up a lot of time and resources. Being realistic about your expectations and goals can help prevent spending too much time and money on any one social media campaign and ensure that there is room left in the budget for other important marketing activities.
The Future of Organic and Paid Social Media Marketing in 2023 and Beyond
As we look forward to 2023 and beyond, both organic and paid social media marketing continue to be important aspects of a brand’s overall marketing strategy. However, the way that brands balance these methods as well as the specific ways that they generate and promote both organic and paid social posts must evolve along with the ecommerce space. This includes keeping up with changes to social media platforms’ algorithms as well as other trends in the social space.
The Evolution of Social Media Platforms and Advertising Algorithms
Just like search engines, social media platforms work based on algorithms. These long lines of code affect not only which advertisements users see, but also which posts from their friends and which “liked” businesses are most likely to appear in their feeds. For this reason, algorithms matter a great deal for both organic and paid social media marketing strategies.
While it’s impossible to “beat” social media algorithms, it’s important to understand and consider them during planning. In 2023, that means understanding the nuances of each social platform you intend to use. For example, relationships, interests, and popularity drive rankings on Instagram. In contrast, a user’s previous interactions and location play a role on TikTok.
The Importance of Staying Ahead of the Trends in Social Media Marketing
Staying ahead of social media trends is one of the most important ways to capitalize on social media marketing strategies, but it can be overwhelming, especially when many other aspects of a business need attention, from production to payroll. Working with a professional marketing firm such as Elevation Ten Thousand can help you focus your initial social media marketing plan and then manage that plan along the way based on those important trends. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you manage your social media marketing strategy in 2023 and beyond.
