The first social networks emerged as a means of unpaid advertising. It was one in which businesses invested heavily in attracting new customers by disseminating viral videos, quizzes, and other viral material that would go viral if enough people watched it and commented on it.
In recent years, however, advertisements, promoted posts, sponsored content, and influencer marketing have been the backbone of most social media marketing campaigns designed to increase brand exposure.
While it’s common knowledge among marketers that both sponsored and organic content impact both current and future audiences, striking the perfect balance between the two may be challenging.
Which of these two approaches do you think would be most effective for your brand, and why? To what direction are current tendencies pointing?
In this article, we’ll compare and contrast organic and sponsored social media content and provide tips for incorporating both into your marketing approach.
The benefits of combining organic and paid social media promotion
Digital marketing relies heavily on both paid and organic content.
Sixty-eight percent of all visits to websites are attributed to paid and organic search engine marketing and
Organic search referrals account for 53% of all visits to a website.
Paid promotions contribute to a website’s visibility by 15%.
These numbers represent a mean across all sectors.
Research also shows that 72 percent of a company’s income comes from their own marketing efforts, both free and paid.
Two-thirds of a company’s income is typically generated through a mix of organic and paid promotion, according to studies. Wow an absurdly high number! That’s why it’s important for your company to put resources into both free and paid forms of social media promotion.
Introduction to Organic Social Media Marketing
Providing users with material they find interesting and useful is at the heart of organic social media marketing. By providing genuine value to consumers, you may build your brand’s credibility through organic marketing strategies.
In many cases, the goal of organic marketing is to increase traffic to your website or the very beginning of your marketing funnel by way of naturally occurring channels like social media content and search engine results (when they search for relevant keywords, hashtags, and topics related to your industry and brand).
Organic marketing avoids annoying clients by bringing them to you with well-crafted content that they actually want to read.
In an organic marketing plan, content is used to guide the client through each step of the purchasing process. It is important that the social media material you produce is interesting enough to attract, convert, and retain your ideal customers.
Promoting Your Business With Paid Social Media Marketing
Companies may rapidly and directly contact their target demographics, build relationships with them, and turn them into customers with paid social media marketing. Instead of crossing your fingers and praying the right people stumble across your organic social post, sponsored marketing will force your content in front of your target audience. Hence, you may direct your efforts far more precisely towards encouraging particular behaviours from your audience, such as completing a purchase or signing up for a webinar.
When it comes to generating serious business and seeing immediate results, paid social media marketing is where it’s at. Each piece of sponsored content (or ad) will link to a specified sales page, lead capture form, or other destination designed to generate a predetermined action. For this reason, before you start shelling out cash for advertisements, you should have a firm grasp on what it is you hope to accomplish with your marketing budget.
The Formula for Social Media Organic Marketing Success
These are the three most important things to remember when implementing an organic social media marketing strategy for your company.
Selecting the Appropriate Social Network
Identifying your target demographic is the first step in developing an effective marketing plan. Your fans on a certain social media network will be accustomed to a certain culture, audience, and tone on that platform. In order to draw in your ideal customers, you’ll need to fine-tune and change your organic marketing strategies to account for these factors.
Don’t rush your development on every social networking site. Choose one main social media platform and focus on growing your following there. After getting a foothold there, you may go on to the next step. You can’t just develop one piece of content and hope that it does well on all social networks; each network requires different kinds of material.
Be original with your posts and regular with your updates.
Creating engaging content is the single most important thing you can do to attract new followers and consumers on social media. Hence, make sure your material is original, interesting, and helpful to your target demographic. The more original your material is, the more likely it is that it will spread on its own.
Get Your Audience Involved
Your brand may more easily cultivate a strong, long-lasting reputation if you actively engage with your social audience through organic means, such as answering their questions, reacting to their comments and criticism, or just beginning a conversation. This might lead to exciting new prospects for collaborating with other businesses, extending your reach.
Paid social media marketing: the secrets to success
You can get the most out of your social media marketing budget by following these guidelines for running a successful sponsored social media marketing campaign.
Consider the Potential Benefits and Drawbacks
Spending money on the incorrect demographic or on an inefficient ad format may quickly eat away at a company’s advertising budget and leave little room for expansion when it comes to paid social advertising. The payoff is exponential expansion while still accomplishing established objectives.
How you begin your campaign and who you select to target with your advertisements will have a significant impact on the likelihood of success and the size of your potential payoff. In order to correct the course of a funded campaign quickly if it should ever head in the wrong direction, constant vigilance and speedy action are essential.
ROI Metrics to Consider
Earnings-based goals guide paid social media promotion. Because of this, you must put careful thought into how you will spend your marketing budget.
In addition, you should implement a social ROI calculator, pixel and UTM monitoring, and other tools to monitor the efficacy of your campaign.