Organic Vs Paid Social Media: Importance of Multi-Channel Marketing
Create the perfect multi-channel marketing strategy by leveraging the unique powers of both paid and organic social media. Whilst organic and paid socials may utilise some of the same platforms, each has independent goals and benefits that will help you reach your business targets. Paid content is a great way to quickly generate leads and boost sales. However, without a solid organic social media foundation to support it, this strategy is less effective and short-lived.
Why organic social media?
Organic social media is a free, valuable tool to boost brand awareness and establish your business as an expert in your field. Build relationships with your audience by sharing entertaining, informative and inspiring content that reflects your brand image. Here, you have the power to establish your tone of voice and express the story of your brand.
Organic social media creates a sense of authenticity as consumers are free to establish genuine connections with brands without feeling like they are being sold something. Use your organic social media to showcase your business’ more “human” side by posting behind-the scenes content, insights into upcoming projects and join in on social conversations that resonate with your brand values. When it comes to customer care, organic social media is your best friend. Build a strong brand community by reposting user generated content and responding to comments, queries and reviews.
However, as major social platforms become more saturated and organic ranking algorithms change, it is becoming harder to get your organic content seen by both your existing and new audiences. This is where paid content comes in handy.
Why paid social media?
Paid content is a great tool to produce a higher quantity of leads that drive conversions and sales for your business. It creates opportunities to reach a larger number of people and target your ideal audience more precisely. Through paid advertisements, you have the ability to narrow down specific demographics and interests of your audience to ensure your message is reaching the right people. In turn, this attracts new customers that are interested in your offering and is an efficient way to create hardline sales.
When creating paid content, it is important to identify your business goals. Are you trying to drive sales on a particular product? Raise awareness of an event? Generate leads to your website? Whatever your goal, paid advertisements allow you to choose the right objective that encourages users to take action and help you reach your targets.
The downside is that paid social media can get expensive. This is why it is important to utilise paid content as part of a larger marketing strategy and use it in moderation when you need to accelerate your business goals.
How should I use organic and paid SMM together?
- Build a solid organic foundation
When consumers are intrigued by advertisements in their feed, they are likely to click on their organic social pages to learn more about the company. Before you invest in paid socials, it is important to build a solid foundation with your organic social media to express your business’ creative voice and brand story. Make sure you are regularly posting inspiring, engaging and informative content.
- Lookalike audiences
Use data from your organic social media to identify your target audience. By creating a lookalike audience with similar demographics, interests and buying behaviours, you can capitalise on this data to attract new customers who have not yet been introduced to your brand. In turn, this will create more effective ads, giving you more bang for your buck!
- Re-targeting campaigns
Retargeting campaigns are advertisements that reach out to people who are already familiar with your business, whether it be through organic social media platforms or your website. These paid ads can give a friendly reminder to those who have interacted with your brand to come back and convert, and therefore have a high ROI.
- Boost Organic Content
One of the easiest ways to create paid social posts is to boost your top-performing organic posts. Capitalise on free data obtained on platforms such as Instagram and Facebook to find out which posts are engaging and resonating with your audience.
- Create a broader strategy
When creating your multi-channel marketing strategy, it is important to have broader goals in mind. As your business grows your campaign goals will change. Initially, you may focus on building brand awareness and later, you may focus your strategy creating purchases. If you’ve launched a new product or are running a sale, use paid campaigns to enable your message to reach further and drive results. Make sure that your paid and organic strategies are aligned, and support this messaging with organic content.
Contact us at MBP today to see how our team of experts can create the perfect multi-channel marketing strategy for your business.