When you look at the whole picture of your social media marketing you should be looking at a strategy that combines paid and organic strategies. These two kinds of marketing complement each other. To get the most out of your social media marketing efforts they must be used together. This hybrid approach helps you achieve all of your marketing goals. To understand why these strategies must be used in tandem, you must understand what each strategy does and the goals of that strategy. When you put them together they become an unstoppable marketing force.
Organic vs. Paid Strategies
An organic social media strategy is the foundation of your marketing strategy. It is the followers you have and those who follow the hashtags you post that see your content. The main goals of organic outreach are to build a social presence and voice, engage with both potential and existing customers, and strengthen existing relationships with customers. Customers that engage and follow you are some of your best brand promotors. They not only buy from you, but they recommend you to their family and friends. These days, engagement is more and more important to customers. Customers expect to be able to communicate and engage with the brands they buy from. These engaging relationships are what creates brand loyalty.
On the other hand, a paid social media strategy is when a company or brand pays to have its ad or post put in a social media feed or search. The ad isn’t thrown into just any feed. It is shared with audiences that fit their target demographic. It essentially makes more of the specific group of people who are the most likely to buy your product see your ad or your post. The more people that see your ad, the more clicks, especially if you have reached the right people who are interested in your product and now want to either learn more or go directly to buying. The goals of a paid strategy are brand awareness, reaching new audiences, driving conversions, and boosting sales.
It is getting harder for businesses and brands to reach their target audience through organic outreach. There are a few reasons for this. One is the amount of content there is today. The more content, the more competition there is for space in a customer’s feed. Ad space is governed by algorithms. These algorithms change all the time, but one thing is becoming constant- paid ads are getting viewed more and more. This “pay-to-play” is a strategy set up by the platforms. They give more ad space and time to those that are paid, rather than organic. They want brands and businesses to spend money on advertising so they are making paid advertisements get the desired results. Even though paid ads are the name of the game now you still need your organic social media, as it is the foundation of your social strategy. This is where the combination of paid and organic strategies comes into play.
The Hybrid Approach to Marketing
One of the ways to effectively combine your strategies is to analyze the demographics of the organic traffic of your social media. Then use a paid strategy to put your ads in front of that same demographic These are the people who are most likely to buy from you- so in other words they are your target audience. Your advertisement in front of your target audience is going to bring you results. You will get more followers, more engagement, and more clicks as more of your target audience see your product or service.
Another way is to look at posts that have organically been successful and make that post, or something very similar to it, a paid ad. This way you can replicate your success on a grander level. You are boosting your post by reaching a wider audience with your best-performing posts and content. Looking at what has performed the best also gives you some great insight into what your audience wants. You can create more content that fits into this same vein of content your customers want. Understanding more about your customers and what they want will ultimately benefit you and your sales.
A hybrid approach is more powerful than singularly using an organic or paid approach. You will have more confidence in your social media return on investment, as your authentic message is getting in front of more of your target audience.
A hybrid approach using both paid and organic strategies is a more holistic way of looking at your marketing strategy. It is more complete in looking at company goals, and ways of achieving these goals. When you integrate organic and paid marketing strategies you get the greatest impact and the result is boosted outreach, which leads to more customers and sales.
The Creative Agency is a full-service boutique marketing agency. We know how to integrate organic outreach and paid advertisements to help your business or brand get seen by more of your target audience. Book a discovery call with us today and we can talk about your strategy and how we can maximize your outcome.
