Organic marketing is often given less credit than it deserves because of its time-consuming nature. But people fail to see its ingenuity in building an authentic and loyal fan base for a brand. As opposed to paid marketing, organic marketing relies on using non-financially boosted posts to attract your audience (organic traffic). You advertise but you do not spend money boosting their reach, such that whoever stumbles on your content or page sees it for what it’s worth, and not because it was forcefully presented to them on the first page of the SERP.
Organic marketing can comprise several forms of marketing
Organic marketing is not actually a single marketing strategy. Any marketing strategy that does not spend money on paid ads is regarded as organic. Therefore, content marketing, local SEO marketing, social media marketing, etc. are all regarded as organic marketing so long funds are not being spent directly on the publications or contents.
Importance of organic marketing
Paid marketing can never work without organic marketing and it is a fact. This is because users will bounce off a page after clicking on a paid ad and then finding the landing page lacking of quality content. Those quality contents are generated as a part of the organic marketing strategy. When customers can find quality contents published by your brand, they develop more interest and confidence in what you sell. It is important to know beforehand that organic marketing takes time to yield results but once it begins to do so, it does so sustainably. This is because your customers are authentically engaged to your brand.
How to create an effect organic marketing strategy
To create an effective organic marketing campaign, there are steps to take.
1. Know where you stand
Before embarking on your campaign, it is paramount that you establish a clear picture of your brand, what it sells, and your competition. You have to, with scrutiny, look into your company and what it produces, ascertain its strength and weaknesses and what makes it stand out. All these things will help your campaign as they are the defining qualities of your brand. You also have to carry out market research to determine what your competition is doing, what propels their success, and how this can apply to you.
2. Have a clear understanding of your potential customers
Your target audience are your potential customers. Understanding them goes a long way to aid the effectiveness of your organic marketing strategy. You have to clearly determine what your target audience need, and this is what you must offer to them. Also, you have to customize your contents to suit the demography of your audience. For instance, an investment company in New Jersey may tailor organic marketing for NJ residents.
3. Have specific goals
Next, you have to establish the ultimate motive of your organic marketing campaign. Is your goal to create sales or just to increase site traffic? An important factor here is that your goals must be measurable and definite so you can determine if you are having success or not.
4. Establish your methods
This is the next big step in your organic marketing campaign. After defining your goals, you have to establish what methods or routes to actualize those goals. You have to endeavor to publish content on the right platforms where your target audience likely seeks for such topics. Your medium could be through newsletters, social media, podcasts, blogs, videos, etc. In all these, your message has to be relevant to your target audience, and as well clearly goal-driven. For example, a tech company producing a new useful gadget and desiring more sales may publish educational content on that particular gadget and how it makes life better. This serves to make the company affiliated to its product.
5. Working within a budget
While organic marketing does not involve paid ads, money must still be spent regardless. But then, your monetary investment must be such that is profitable in the long run. You should ask questions like how much more revenue are you expecting as a product of your organic marketing campaign? Does the revenue cover your monetary and time investments with a considerable profit margin?
6. Assessment
There must be periodic assessment of your process to know if you are making any headway or not. It is important to know that as you go on, the market as well as your audience can change and what suits them two years ago may no longer work. Then you may need to make changes in your plan and adapt. If your goals, when measured, are not adequately met after the given period, you may want to reevaluate your marketing plan.
7. Be patient
Nothing good comes easy and this applies to organic marketing. You should be very patient as organic marketing takes time. You may be tempted to put more effort into paid marketing but you must remember that organic marketing is far more effective in generating long-term traffic and brand building.