Organic vs Paid Social Media

Nowadays, social media is a part of most people’s daily life. This has had a significant impact on the world of digital marketing. However, simply creating compelling content for your audience might not be enough. Organic and paid social media are two very effective ways to reach your target audience. So let’s look at the differences and how they can be used together to achieve optimum results. 

Organic Social Media Marketing

When social media content receives many likes, shares, and comments, it can result in brands unexpectedly gaining more followers, who then go on to buy their products. Creating content on social media that yields positive results like this is called organic social media content creation.

Organic literally means being natural and not manipulated. Therefore, organic content on social media refers to the content you create yourself as a brand. When you post your content on different social media platforms, people become interested and want to engage with it, so they share your content with others.

The key to creating successful organic content is understanding your target audience and their wants. You should create engaging, memorable content that aligns with current trends to keep your brand front-of-mind for customers. 

Although it allows you to create a variety of content at no cost, it doesn’t mean that organic social media has no flaws. Organic marketing may reach your target audience more slowly because, nowadays, the algorithms of social media platforms limit visibility, making it difficult for the target audience to access your content. For this reason, paid social media should be considered to maintain visibility among your target audience.

Paid Social Media Marketing

Paid social media involves paying for advertising space to deliver content directly to the target audience according to the objectives and budget you set. It enables your content or campaigns to reach the target audience better and expand the visibility wider than organic social media.

Before purchasing paid social media advertising space, marketers need to learn and understand their target group in detail regarding their behaviour, needs, and the times they are frequently active on social media. The next step is to design an advertisement that suits the target group’s interests. Nowadays, paid social media is available on several platforms, including Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, TikTok Ads, and via marketing influencers.

Pros and Cons of Organic and Paid Social Media

As mentioned earlier, organic social media refers to creating content on social media channels that organically reaches the target audience. On the other hand, paid social media involves purchasing advertising space. Besides the cost, the two strategies have different pros and cons. 

Organic social media helps increase a brand’s visibility without incurring costs. It also helps maintain customer relationships and enables unlimited communication between the brand and its customers. However, the downside of organic marketing is that it requires time to create and test which content resonates with the target audience. 

The big advantage of paid social media is that it allows a brand to accurately reach its target audience. Brands can specify which audience they want their ads to appear to, the target group’s interests, and even the specific time the ads will be displayed. This means you no longer need to wait and hope your target audience comes across your content independently or rely on word-of-mouth referrals.

Let Your Brand Thrive with a Hybrid Strategy

Organic content creation promotes awareness, while a paid approach helps your content reach the target audience quickly. Therefore, if marketers integrate both strategies, it can double the campaign’s effectiveness. But how do you combine the two strategies to yield the best results? We recommended the following techniques:

Purchase Advertising Only for Essential Content

When considering using organic and paid strategies together, it is important to carefully consider which content should be assigned to each strategy to make the most of your budget. We recommend that content followers can already see, such as product recommendation content, remains organic. On Facebook, product recommendations can be pinned or included in story highlights on Instagram. If you’re still uncertain about what type of content to put money behind, take a look at which organic content has the best engagement. This ensures that your content will resonate with your target audience. Once the brand has enough experience and data collected from the target audience, it can use it to plan and create content specifically for paid strategies later on.

Use A/B Testing

If you’re considering using paid social media but need to decide whether to create new content or stick with existing organic content, try A/B testing to determine which type of messaging resonates best with your target audience. Test different ad copy variations, visuals, and formats to allocate the budget to the content that yields the most effective results.

Use Organic Audience Data to Buy Ads

The more the target audience engages with your organic posts, the more accurate the data is that you gather about them. By analysing data from those who have previously viewed or engaged with your organic content or even made purchases, you can plan and create compelling ads that will appeal to them. This approach will help you reach your target audience more accurately.

Use Marketing Tools to Analyse Results

Using tools to analyse your marketing results on social media helps you know which campaign or strategy works best. This technique lets marketers know whether to use an organic or paid approach and which works more effectively.

Know The Strengths of Each Platform

Each social media platform has its own strengths and different user bases for marketers to take advantage of. By understanding each platform’s strengths, you can plan and implement strategies that combine both organic and paid approaches with maximum efficiency.

• Facebook is the most widely recognised platform, with a reach of up to 1.2 billion users. Most people use this platform for news updates and communicating with their communities. Given its strong brand presence, companies should consider combining organic and paid strategies on Facebook. One approach could be to create organic content initially to enhance brand visibility and then use a paid strategy to drive sales by serving targeted ads.
• Instagram is a popular platform for showcasing people’s lifestyles and brands. Marketers may utilise an organic strategy to present their brand identity, then use paid techniques such as story ads or sponsored posts to increase reach and engagement.
• Twitter is where users stay up-to-date on trends and news. Therefore, this platform is best for creating organic content communicating information about the brand’s products or services, and conversing with customers to make them feel closer to the brand. Brands can also purchase ads to generate higher customer engagement, whether that’s retweets or likes.
• TikTok is known for its short video format and user-friendly feed. It allows for the delivery of organic content and knowledge-sharing. Additionally, TikTok can be used to create advertising campaigns that stimulate awareness, consideration and ultimately drive conversions by transforming interested users into actual buyers.

Summary

Combining the advantages of both organic and paid social media can greatly enhance your brand’s marketing results. However, if you’re unsure how to get started or which social media platforms to use for optimal results, you can contact Primal Digital Agency. We have over 150 experts ready to assist you. Fill out the details for your free marketing plan.