Over the past few years, the social media space has become extremely crowded by brands across all industries. This has made organic growth more difficult but social media remains an indispensable part of an overall marketing strategy. Why? 75% of consumers go to social media before making a purchase decision. So, what’s the solution? Combining organic and paid social media efforts is the most effective strategy for growing a brand on social media. 

Let’s explore the separate benefits of organic and paid social media, as well as why they work together best and ways to go about implementation. 

Benefits of Paid Social Media 

• Quickly reaches a large audience, including potential customers
• Allows you to target your ideal audience based on demographics and interests
• Gives you the flexibility to promote offers and other real-time content
• Another way to generate leads and increase sales 

Benefits of Organic Social Media 

• Helps you generate brand awareness and establish industry expertise through your content
• Allows you to listen to, engage with and create a meaningful relationship with your audience
• Demonstrates transparency and builds trust among current and future customers

Why should these strategies be merged? 

Whether your goal with social media is to reach a greater audience, generate more followers and page likes, increase web traffic or drive leads for your business, combining organic and paid efforts deliver the best results. How? Organic social media drives brand awareness and credibility for your brand. Paid advertising can help increase the reach of your content, and target those who could be potential customers. Paid can also retarget those who click to your website after visiting your social profile. Since these users have already had exposure to your brand and you’ve built up trust through your content, they’ll be more likely to convert when the ad hits them, ultimately increasing sales.

Successful Strategies 

1. Leverage paid social to retarget inbound traffic. 

Build content around keywords with low competition to drive traffic to your blog, then use CTAs to send these visitors to key pages on your site. You can then retarget the visitors who spend the most time on these pages with paid social ads. This way, you’re only using spend on those who are more likely to convert. 

2. Utilize organic elements to influence ads.

It’s always essential to have a cohesive look across all marketing materials. In terms of social media, you can apply the elements that generate the best engagement among organic content to paid posts as well. This could be with topics, copy images, videos, etc. 

3. Use paid content to inform organic SEO. 

Assuming you’re already using SEO to strengthen your paid strategy, you can also use the data to build and re-optimize organic content around the most successful keywords. This is a cost-effective way to ensure that your organic content is filled with terms you already know will generate results. 

4. Combine organic and paid KPIs. 

You should always be analyzing KPIs. When it comes to social media, we want to look at reach, views, engagement and growth. Looking at organic and paid KIPs together gives you a deeper insight into the effectiveness of your campaigns, as well as overall brand health. 

Final Thoughts

In 2021, social media has become an essential part of an overall marketing strategy for brands in all industries. It gives audiences a place to feel like they’re a part of a community, engage with their favorite brands, allows you to build relationships with customers and ultimately increase sales. It is no longer a question of organic vs. paid social media efforts. For the strategy to be most effective, both are needed. 

At Onimod Global, we’re experts in all areas of social media marketing. We help develop social synergy for your brand, which is about having visibility in the social spaces your consumer is on. Having your brand in the correct positioning is essential; mobile and social media have now established themselves as indispensable parts of the mix. Digital Marketing across multiple social platforms allows us to create visibility for your company in the places your customers are searching, interacting and engaging on social media properties.

If you need assistance in any area of digital marketing, contact us today. 

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