Ep9. Organic Traffic vs Paid Traffic - Pros & Cons

Anna takes you through what paid & organic marketing means, what the purpose of each is & importantly, how to know which one is best to use for your business.

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Welcome to Episode 9 of The Elevatory Podcast. I'm your host, Anna Jonak, the founder of The Elevatory. So today, I would like to take you through paid versus organic marketing, because these two words are so often thrown around by coaches and consultants, but do you actually get what they mean? And like, what the purpose of each of them is? And most importantly, how do you know which one is best to use for your business and why? So in this micro episode, yep, I'm going to try and keep it really short. I'm going to walk you through each type, I'm going to talk about the pros and cons of each. And then I'd like to wrap up with some thoughts about how best to use them both to grow your business.

What is organic marketing?

So let's start with organic marketing, otherwise known as the channels and platforms that you can market on for free. Yep, that's obviously the big pro plus point here that everything you do on these channels is free. It doesn't cost you anything for having reach & making an impact.

So types of organic content, or marketing channels:

• • • We've got SEO, so organic search, unpaid socials, rules, posts, stories, that sort of thing
    • Facebook groups, great platform
    • You can think about blogging, working using other people's platforms. So guest posts,
    • Podcasting. So you could be featuring on someone's podcast, and you could podcast yourself as well.
    • Thinking about competitions and giveaways, user generated content, social proof,
    • and one of the most powerful is Email Marketing.

Okay, so lots of different channels there. I'm sure most of you are using these in some form or another. Now, the pros of organic content. The big one is that it's a fantastic way to increase reach and brand awareness at no cost. But beyond that, I think we really need to start thinking about the fact that organic marketing channels genuinely are used more to build longer lasting real relationships, and they're about connections, and they're about trust. And they're about building out a relationship for the long haul, versus paid marketing, which genuinely tends to be a bit more in your face, make a click, do something or transactional. And generally, what you'll find is even if you use paid marketing, your organic channels will then be used to nurture that person after the purchase.

Okay, so the real big pro to organic marketing is the relationship building that happens. And the fact that it really is an opportunity for you to touch base with your prospect through to customer at multiple touch points in the customer journey from consideration all the way through to purchasing and hopefully repeat purchase. So that's the biggest pro, it can drive sales in its own right:

• • • you know, a well placed post following on from a viral post that might have happened when it's more of a promotional post can go exceptionally well.
    • Thinking about driving teasers to a launch, you could let people know in Facebook groups that you've got a special offer on.
    • Podcasts - mentioning your brand and your business can drive sales, people hooking up with you or like clicking on your website and booking in for that call.
    • And as I said, email marketing is one of the most powerful, and especially for ecommerce businesses, up to 20 to 30% of your sales, the view is should be coming from email marketing. So I mean, that in its own is huge, isn't it?

And I think another point that I want to get across for content and organic marketing is that content is evergreen. So it lasts for a lifetime, you post something and it can go viral, and people can keep commenting on it, it doesn't have a shelf life, it's not working for a seven day window, and then being turned off, it just sits there and it stays there. And people can find it again and again. You know, think about that with blog posts that you can write from an SEO perspective and so on. I know for myself as well, Facebook groups, when I first started my coaching business, I use them a lot. And it was through referrals and people searching my name historically, that I got a lot of business. So organic marketing really is a very important marketing channel, as you can see, for many reasons.

Now there are some cons to this platform as well. Organic is often slower to reach your business goals as in, yes, you can certainly make sales I mean, particularly with email marketing, but you will not make sales as fast as you will, with pay channels - once you've got those working properly for you. Obviously, building an email list organically takes time. It's one thing to leverage your email list and to make 20 or 30% of your sales coming from it. But what happens when you have no list? You've got to build a list and building one organically takes time. Same thing as I'm sure you appreciate, we're building followers and increasing engagement and all of those things. You can spend an extraordinary amount of time on socials just trying to get a few extra followers, which is pretty exhausting. And talking of exhausting, you can actually exhaust your warm audience. So there's only so much you're going to want to be in front of people. And there might be a point when you are driving an offer or an opportunity and it's just a bit too much to people having seen it again and again and again. Okay, so pros and cons there.

What is paid marketing?

Now let's dive into Paid. Okay, so types of paid content marketing.

• • • So we've got pay per click. So Google paid search, you've got social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest
    • Influencer marketing.
    • And then the bigger channels, which are quite often overlooked now like billboards and billboard ads, radio ads and TV.

Now, a lifetime ago, some of these channels were exceptionally expensive. I've worked in all three, billboards, radio, and TV, and a small business would have no chance of paying for a spot in any of these things. But actually, the world has changed enormously. And as a small business, we've actually definitely seen some service businesses really leveraging radio ads or TV ads to their benefit, and on a much smaller scale, but having a very big impact for their business.(Example below: Former Elevatory client Home Of Visas ran a TV campaign in WA.)

Okay, so the pros, paid methods generally enable you to reach, engage and convert your audiences on mass. And far more quickly, it's a great channel for you to build brand awareness fast to attract new followers fast. Once you've got ads running, there's certain types of ads you can run, which I'll come on to, that can help you just constantly get in front of new people. So you've got new people liking, following, joining your Facebook group and the like. And you can use them to promote a deal or content and event for a really short period of time really quite heavily to drive interest, and to a cold audience, so to a much bigger audience than the audience that you've already got, as a warm audience that you've grown organically. And also you can use paid to help you generate leads. So list building and driving those conversions, literally getting people to click and purchase. So it is no wonder that people are very keen to learn and master paid ads for their business, because it can be it can be a business changer when you bring them in.

So the cons though are:

• • • That is it can be expensive, you know, you're suddenly paying $1,000 a month on a platform, but the view is that that platform returns for you over time.
    • They certainly are more complicated to run, you definitely need to get skilled up to learn how to run your own ads properly. It really is not as simple as boosting a post, as Facebook and other channels might let you believe, they'll just give you a button and say, 'Hey make this post work harder for you.' But there's no strategy behind it. And basically, when you get into the likes of ads manager, you'll see there's lots of layers to it that you really want to learn and master. And when you do it will save you a lot of a lot of money in the long run, put it that way.
    • Paid ads, or paid marketing genuinely is more disruptive, it's really more in your face, you know, there's a scroll, and there's an ad. And so as such, it doesn't come with the same sort of authenticity or relationship building. It's different if you're retargeting though as they are people that already know you and that trust is already there. But you know, you are basically interrupting someone's feed at some point and suddenly, there you are. So you have to work hard at the authenticity. If you've got an influencer marketer, hopefully they do a good job for you on that front.
    • Testing is also a big one when it comes to paid because it's one thing to be testing all these different things organically, because it doesn't cost you anything if it doesn't work. But with paid stuff and you're testing and it feels like you're throwing money down the drain. And you're not. It might feel like it but if you're spending you will be learning, and through those lessons there is an opportunity for you to actually really optimise your results. But at the time, I have to tell you, you're cringing, you're nail biting, as you spend money to find the right platforms for you. We've certainly had lots of clients who have used influencers that haven't worked or ad campaigns have bombed. But through trial and error, over time and being brave, you find what works for you, and then you're able to scale it. And that's another pro that I didn't mention, but the scale that you can go from, you know, from spending $30 a day to several $100 a day can really really make a huge difference to your business.

What are the cons I want to share with you? One thing, which I think is really important is that if you don't have a following on social media, then actually your paid ads are less likely to work as well for you. Same thing, if you don't have any social proof on your website, or you don't have any, like ratings, you know, people are looking for social proof and that trust and authenticity. And if you don't have a following, and you've just started running paid ads, and all of these other things, and that trust is going to be a lot harder to come by. Likewise, if you've got really poor organic engagement, don't have much of a following, Facebook knows that and it impacts on your paid ads. So it's likely that you'll actually have to pay more to get your ads shown. Because the whole point of Facebook is to have this amazing user experience where everybody you know is getting served stuff that they enjoy and they're already engaging with.

"If you've got really poor organic engagement, don't have much of a following, Facebook knows that and it impacts on your paid ads. So it's likely that you'll actually have to pay more to get your ads shown. Because the whole point of Facebook is to have this amazing user experience where everybody you know is getting served stuff that they enjoy and they're already engaging with."- Anna

Something else to consider with paid as well is that your website user experience needs to be top notch. So I'm not necessarily talking about SEO to the enth degree. Obviously the backend SEO is important for Google crawling your site. But what I'm talking about is if you're going to be paying for traffic, you really want to make sure things like your website customer journey path, that the customer is taken all the way through to cart really easily and it's a really good user experience.

Alongside that, you're going to want to make sure as well, things like your email marketing platforms are set up, and you've got automations in place, and you're able to capture leads. So you're maximising your opportunities. Rather than having people come in, you're not getting any leads, you're not getting them into your list, and they're not converting because then it really is money down the drain.

Which type of marketing for your business?

Okay, hopefully, I've shared a few few things for you to think about across both of these platforms. So which one should you be using for your business? Well look, I'm just gonna say it - if you're starting out, you definitely want to get your ducks in a row with organic first. It's a foundational must have for your business. Think of it this way. People, when they're checking you out, they're gonna go and check out your social media, they're gonna go and check out your website. And if you have no social media presence, and your website looks dodgy as, then you're going to be in trouble. Alright, so we definitely want to make sure that we've got those things in place. And as I said, basic email flows so that when someone does come to your website, you can capture a lead. And I would encourage you to be working on things like social proof. So making sure that you've got those testimonials and reviews so that when you can get customers to your pages, they're far more likely to engage with you and trust you. All right. Socially, you want to be posting regularly, you want to be engaging, following adding value to groups. Yes, it all takes time. But that's the downside to it. But essentially, it helps give your brand traction, it helps you sort of set up brand awareness and start having a conversation and starting to build relationships. And again, come back to thinking about the long term relationship that you create through your socials. Once you've got these things down pat, once you know that you've got a little bit of a solid following, you're happy with your assets, and you know that your infrastructure is in place, and it's good, you've got the hard yards done, then it's time for you to add paid traffic into the mix so that you can reach infinitely more people and you can definitely grow so much faster. So in essence, what you're doing is you're serving and delighting your existing customers, you're building that brand awareness, trust engagement over time, you're dropping emails, you're showing up in their feed, probably on a podcast, you're showing up in someone's Facebook group, maybe you're doing a collab, all of these things, and all of a sudden, that trust is growing.

And then we're using paid ads alongside to attract new eyes, get more people into your email list to get people to spend fast. But then using them together, that's where the magic happens. Okay, so some examples are, looking at your best organic content, and then putting money behind it.  So you can do that to drive traffic and awareness and build an even bigger, warm audience of people that are getting to know you. The beauty of organic content, if you've tested and trialled you can see what works best. And then you can use that data to put money behind paid things to help you build a warm audience. And to start that conversation again on mass. All right, make sure you use your insights for that. Low cost retargeting ads is a great way for you to stay connected to your organic audience that already trust you. And as I said, if you're using engagement ads and traffic ads to build a warm audience, that that pool of people is going to grow. So they're seeing lots of touch points with you. And again, you're going to help drive that trust factor, okay. Also, using paid ads to list build can help your emails work that much harder for you, we have definitely got clients who have times when they're running campaigns, and then outside of campaign time, they just put their bucks in to growing an email list. Because they know that once that person is in email, they can sell to them again and again. And it is not going to cost them anything. The initial cost is just in getting the lead. And sometimes it actually is more cost efficient for you to be list building than it is to be driving a direct conversion. You know, these are some things to think about.

How else can you be using them together? Well, you can target your ads to people who are similar to your current organic audience. So basically looking at your social media following and your email list you can create look-a-like audiences. So you can look at the people that know love and trust you and try and find more of them as you create these audience groups basically, that you can then use to target on your ad campaigns. And also, you can use what you know of your current audience to help your marketing messaging work harder for you. If you've got an audience, survey them, poll them, interact with them, engage with them, all of this stuff will help you know them even better. And it means that you can use the more efficient and more powerful language in your copy in your offers and your hooks to attract more of the right people because you're showing them you get them. If you can do a survey and find out someone's pain points, and then they're seeing these things over and over again in your feed, they're gonna be like 'this person really gets me' or 'this brand is really aligned with who I am and what I'm looking for'.

Okay, so there's my two cents worth. Both platforms are exceptionally important for growing and you really do need to be working on them both. Now, that does not mean that you need to be doing every single thing on the organic list. And every single thing on the paid list. It is about you picking a couple of areas that you decide that you really want to own. And it might be that you do SEO and socials, and they're your main things. Email marketing is huge. Can't take that one off your list. It's got to be part of it, you know, but you pick a couple of channels that you decide to master and you master them well. And then as you master things, they should take less time. And then if you need to, you can add more in.

All right, well, I trust lots of food for thought for you to dive in and start playing with both platforms and again reinforcing for the newbies out there that it really is important to start with organic first, but the both of them absolutely are a 'must have' as your business grows.

Now as I wrap up, if you would like some help implementing both paid and organic marketing into your business, and I am going to say you should look no further than our one on one coaching program where you are working with a whole team of coaches as well as an amazing community to master all of your marketing so you can sustainably scale your business in months, not years. And we're talking about covering off everything from website optimisation to your email marketing, SEO, social media content, sales funnels, paid ads, Facebook, Google, you name it, influencer marketing, offline marketing, marketing plans, metrics and analytics, cash flow, forecasts and budgets because the numbers and analytics need to come in there somewhere okay. And a success mindset is also very important not only from a trusting that you can get the job done but from a media buying mindset as you approach all of this stuff and are ready to test and optimise. So come and check it out at theelevatory.com.  All right, that is me signing off for today. I will catch you in our next episode.

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