There’s a lot of talks these days about the opportunity of promoting your online business. It’s clear that people spend a lot more time online and therefore it’s a good idea to engage in online marketing and show up on their radars.
However, since most financial advisers say that at the moment it’s best to be very careful with personal finances, it’s more unlikely that potential customers will be very inclined to make that many purchases online. And if you are an entrepreneur, you are probably also in a spot where you think twice about spending on advertising.
The solution is simpler than you might think: go about marketing your business the organic way.
Understanding organic marketing
Organic marketing, also known as inbound marketing, is the one that occurs naturally as you build your business and your brand. Organic marketing is basically publicity that costs very little or nothing at all.
It’s free if you have the ability to create all the necessary content yourself (social media posts, blog articles, podcasts, infographics) or you may have to find partners or freelancers to help you with these.
Read more: Why you should consider outsourcing parts of your course creation
Ideally, when you create organic content, you aim to find your customers where they are – on the pages of social media that are of interest to them or in the searches they make online.
Organic marketing channels
There are several options when it comes to organic marketing. The most popular are social media platforms, search engine marketing (SEM), creating a personal blog, a landing page, and a business page.
Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok are some of the venues that one thinks of right away as they are the most popular with the younger audiences – these are, of course, more susceptible to online marketing.
However, it’s very important to take SEM into consideration as not everybody in your target audience is on social media and this is a great tool to improve rankings on search engines through the production of blog content and other audio, visual, or written content.
Read more: Promoting your online course through online ads: What are your options?
Why you should consider organic marketing
There are a lot of advantages of organic digital marketing, some which I have listed below:
- It’s free and feels natural. Your target audience is reached right where it is at and it doesn’t imply costs for your business. Whether you show up in their searches or on social media recommended by peers, organic marketing ensures you have a very non-invasive presence.
- It helps drive traffic and build awareness. When you aim for more people to come to your website, a good organic marketing strategy will help generate leads and drive up traffic – those at the top of your funnel will naturally become aware of your business – even if they don’t make a purchase right away, at least they will know about you.
- It builds trust and authority for your brand. It’s very important that your customers trust your brand so that when the need for one of your products arises they will feel comfortable purchasing from you. Organic marketing is a great way to build trust and authority by creating and sharing quality content with your audience.
- It builds a permanent audience. As your created (and curated) content keeps adding up you’ll see that audiences keep coming back to your points of presence and bringing new potential customers as they share and comment on your work. The key is to keep the content relevant to your audience and to post regularly.
Drawbacks of organic marketing
While organic marketing obviously has multiple positive aspects, there are also several issues you should be aware of:
- It can be time-consuming. Content creation is a laborious activity. Since you want whatever you put on your page or your blog to be qualitative and relevant to your audience, you have to first research what your public is interested in then come up with the appropriate content for their needs.
- It is slow-paced. Using organic marketing to build sales is natural and non-invasive but it also happens over a long period of time. If your goal is to have immediate financial results, this is not the path for you as there is no fast return on investment.
- It is difficult to track. In most cases, one particular piece of organic marketing does not result in direct sales – as I have mentioned before it takes time to build an audience and an even longer time to perfect your funnel. Therefore, you won’t be able to pinpoint which part of your organic strategy convinced a customer to make a purchase.
- SEO tactics are ever-changing. What works today may not work tomorrow, which means that you’ll need to constantly tweak, update or even altogether change your strategy. Staying on top of SEO developments is an ongoing task but if done properly the results will surely appear.
Closing thoughts
It’s obvious that a successful marketing strategy should incorporate the right amount of both worlds – organic and paid. In a time when costs are a real issue and potential customers may be more guarded with their credit card, the free, organic version of promoting your business is the best option – you can build brand awareness, trust, and a loyal audience. All these will help you sell more in the long run.
