Organic Marketing Vs Paid Advertising: Who Wins The Traffic Game On Social?

Organic Social Marketing or Paid Social Advertising?

Which is the more effective traffic generation and customer acquisition channel between the two? Where should a social media marketer invest their resources (time, efforts and even dollars)?

In the social ecosystem, there has been a roaring debate going on for a long time over the use of Paid Advertising vs. Organic Marketing, and which one provides better value for a brand’s social marketing strategies.

So, let’s dive in to compare the two contenders and find which one wins the ‘Game of Thrones’:

Contender #1: Organic Social Marketing

To play and win the game, you must know the rules of the game. So, let’s understand how social algorithms work to get maximum organic social traffic to your website.

Learning about the rules: Understanding the math behind social algorithms

Easy to say, difficult to do!

Understanding the working mechanism of social algorithms is not a piece of cake. The algorithm for each social platform works differently. For instance, on Facebook, a core factor that affects the rankings of a post is: relevancy score, whereas on YouTube the total watch time of the video per session decides whether a video becomes a suggested video or not.

To add to the woes of social marketers, engineers update these social algorithms from time-to-time; making it next to impossible for social marketers to keep track of each and every social platforms algorithms on a regular basis.

However, after thoroughly analyzing a few social algorithms, social media experts have found that just like Google’s algorithm, social algorithms are also basically designed to give users the best experience possible. In short, the goal behind any social algorithm is pretty simple – ‘To promote the best content to the most relevant people.’

So, the key to amplify your website traffic with organic social marketing is to post only quality content (which falls in any of these 3 categories – informative, inspiring or entertaining) that is relevant to your target audience.

Strengths of Contender #1: When organic social marketing boosts traffic

Now that we know how to crack the social algorithms, let’s see instances where it is beneficial to go for organic social marketing to generate traffic for your business website:

• For long-term gain: Getting noticed by a social audience will take time. Also, turning these social followers into website visitors won’t happen overnight. Be consistent and you will enjoy sustained traffic.
• Your target market is social followers: When you are not looking for a specific target audience segment – i.e. people belonging to a specific location or falling into a particular age bracket – to market your products/services, it is ideal to go for organic social marketing.
• Tight marketing budget: It is difficult for a company with a limited marketing budget to consistently invest in paid social ads. Such companies must therefore opt for organic social marketing to turn a loyal social follower base into website visitors.

Contender #2: Paid Social Advertising

A large number of social media marketers believe that paid social ads delivers results. But simply investing dollars in paid social ads will do you no good. Your ad should be click-worthy!

The results of paid social ads depend on how enticing the ads are you have crafted. Ensure they have the right call-to-action buttons with a link to your website or landing page.

Strengths of Contender #2: When paid social ads boost traffic

Here is the list of instances where a social media marketer must opt for paid social ads over organic social marketing:

• To create brand awareness: An aspiring entrepreneur will not have a huge follower base on social channels for their start-up. So, to grab eyeballs in a short period of time the start-up must take the road of paid social ads.
• For a limited time offer: A social media user needs to know about your special or limited time offer before it expires. Posting on your social pages will do you no good if a follower stumbles upon it after it has expired. So, if you are marketing products or services with an expiration date, you absolutely must go for paid social ads.
• To drive instant traffic to your website – Unlike organic social marketing, paid social ads instantly deliver results. The moment your ad goes live on social channels, you will get to see a large number of visitors on your web pages. Paid social ads are therefore ideal when you are planning to make a new announcement or if you are launching a new product/service for your brand.
• Targeting a specific audience segment: With optimized paid social ads, you can target a specific group of people based on their demographic or location details. These narrow bands of people are highly likely to click on your ad and visit your website as they are prospects who might be looking for a product/service that you are offering.

Factors that determine the winner

Here is a list of factors which will help you to decide which social strategy you must opt for under a given circumstance:

	Organic Social Marketing	Paid Social Ads
Target Audience	If only targeting your followers	If targeting a specific set of people (Based on their gender, age, hobbies or other such factors)
Cost	Free (The only cost is of having a social marketing team)	Requires an investment of dollars
Website Traffic	Sustained traffic in the long-run	A large number of visitors as soon as the ad goes live
Time Period	Shows long-term benefit	Only while you keep investing in ads
Business Model	Ideal for B2C	Ideal for B2B as well as B2C companies

Apart from the above mentioned factors, analyzing your competitors’ social strategy, the industry your business falls into, and individual social platforms will also help you in deciding the right social strategy. For instance, recently the Facebook algorithm reduced the exposure of organic content, so for exponential results on Facebook a brand must go for paid ads.

Deciding the winner: Monitor and analyze the stats

There is no one size fits all formula when it comes to social media marketing. For instance, a fast food chain restaurant could find a large number of people ordering food on their website with a simple organic Facebook post, and on the other hand a small mobile app development company may see dramatic results with a promoted tweet.

What may work for one, may not work for another.

From analyzing my own personal Tweets, I came to the conclusion that people are more likely to like or share content rather than click on it:

Therefore to earn large number of visitors from social platforms, you need to regularly post contagious content that will compel social users to visit your website.

Find the kind of posts your followers and target audience finds interesting by analyzing all social channels, campaigns and posts, and figure out what works best for your brand in a given scenario.

Over to you: It’s your time to start playing!

It is clear from this article that there is no single winner when it comes to selecting between paid social ads and organic social marketing.

Paid ads can help get the ball rolling and gain the initial needed exposure for your start-up, but to continue gaining traffic you definitely need to have concrete plans for organic social marketing. It is therefore advisable for you to use both the strategies in tandem to have a significant growth in web traffic.

As you layout your social marketing plan for 2017, don’t forget to keep the above points in mind and select the right social strategy under a given situation to boost web traffic.

Which form of social media marketing is generating traffic for your company? Share with us your thoughts and experience of using social platforms by commenting below.

Guest Author: Kim Smith is a Content Consultant at GoodFirms, a full-fledged research firm that offers a transparent and unique platform for software development companies to stand out from competition and magnify their industry-wide credibility and visibility. Online you can find her on twitter: @contactkim11

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