Integrating Paid and Organic Social Media Strategies
Our previous blog discussed organic and paid social media content’s main goals and purposes, as well as their main differences. We’ll now dive into how the two approaches can complement, enhance and inform one another.
In most integrated social media strategies, organic content serves and delights your current customers while paid ads bring in new ones. By integrating these two methods, businesses can reach their business goals more effectively. The right mix of paid and organic content can enhance and maximize your marketing efforts in a variety of ways, from audience research to engagement data.
Align Your Messaging
While paid and organic social media have differences, their end goal is the same: business growth. Think about social media from the user’s perspective: Prospects may encounter both paid and organic messaging during their customer journey. Thus, your message should be consistent, and reflect your brand’s identity, voice, tone and aesthetics at all times. Your audience should be able to recognize your brand regardless of whether you pay for an ad or post organically. The more blended your content is the more credible it will feel and look.
A conflict of messages could undermine your own social media marketing efforts. Time, opportunity, and marketing dollars will be wasted if paid and organic social media efforts are not aligned. Making sure your organic and paid social media efforts are aligned is the first step to maximizing your online success.
When your marketing teams are aware of each other’s efforts, it’s much easier to tell a consistent story across paid and organic channels. Create a unified marketing effort by bringing information out of silos.
Get Your Top Organic Content Boosted
It is a good idea to repurpose well-performing organic content for paid amplification. Marketers can avoid making assumptions by using organic outreach results to determine whether a piece of content is good enough to promote.
Social media channels like Facebook have proven that popular organic posts are cheaper to promote because they generate a higher engagement rate. As a result, social media amplification is easier and more cost-effective. In addition, boosting popular organic content helps establish social proof as users are drawn to content that has a lot of reactions (likes), comments and/or shares. As a result of this positive engagement, users will be more inclined to explore your brand further. Boosted organic content tends to perform particularly well as it blends more seamlessly with the entire social media experience.
Target People with Similar Attributes To Your Organic Followers
Your organically engaged audience and people who follow your page are obviously interested in your content. Analyzing your organic audience can help you understand who your target market is (gender, demographic, interests, behavior, etc.) as well as discover what content resonates most with them. As your social presence grows organically, you gain better insights into your ideal customer. What are the problems they are facing in their lives? What are you doing to help them? Using these insights will help you focus your advertising efforts to reach the right audience with the right message.
Additionally, you can leverage your existing customer base with paid advertising by creating lookalike/similar audiences. With lookalike audiences, you can target a totally new audience based on their similarity to your existing ones, in this case, based on their previous interaction with your social media page and content. Lookalike audiences based on your followers provide you with new potential customers who are likely to be interested in your products/services.
Make Your Ads As Interesting As Your Organic Content
Ads don’t have to be overly promotional just because they’re paid. Ads should be interesting in their own right, just like organic content. Add promotional content that looks natural and “native” to the platform. The majority of people dislike being forced to view aggressively promotional ads on social media, especially if they are boring or uninteresting. People care about a promotion only as long as it’s valuable to them. Take the time to understand your target audience on a deeper level so you can make your ads feel more real and personable. Beware, however, of becoming too personal. Your audience shouldn’t feel like you are prying into their private lives.
Conclusion
Increased social media amplification, a full marketing funnel, and an increase in ROI can be obtained by integrating organic and paid social media strategies. Your prospects should experience both paid and organic social media as smooth steps in your social media marketing funnel, even though they are fundamentally different tools. Make sure you don’t choose one over the other. Success requires both of them.
Interested in learning more about how social media advertising can help drive revenue for your business?
