As a business owner, it can be challenging to stay up to date with every piece of digital marketing jargon that you need to know. Since we’re seeing more and more businesses move online, it’s important that you’re aware of the different kinds of digital marketing that you should be doing in order to grow your business. This includes organic marketing.
If the first thing that pops into your head when you hear organic is fresh fruit & veggies from the farm and had no idea that it also relates to digital marketing – then you’ve come to the right place.
Sparrow Digital is all about organic content marketing!
What is organic marketing?
In a nutshell, organic marketing refers to when someone naturally finds your business – be it through a friend’s recommendation or genuine engagement with a brand on social media or elsewhere that leaves you wanting more.
Organic marketing is a kind of strategy that aims to increase traffic to your business naturally, over a longer period of time. It’s important to note that organic advertising doesn’t include paid ads or sponsored posts, but rather is based on ads where money is spent indirectly. Some great examples of organic marketing include blog posts, social media content, case studies, unpaid posts and updates. It also includes user-generated content, for example, a customer showing off your product on their personal profile.
While we emphasised the indirect cost, organic marketing isn’t exactly free. You’ll still need to invest in your organic campaign, but you won’t be looking for pay-per-click or PPC ads with this in mind. It would be smart to budget for some marketing tools to help with organic marketing. This could include software for inbound and outbound emailing and email lists, and content schedulers for social media for example!
Getting started with some organic marketing ideas
Cool, so now you know a bit more about what organic marketing is, how do you get started with it for your business?
You’ll need to build credibility amongst your audience for your website, which can be difficult to accomplish. We’ve got a few top tips on how to get started with organic advertising right away!
Create permanent sources of traffic.
Think of things like guest posts, social media posts and the content hosted on your website. You’ll want these elements to work harmoniously in order to maintain a constant influx of web traffic.
Ideally, you’ve done some great keyword research and you’ve got a great organic ranking with Google. Social media posts from influencers in your industry can help your content be seen by a wider audience. Remember that a single post won’t achieve this, so the key to getting this right is consistency in your content schedule.
Build up your website.
Don’t start neglecting your business in favour of posting external links. You’ll want to get as much organic linking to your website as possible, which is essentially an unsolicited backlink from another website. This typically does not include compensation.
Organic linking can help you get more views from a larger audience. Your new audience chooses your website because it offers high-quality, valuable information. If your blog posts are filled with endless links, they may become disappointed or frustrated with the quality of your content. You can mix things up with different types of content, such as blog posts, videos, infographics, ebooks and more!
Spend time on search engine optimization (SEO).
SEO can help your website perform better with Google search results, which is extremely desirable. This is one of the most important organic marketing ideas to start utilising, because it can yield considerable organic traffic.
SEO can be confusing, but what you should essentially focus on are using relevant keywords in your content, using image and title tags, and using as much other metadata as possible. You’ll also want to make sure your website is easily accessible for mobile users, as this is extremely important for your audience on the go. Google uses mobile functionality in its ranking, so it can help your SEO too.
Don’t forget to include social media.
If your website is teeming with awesome videos, post them to your social media profiles. Any social media post that is not promoted, boosted or sponsored is considered an organic campaign. These can be used to generate more traffic for your website, so you should seriously think about posting your top assets.
When posting on social media, don’t forget to consider the platform, post type, inbound and outbound links and content schedule. After all, different platforms appeal to different audiences, as do different post types and the timing of your posts. You should even tweak the links and visuals involved to suit your desired audience!
If you’re still confused, we loved this article about Organic Marketing from Entrepreneur for Instagram-specific organic advertising tips!
When should you use organic marketing?
One thing to note is that organic advertising takes time to build up, especially if your business is quite new. Your first-ever blog post may not attract a large audience right off the bat, but adding to your content over time can allow you to build up your organic reach. This includes social media posts, too.
What’s important to do is to set goals for your website’s organic marketing. Do you want to focus on increasing traffic? Then focus on SEO and maybe host an influencer or guest on your blog.
Do you want to increase your sales? Make sure you’ve added a call to action in your content, which directs your audience to do something immediately. These could include contacting your business, downloading one of your resources or signing up for your newsletter.
All in all, an organic campaign should be used by anyone to grow their business. We also think it should be used in conjunction with another strategy for greater impact. Remember to think of your intention with organic advertising, as this can help you create content or an organic campaign that is tailored to your specific circumstances.
Do you need help getting started with your own organic marketing campaign? Our SEO writing services can seriously boost your organic marketing strategy. Get in touch and let’s chat about how we can help you get started with posting SEO-friendly content for your business!