When it comes to marketing your business, there are a lot of decisions that come to mind such as trying paid advertising or when should you consider hiring outside help. During the month of September, we are going to analyze some of the tougher decisions every marketer has to make as they promote their business. Each week in our Versus Series, we will look at the pros and cons relating to each of these decisions so you are better prepared to handle these decisions in your own business.

Without further ado; let’s check out the pros and cons of organic vs. paid marketing.

Organic Marketing 

Organic marketing is the art of naturally attracting customers to your business over time. Most organic marketing is associated with SEO, content creation, online directories, and social media. Just like a garden, organic marketing is built with care, attention, and from the ground up. When done correctly it’ll definitely help your marketing efforts. Now, let’s dive in and see the pros and cons of organic marketing.

Pros:

The Costs Can Be Low – Once you’re strapped with organic marketing knowledge, you can put it to work at little to no cost. For example, by creating content and optimizing it to your audience is one way you can use organic marketing. It doesn’t cost much to write up something useful to your audience, right? Not to mention the home-grown content establishes you as an expert. Long story short, organic marketing is cost-effective when paid marketing is out of your budget.  

Great Long-term Results – When done correctly organic marketing will increase visibility for your business, create customers, and help build your brand. Oftentimes your marketing efforts become automatic. You get recommended, people find you, and you naturally start to attract customers. You build relationships, and that will provide benefits for your business time and time again. 

Cons:

Patience is Required – Setting yourself up for organic marketing success is a long-term journey. These results aren’t instant. It takes patience to see the fruits of your labor. This means researching, creating, testing, and trying different things to increase your organic results. Don’t expect instant results with just one post. You have to be ready to wait to see the benefits with a consistent strategy. 

A Lot Of Time Needed – Like most things, time and attention are required. You must be ready to post on social media, research keywords, and create relevant and engaging content. Paid marketing is not a one-and-done but a long-term strategy. 

Technical Expertise – To set yourself up for organic success, you’ll need skills. To get skills, you’ll need to study and practice. If marketing isn’t the only thing you have to worry about it could cut into your other tasks. Learning these skills is important. If you aren’t willing to learn, it’s best to outsource your marketing tasks. 

Paid Marketing

Paid marketing is probably what you’re most familiar with when it comes to marketing. Basically, you pay a platform in exchange for advertising spots. These spots are then placed in front of an audience. Pretty simple concept, right? Well, there’s perks and drawbacks to paid marketing methods. Let’s take a look to see if paid marketing is best for your business. 

Pros:

Faster Results – Instant delivery means instant results. When done right paid marketing gets you faster results. No matter your goals, paid marketing will help you. This means you’ll be able to quickly evaluate your marketing efforts. As a result, you can better spend your marketing budget. 

Feedback – Paid marketing gives you faster helpful feedback on your marketing campaign. Many digital campaigns come with dashboards. These dashboards help you gather useful information to better understand your audience. Thus, creating more impactful messaging for your audience. 

Cons: 

Money, Money, Money – As the name implies, paid marketing means spending money. You’ll have to pay to get your marketing noticed. This means making sure you have money to spend in your budget. If you want to get noticed you’ll have to pay for it. This isn’t always good when you don’t have a budget or if money is tight.

Costs are Climbing – You’ll always want to prepare for the unknown. However,  paid marketing isn’t getting any cheaper. That means planning out your already tight budget could get harder. Remember, it’s always better for you to plan for more than less. 

The Verdict

As you know, Beacon Marketing encourages multiple marketing channels. A nice mix of both organic and paid marketing will most likely be best for your business. This means your budget, time, and marketing needs will be playing a huge role in what you choose. It’s important to keep these things in mind: 

In today’s digital world, your organic marketing efforts, to an extent, will be necessary. In the information age, your website needs to be visible on search engines. You’ll need a social media page, or two. Organic methods are necessary to provide visibility to your business. 

Even paid marketing will be necessary at some point. This will speed up your results. Especially if you have certain benchmarks you want your business to meet. You don’t want to be waiting around for your long-term strategy to work. It’s necessary to get that bang for your buck. 

How do you make those decisions?

Well, do research for your business. Resources are limited. It’s important to divide your time and money efficiently. Doing research upfront will help with these decisions! 

Research on your audience, channels, and understanding them will provide endless benefits for your marketing strategy. Once you know these things, the choice between organic and paid will be more apparent to you.