Digital marketing has devised various models and means of scaling businesses and organizations. All marketing strategies fall under either paid or organic advertising.

You must understand the differences between paid marketing strategy and organic marketing strategy to know the one that would be best suited for your short- and long-term business goals. This article offers a brief overview of the differences between the two. Before diving in, let’s quickly define paid and organic advertising.

What Is Paid Advertising?

Paid advertising or inorganic marketing refers to all paid digital marketing methods your business utilizes to reach, engage and convince your target audience to buy your products or services. Paid advertising often shows up as Pay-Per-Click ads. Social media ads on Facebook or Instagram, where a business runs sponsored ads and pay for every click. PPC is most commonly used for ad-hosting sites.

Man explaining dataThe primary goal of paid marketing is to drive sales. If your business is relatively new or has been slow in conversions, paid ads are a great tool to change the narrative and see more results.

There are two forms of paid ads: search and display ads. You can use search ads to target specific keywords when people in your target audience search for your product/service online.

Display ads, on the other hand, are displayed anywhere on websites or spots online without a search entry targeted keyword. You must, however, ensure that your ads target the right audience by developing a buyer persona.

What Is Organic Advertising?

As long as your business has an online presence, you’re most likely doing some form of organic advertising. It refers to the strategies, tools and methods your business uses to drive traffic inwardly. Organic advertising is also known as organic marketing and is done with content marketing (which involves creating evergreen content around relevant topic clusters). Other types of organic marketing examples include social media, affiliate marketing/influencer marketing and email marketing.

The main objective of organic marketing ideas is to build brand awareness online and loyalty and keep your business in mind. This way, your business wins the competition when they get to the decision stage in its buying journey. Therefore, the benefits of organic marketing strategy are yielded in the long-term game.

Organic Marketing vs Paid Marketing

When it comes to marketing your business, it can be difficult to decide between organic and paid marketing methods. Understand the differences between the two approaches and which one might suit your needs the best. 

Goals

Paid ads are majorly sales-oriented, while organic advertising is for brand growth through awareness and trust.

Time Invested

Marketers coming up with marketing planPaid ads are the fastest way to drive conversions in your business. Therefore, it is a short-term investment. Usually, organic marketing, such as search engine optimization (SEO), takes time to produce significant results.

Specificity

While organic marketing targets a broad audience within the confines of your customer persona, it may not specifically target prospects with buyer intent. Paid ads are more specific, targeting an audience with higher buyer intent concerning our products/services.

Methods

Paid ad methods include sponsored ads, search ads, display ads, social media ads, etc. Organic marketing uses content marketing strategies such as social media marketing and email marketing.

Ready to Scale Your Business?

Now that you know the differences between paid and organic marketing, keep in mind that your business needs both to grow significantly. Contact us at Blue Ridge Media Company If you need more advice on advertising. We can offer your business the help it needs to scale.