“WTF is an organic marketing strategy”

As a professional service provider, it is safe to assume that your talents lie in your specific skill set and not necessarily in marketing. 

However, as a business owner or operator marketing your services comes with the territory. 

As such, it’s highly likely that you have encountered at least some confusion about marketing your business. So, let’s discover what Organic Marketing is and get you on the right track.

It is quite common to view marketing as one big entity but of course it is more complex than this. 

A big step in understanding marketing strategy is to note that every business has access to two types of marketing: paid and organic. Failing to pay attention to either one of these will have an ill effect on any business.

In order to help you bridge the gap between where you are now and effective social media marketing let’s discuss each of these and explore some ideas on what a solid Organic Marketing Strategy can do for a professional service business.

Organic marketing Is the process of attracting the attention of potential clients via content creation and building a reputation or “Brand Awareness” before they are even ready to buy. 

And guess what organic marketing is one the most effective and inexpensive types of marketing available.

It is also, by far, the most underemployed marketing technique by many small businesses. 

What is great about it you ask?

….well it is basically free and you control the narrative. 

The act of getting your customers to come to you naturally over time, rather than artificially through paid links.

We all know how building relationships works and this is not something that can be developed overnight. Right?

Yes, you see organic marketing is best described as the long-game!

It should be used for authentic interactions with customers providing education and resources validating your skillset, expertise and to build trust. 

It’s also your opportunity to build awareness of your brand, who you are, what it stands for, its voice, core values, mission and the results or solutions you provide.  

This can involve blogs, videos, SEO, and social media. 

Namely, these are elements you put in place to share content you create. 

Give value and show prospects what you can do for them on a minor level and they will invest in you when the time comes. 

Actually, they will search you out when they need you because you gave them free value before they even needed your services and that has built trust with your brand.   

As professional service providers act as intermediaries for their clients, it’s imperative that clients trust and believe they are in the right hands in order to rationalize investing in the service provider. 

Your clients understand they need specific help. 

The question is who they choose to hire for it? 

Who would you choose, the brand you know or the brand you just found and know nothing about?

Exactly, we all would choose the brand we know as long as we feel comfortable & confident with them.

As the saying goes “trust is not given it is earned” 

Organic marketing through social media is how you earn their trust by demonstrating over time that you can be trusted. As they get to know you and your brand better they will decide for themselves.

When it is done right organic marketing can generate a steady stream of loyal traffic. 

Where they look to first when the moment they need that service arises. 

…Organic marketing builds trust

• Positions your business as an authority in your service
• Demonstrates your knowledge
• Gives away value
• Directly addresses your clients specific pain points
• Give them the big picture
• The opportunity to see themselves in your content

If you can demonstrate that you accurately understand your ideal clients’ problems or they can see themselves in your content, then they will know you can help. It is your opportunity to offer information, insight into your business and your expertise to help your prospects make decisions. 

Can’t I just pay for it? 

It sounds easier right? 

A brand pays for ads to directly target a specific desired audience as opposed to waiting for them to find your blog post or other content organically as they search themselves. 

Well it is actually much more complicated than it sounds.

• There is a huge margin for error and wasted ad spend
• It requires skilled digital marketers to implement
• There is no such thing as a build it, publish it, and profit from it scenario
• Not a one time fits all solution
• Ad campaigns require multiple versions, testing, tweaking & demographic honing

So you can see it is both costly and time consuming. 

Paid marketing is the process of gaining the attention of potential clients via paying to target, reach, engage and convert that specific demographic quickly and directly but you must have both the correct demographic details and an accurate highly converting piece of media to employ.  

You can push your content into their line of sight yes!

But, they will only pick up on it if it is the right information, right time, & place. 

This often takes much trial and error…

However, when it is successful it can be used to motivate specific actions such as a purchase, a click-through, a download, joining a group and or providing an email address for access. 

As you may have gathered this is more sales oriented than organic marketing but it does serve a purpose. 

There is new research from the Content Marketing Institute that found that 91% of top-performing content marketers use paid distribution channels to promote content.

What this means is that it is also a useful tool to get your organic marketing content in front of the right audience to ask them for an action other than a sale like an opt-in for a freebie which is easier to convert than asking them to spend money. 

This should definitely be added to your marketing strategy. 

You know what else is great about paid marketing?

It provides you with a metric that can be measured. 

• You can measure success versus failure.
• You can measure marketing cost per acquired customer or sale.

All sorts of things can be measured. Again it depends on how you set up the data collecting.  

Given the investment required for paid marketing it is really important to maintain solid tracking of the results, the effectiveness of the media and maintain constant amendments to improve results. 

Ultimately Paid Marketing, as it says in the name, costs money. Driving up the marketing budget and ad-spend budget. It can become a bit of a rabbit hole of endless trial and error but it can also be incredibly profitable.

Then you have to consider “how deep are your pockets”?

Organic contrasts paid marketing in that once you understand it and have a workflow set-up correctly you can largely maintain it yourself inexpensively. 

Whereas paid marketing should be managed by experts and is time consuming.

All this talk about strategy…so what is it?

Ultimately, both are key elements of a solid inbound marketing strategy or rather how your business will acquire clients online in virtual business without a retail storefront.

Not every business will have the need or budget to engage in paid marketing campaigns.

However, EVERY business should embrace the power of organic marketing!!!

Lastly, it may seem easier to throw money at marketing in hopes to move things along faster…but a word of caution ⚠️

A marketing strategy built only on paid marketing initiatives comes across as shallow.

It lacks the information and authentic connection your prospects need to help them choose to invest in you.

Without the emotional connection to your brand they will not invest.

Or worse, if they do invest it will open you up to more negative encounters because they will be a less than ideal client or fit for your business. 

A well-built marketing strategy is based on delivering a positive brand experience.

When building your marketing strategy it is important to consider:

• What your buyers’ journey is?
• How you are attracting & driving clientele to your website or landing pages to buy?
• How you are asking for the sale?
• Your specific business goals you want to achieve with Social Media.
• Developing marketing objectives to match each of your specific goals.
• Identifying which marketing tactic, or combination of the two, best serves your objective. 

Easy right? 

Not exactly ?

As I said in the beginning of this article marketing may not be your specific skill set and it’s important to recognize when you get to the point where you find yourself wasting lots of time when you could be billing hours in your business.

Please make sure you are using an organic marketing strategy as part of your digital marketing plan. It’s affordable and once it’s set up properly it’s usually quite easy to manage. 

If you would like some help building your organic marketing strategy or would like to have a workflow built for you that you can maintain yourself please book a call to learn how we can help take your marketing to the next level.