Both paid and organic content come with distinct benefits and drawbacks. While paid content can help a company get a foothold in a market, organic material is ideal for boosting conversions and building brand reputation.
The most effective marketing strategy comes from combining organic and paid methods into a single cohesive unit. But how does a marketing agency find the balance between these different content types? What marks the tipping point between organic and paid content integration?
Ten members of Forbes Agency Council offer some insight into combining these content types to create an effective marketing strategy.
Members explain how to successfully integrate the use of both paid and organic content.
Photos courtesy of the individual members
1. Ensure Consistency Across Content
Being consistent in your paid and organic content is key. Making sure both look and feel the same will create a seamless experience for your audience and diminish the distance between organic and paid. – JC Hite, Hite Digital
2. Align Keywords And Concepts
Align the keywords and concepts you’re using and make sure they tie back to an achievable goal like increased sales or product awareness. Not only will this alignment strengthen your SEO, but it will build credibility behind those messages. It will push the valuable earned media into a brighter spotlight so it’s in a better position to influence your audience. – Christine Wetzler, Pietryla PR
3. Implement Remarketing Strategies
The best way to combine paid and organic content is to create ad-hoc remarketing display ads to show users previously visited organic pages. This will give them a more natural feeling when they click on the display advertising. – Alessandro Bogliari, The Influencer Marketing Factory
4. Choose Paid Strategies Based On Goals
We track performance of paid and organic across all campaigns, carefully measuring how each best accomplishes different KPIs. Depending on client goals, we recommend a specific metrics-informed combination designed for maximum impact. For example, if the main KPI is clicks and budgets are tight, we craft a program based on knowing that cost-per-click is much lower on paid than it is on organic. – Danielle Wiley, Sway Group
5. Set Up Multiple Touch Points
During the buyer’s decision making process to pay for a service or a product, they need gentle reminders that at one point, they were interested in what you had to offer. With today’s distractions, getting the final sale can be pushed aside until later. With retargeting, you can take information about your organic site visitors to create highly focused, retargeting campaigns. – Jason Hall, FiveChannels Marketing
6. Promote Original, Informative Content
I’d never promote curated content unless it’s a highly authoritative source that mentions your brand in a good light. User-generated content doesn’t need to be promoted either, but spread organically across the community. Promote original content that informs and educates your audience on topics related to your product or services. You will also get valuable data from promoting such content. – Fran Biderman-Gross, Advantages
7. Create FAQs And Social Content
A great way of integrating paid and organic content is by creating frequently asked questions and social content. I’ve found that answering user queries is a cost-effective way to integrate paid and organic. Same goes for using organic social content and driving paid traffic as a test. – Alex Valencia, We Do Web Content
8. Use Organic Performance To Drive Paid Amplification
If you have specific organic content that’s doing well, consider doing some paid amplification of that same content to get more eyeballs on it. That’s a much better way to decide where you want to spend your marketing dollars than going straight to paid and hoping the content will be well received. – Jodi Amendola, Amendola Communications
9. Leverage Analytics
Where paid pushes the message onto new screens, organic content in general can add credibility by answering a search inquiry. Both can be analyzed and optimized for better engagement. By optimizing paid and organic posts, ideally, they work together to drive the target audience into the engagement or sales funnel. – Patrick Nycz, NewPoint Marketing
10. Consider Free Testing On Messaging
Consider conducting multivariate testing on messaging, including media types like video, imagery, bylines, etc. with your organic audience first. See what resonates at a high level and then modulate the content with specific messaging tailored to each vertical or audience segment when you launch paid campaigns. – Scott Kellner, GPJ Experience Marketing
