Quick wins are thrilling and can boost confidence in your marketing efforts, but there’s truth to the adage “Hardwood grows slowly.” There are no shortcuts in organic marketing — you’ll grow with consistent, strategic effort compounded over time.
In this article, we’ll explore:
- Benefits of organic marketing
- The power of organic marketing
- How organic and inorganic marketing differ
- Building on your organic marketing success
- Organic marketing strategies to cultivate natural growth
Contents
- 1 The power of organic marketing
- 2 How do organic and paid marketing differ?
- 3 5 benefits of organic marketing
- 4 7 organic marketing strategies to cultivate natural growth
- 4.1 Organic strategy one: have a strategy at all
- 4.2 Organic strategy two: create targeted and relevant content
- 4.3 Organic strategy three: don’t focus on making a sale
- 4.4 Organic strategy four: create the right type of content
- 4.5 Organic strategy five: be accessible
- 4.6 Organic strategy six: use local SEO
- 4.7 Organic strategy seven: optimize your web pages
- 4.8 Bonus Organic strategy: Leverage niche communities for engagement
- 5 Building on your organic marketing success
- 6 Wrapping up
The power of organic marketing
Growth explodes with authenticity. Organic marketing allows you to build trust and relationships with prospective customers and turn them into a loyal customer base.
Your customers are tired of “sales speak” and resent constant advertisements.
According to a 2023 survey conducted by Optimove, 66% of consumers said they wanted fewer marketing messages.
Ad fatigue is real, and sales gimmicks that used to work now fall on deaf ears.
Cultivating your growth avoids causing resentment in your consumers and offers solutions to problems your target audience is seeking.
The power you have is to be a friendly, accessible voice they can rely on and come back to again and again.
It means cultivating a person-to-person approach and tone of voice rather than appearing as a cold business entity completely detached from customers and their problems.
The explosive ROI of good customer service has been proven repeatedly. Good customer service starts with quality, educational content at the top of the funnel.
How do organic and paid marketing differ?
Organic marketing is a digital marketing strategy that slowly builds a loyal customer base by educating, entertaining, and connecting with consumers.
Organic marketing often uses content marketing formats and platforms, such as blog posts, social media posts, case studies, white papers, video content, and similar content.
Ultimately, you’re trying to build organic traffic to your site. Ideally, the traffic you capture will move down your sales funnel and convert, thus growing your bottom line.
On the other hand, paid marketing is exactly what it sounds like — a method to reach your target audience quickly by paying for access to them via visibility on ad platforms.
Paid marketing includes social media, guest blogging, and video, as well as banner, display, and sponsored ads.
Also called inorganic marketing, paid marketing allows you to minutely target advertising campaigns to demographics you may never have reached otherwise.
The two have different goals, but organic and inorganic marketing work hand in hand — organic marketing makes people aware, and paid marketing targets ideal customers with advertising campaigns to convert them.
5 benefits of organic marketing
Driving growth organically has many benefits. One we have already touched on is the ability to grow a loyal customer base through authentic connections and a friendly tone of voice.
Customer retention is the difference between a flash-in-the-pan sale and a buyer who returns again and again for more of what they trust.
Beyond building customer retention, organic marketing also has other benefits.
Organic marketing costs less and adds more. Compared to other types of marketing (including paid), content marketing costs 62% less and generates 3x as many leads.
Its potential reach is limitless. Although generating an initial return on investment (ROI) with organic growth takes time and effort, you can use and repurpose content endlessly. For example, a blog post can become several social media posts and a script for a podcast.
You are in control. You decide how much organic content to produce and how to distribute it. Spend according to your budget — run social or email campaigns or stick to organic-only promotion.
It’s low risk. If a piece of content doesn’t perform well, you can pivot without the cost of an expensive marketing campaign. You risk next to nothing by producing more content — experimentation is low-cost, and you can re-adjust as many times as needed.
It builds SEO authority. The more you publish, the more your internal search engine optimization web grows. The more your on-site SEO evolves, the more authority you gain with search engines. The more organic traffic reaches your site, the more qualified leads you capture and the more conversions you create. Everybody wins.
7 organic marketing strategies to cultivate natural growth
You know what organic marketing is and why it’s beneficial — now what? How do you build an organic strategy?
Let’s start with the basics.
Organic strategy one: have a strategy at all
It sounds too basic, but in a 2022 study by the Content Marketing Institute, only 40% of B2B marketers had a documented content strategy. A further 33% had an undocumented plan, and a whopping 27% had no strategy at all.
If you don’t have a well-thought-out, documented content marketing strategy, your organic traffic efforts will fail. You’ll be spread in too many directions, unfocused, frazzled, and unable to show the quality and impact of your work to managers and executives.
So, start off right with an airtight strategy as a solid foundation. Adjust as needed, and learn as you go.
Organic strategy two: create targeted and relevant content
In the survey we mentioned by Optimove, 62% of consumers said the primary thing that got them to open marketing emails was whether it was relevant to them.
A whopping 71% said they wanted marketing emails with personalization beyond just using their name.
Remember that this is the same group of people who felt they were already getting too many marketing messages.
Although they already resented the presence of an email campaign in their inbox, they were still willing to open and read it if the content was relevant to them.
The proof is in the pudding here — be personal, but above all, be relevant.
Organic strategy three: don’t focus on making a sale
Organic marketing efforts aim to make sales, but you won’t close the deal at the top of the funnel.
Organic marketing channels create educational content, build brand authority, and slowly increase consumer web traffic.
To this end, you want to avoid hard sales pitches and “salesy” language in your high-quality content. Persuasive copywriting can (and should) happen, but not now.
Focus on solving problems. Expertly identify their pain points and position your brand as the #1 solution to those pains.
Do this well enough, and your conversion rate will take care of itself.
Organic strategy four: create the right type of content
Blog content is one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to grow your consumer web traffic as a long-term strategy. But it isn’t the only way.
Updated for 2024, research done by the Content Marketing Institute shows a 53% tie between video content and case studies being the most effective organic marketing assets for B2B marketers.
Yet short articles and posts remain the most popular type of content, with 94% of marketers using short-form content in their organic marketing campaigns.
Take these statistics to heart. Make sure you put your organic efforts where they’ll be the most effective, and don’t just create content for creation’s sake.
Organic strategy five: be accessible
As companies strive to cultivate a strong online presence, a critical but often overlooked aspect is the accessibility of their digital assets (e.g., website, content, etc.). The quest for inclusive organic marketing goes beyond creating engaging content. It’s about ensuring accessibility for everyone, regardless of their capabilities.
Enter the website accessibility checker. This tool cultivates natural growth by acting as a gateway to a broader audience. It seamlessly integrates accessibility into your digital strategy, ensuring your assets remain compliant and competitive.
Organic strategy six: use local SEO
Many marketers overlook traffic in their own backyard in favor of swinging for the fences in the broader search for relevant keywords.
Yet how often have you begun an organic search with “restaurants in (your city)?” You can bet your target audience uses those same searches to get results.
If it makes sense for your product and industry, include local SEO content in your organic marketing strategy and see what results you get.
Organic strategy seven: optimize your web pages
Ensure all your web pages work for you, not just blog posts and sales pages.
Your site needs to answer specific questions in a search query to rank well in SERPs.
Take, for example, the password management tool 1Password.
They appear at the top of the rich snippet in Google search results for the keyword “password management for business.”
Screenshot provided by the author
This coveted position is the result of 1Password optimizing its web pages with relevant content that Google recognizes. The algorithm rewards them accordingly.
Ensure that your website answers questions and offers solutions, and watch your SERP ranking rise.
Bonus Organic strategy: Leverage niche communities for engagement
Organic marketing isn’t just about putting content out there and hoping people find it. It’s also about meeting your audience where they already spend their time.
Niche communities provide an opportunity to build trust and authority in a space where users are actively engaged. Whether industry-specific forums, social media groups, or fantasy sports platforms, these communities thrive on authentic discussions rather than traditional advertising.
For instance, platforms that engage fantasy sports fans, like Sleeper, attract users who are deeply involved in team management and strategic decision-making. Promotions such as the promo code from Underdog Fantasy incentivize players to participate, making these spaces highly active.
Participating in these communities by providing valuable insights, responding to questions, or sharing expert knowledge can help brands build credibility without relying on paid ads.
Instead of pushing sales, focus on adding value—share expert opinions, facilitate discussions, and become a trusted voice in the conversation.
Building on your organic marketing success
Once you start seeing signs of success from your organic marketing tactics, capitalize on them. Use analytics to boost your strategies and optimize your content.
Analyze what worked
Remember when we said not having a content strategy would render your consistent efforts powerless? In the same way, if you don’t analyze your content, you’ll see less-than-ideal results.
As the saying goes, “You don’t know what you don’t know.” If you don’t document and analyze your results, you won’t know what works and what doesn’t.
If you haven’t been tracking your results up to this point, start now. Before creating anything else, make sure you’re on track to create valuable content that will generate an emotional connection with potential customers.
Publishing content without knowing why or to whom it matters is a recipe for frustration and wasted resources.
Of course, before understanding what works, you must know the goals of your organic marketing campaigns.
These will tie into your overall business goals.
For example, success might involve increasing traffic by X amount each quarter or growing your email list by Y subscribers.
Know what you’re analyzing and then document, document, document.
(Showing steady growth via analysis reports is also an excellent way to prove to executives that organic marketing is worth the wait and the resources. If you can prove organic growth’s impact on business goals, your company is more likely to invest in organic marketing initiatives.)
Create more content strategically
The phrase “content strategy” sounds big and complicated. But it boils down to something simple — once you’ve found what’s working, repeat.
Are social media platforms bringing you exceptional traffic? Which ones?
Is your YouTube channel taking off? Create more educational content in video format.
Are your case studies tipping the scales for your conversion rates? If so, add more to your content calendar.
It’s easy to get stuck in a rut of publishing without any clear direction and believing that’s enough. It isn’t. You’ve got to be strategic about what you create and why you create it.
A strategy doesn’t have to be complex — but it should be intentional and work towards a (preferably) documented purpose.
Optimize existing content
In addition to creating new content based on what you know works, go back and update your library of existing content to be optimized for success.
Do some competitor analysis, a keyword overview, and structural edits while you’re at it, and launch a whole new series of content by re-purposing what you already have.
This method is ideal for small content teams that may not have the resources to produce a bunch of new content from scratch.
Wrapping up
Organic marketing is a slow process, but it’s worth the time and effort. With the right strategy, your efforts will pay off as your business grows and you reach a wider audience.
Luca Ramassa is Outreach Specialist at LeadsBridge, passionate about Marketing and Technology. His goal is to help companies improve their online presence and communication strategy.