Mastering Organic Marketing: The Ultimate Guide for Small Businesses
For small businesses, organic marketing is the way to go. Discover how you can leverage this strategy for your brand with this guide to organic marketing!
All brands share the goal of basking in the fortune that is organic marketing. This happens when brands drive traffic to their platforms naturally, as opposed to using paid advertising tactics. As much as paid marketing approaches have proven well worth their weight, organic marketing is simply necessary for brands seeking longevity in the digital space. After all, today’s consumers are looking for value compounded by deep relationships with the brands that are able to deliver on it.
Organic marketing focuses on the creation and publication of valuable and informative content to be distributed on digital platforms. Actively prioritizing this empowers brands to further their reach, strengthen their customer relationships, generate quality leads, and boost brand recognition. The right organic marketing strategy will help brands strengthen their digital presence for years to come.
Deciding to put your brand in the digital space is critical to your success. By strengthening your organic marketing strategy, you can elevate the way your brand produces content and resonates with your target audiences. With that, here’s how small businesses can leverage organic marketing to meet their brand goals.
Table of Contents
Why Is Organic Marketing Important?
There are no two ways about it: content is king in the digital space. That’s why it’s no surprise to learn that content marketing—both in demand and its fruitfulness—has risen exponentially and will only continue to do so. In fact, brands that invest in content marketing are enjoying 7.8x more growth in unique page traffic than those that don’t. This traffic opens the door for more personal connection, lead generation, higher click-through rates, and overall better sales.
The biggest benefits of organic marketing for brands are:
Boosts Brand Engagement
Brands seek to build deep relationships with their customers because it inadvertently drives them to spend more now, come back tomorrow, and act as free brand ambassadors in the meantime. Organic marketing can help drive engagement through meaningful interaction via select social media platforms. This can be achieved by asking questions, replying to comments, providing space for feedback, and publishing valuable content on your platforms.
By boosting your brand’s engagement, you can build your authority online and rank higher on search engines. This can help drive even more organic traffic toward your site, allowing you to reach audiences who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer.
Cost-Efficient and Cost-Effective
Small businesses tend to have a limited amount of resources, so they need to allocate them wisely. Paid marketing tactics, while fast acting, are expensive and might not even be what your business needs. At best, you enjoy short-lived exposure and at worst, you’ve wasted valuable resources. Organic marketing, on the other hand, is a less costly, more sustainable, long-term strategy.
When it comes to organic marketing, time will be your biggest investment. As many of the best relationships are built over time, this kind of marketing can help you build an authentic community online. Additionally, you will be able to reach your brand goals without spending too much money on advertising tactics.
Creates Stability in the Digital Space
The digital space is ever-evolving, and it is saturated with content from brands across all industries. While paid digital marketing tactics can work quickly, they don’t always gain traction—much less stick. For small businesses, longevity is an important goal to keep in mind because it’s what permits them to grow. Organic marketing tactics help brands build a solid foundation in the digital sphere. Brands that can drive organic traffic are likely to sustain it for a long time.
Organic marketing helps create permanence. Search engines see organic efforts as valuable, and they are more likely to show sites that utilize organic marketing as relevant to searchers. You can post updates on your social media platforms and create blog posts to boost your presence on search engines.
Develops Brand Authority
Customers are more likely to purchase from brands they trust. Standing out in the digital space and focusing on your organic marketing strategy invites you to develop your brand’s authority. Trust, however, takes time to build and requires a sustainable, consistent, long-term strategy.
By building your brand authority, you provide your customers with the knowledge that you know what you are doing and talking about. This makes them more likely to trust you and ultimately choose you over your competitors.
What Makes Organic Marketing Organic?
It’s important to know what organic marketing is as well as what it isn’t. What it is is driving traffic toward your website and digital platforms without using paid advertising tactics. Paid advertising, true to its name, requires you to pay a fee to push your content throughout the digital space.
However, the key difference between these two marketing strategies lies in how they draw in audiences. Organic marketing focuses on the creation, production, and publication of valuable and informative content. Paid advertising is flashier and often drives traffic toward sites using more aggressive selling tactics.
As such, organic marketing hinges on the creation of content that consumers are genuinely interested in. Paid advertising often only works because of the efforts done by paid search mechanisms, which is less sustainable and less effective in the long run. Brands desiring long-term growth are more likely to benefit from organic marketing tactics because it’s a strategy that can compound itself for years to come.
Elements of Organic Marketing
As with all things digital marketing-related, there is no one-size-fits-all for organic marketing. However, there are a few elements and key strategies that every marketer must consider including in their organic marketing strategy. They are content optimization, keyword targeting, capitalizing on the competition, boosting reach, and building links naturally.
Content Optimization
The search engine is an incredibly powerful tool for supporting your organic marketing strategy. Content optimization works hand in hand with keyword targeting to get your page to rank higher on the search engines. By optimizing your content, you are essentially developing quality content that audiences are more likely to find valuable and interesting.
Keyword Targeting
Keyword targeting works hand in hand with content optimization. Effective content utilizes keywords that are more likely to be searched for on the Internet. For example, if you are a marketing agency specializing in organic marketing, your target audience is likely to search for “organic marketing strategy”. Strategically placing this keyword throughout your content is a good way to get it to rank higher on the search engines.
Capitalizing on the Competition
You can’t win a game of chess by playing checkers. So, what are your competitors doing? How are they navigating the digital front? Which areas of the online shopping experience are they excelling in that your brand hasn’t nailed just yet? Are their customers experiencing pain points that you can solve? All of these questions serve as ways to capitalize on the competition. Being able to provide a more holistic and efficient digital experience is key to strengthening your organic marketing strategy, as well as building a more solid relationship with your target customers.
Find Where Your Market Is
Don’t wait for your target audience to magically find you, go to them! Your target market is likely already active on social media platforms, some more than others. By designing your marketing strategy to leverage the platforms your ideal customers are already loving, you have a much better chance of engaging and resonating with them.
Building Links Naturally
You can easily get your links out on the internet by submitting guest blogs, posting on your social media platforms, and starting discussions on forums. However, you also need to have quality inbound links.
So, create great articles and guides for people to derive value from. Once audiences recognize your authority, they will be more likely to share your business and recommend you to others. Allow others to get in touch with you as well by adding your contact information so they can ask questions and give input.
6 Brands Doing Organic Marketing Right
Loads of brands are recognizing the importance of and adopting an organic marketing strategy to stand out in the digital space. Here are six stellar examples of organic marketing done right that.
JetBlue
Organic marketing shies away from too much self-promotion and instead just lets your products and services do the talking. JetBlue does this excellently by using their Twitter account to engage with their customers. Doing so gives them a human touch and allows them to provide excellent, real-time customer service. Responding promptly, answering queries, and actively posting may seem too obvious, but they’ve worked wonders for JetBlue’s digital reputation, customer base, and bottom line.
American Express
Consumers want valuable content from the brands they trust. American Express realized this and launched an open forum website where guest posters can publish content that engages the audience. Here, they can share thoughts and opinions, as well as start discussions centered around American Express. This helps American Express rank higher on search engines and ultimately drive more organic traffic.
Shopify
Shopify has found a great way to provide its audiences with more value through podcasts. Podcasts have risen to fame because they can spark discussions and prompt people to think more deeply about particular topics. Shopify’s podcast interviews eCommerce and business experts to gather their thoughts, tips, and opinions on the art of business. Not only do they build customer loyalty by providing the masses with priorly gatekept information, but they also get to enjoy a 4.9/5 Spotify rating as a result.
Away
Instead of focusing on showcasing its variety of luggage, Away started a blog that shares travel stories and guides. This allows them to provide value to their target audiences (who are likely looking to travel) quietly planting their products in the process. This organic marketing strategy allows Away to build an authentic community bound by adventure rather than physical products.
Dollar Shave Club
Dollar Shave Club is a razor brand that capitalizes on its voice to strengthen its organic marketing strategy. The brand posted a launch video, which was well-received thanks to its casual, entertaining approach. Dollar Shave Club took it a step further by patterning the rest of its content around this brand voice, which customers found endearing and relatable enough to stick around for.
Delta
Delta prides itself on quality service and uses its social media platforms to cater to customer queries and concerns. Instead of prioritizing flight deals, Delta shares how their customers’ safety and comfort are their main priorities. This helps foster their customers’ trust in them, encouraging them to continue flying Delta.
These brands showcase how effective organic marketing can be at cementing a brand’s identity and presence in the digital space. Try to find ways to incorporate these tactics into your own marketing strategy to resonate with your target audiences that much deeper.
Organic Marketing for Small Businesses
Organic marketing can keep small businesses afloat in tough times and set them up to scale when the seas finally do part. That’s why they need to focus their organic marketing efforts on providing their audiences with as much value as they possibly can.
Don’t be afraid to think out of the box when planning your content marketing strategy, either. That’s actually what will help you be seen and remembered! Videos and blogs, in particular, have quickly become dominant forms of online content. Short-form video platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels are becoming an integral part of many marketers’ strategies because of their ability to reach a vast audience in no time.
Organic Marketing Strategy Tips for Success
Establish a Goal
What are you doing all of this for? In other words, what’s your end game? Regardless of the specifics, there are four main goals every content marketing strategy should aim to achieve. They are to generate interest and desire for your brand, boost brand awareness, educate potential customers about what you have to offer, and retain customers. While it’s wise to focus on one goal at a time, their successes all hinge on you being able to adjust as you go. No one’s got a crystal ball, after all.
Zero in on Your Audience
You need to know your audience inside and out for your organic marketing efforts to work. That means conducting deep research on them to learn their likes, dislikes, and pain points. By knowing what makes your audience tick, you can develop content that will deeply resonate with them and make them more likely to engage. Remember that the focus of organic marketing is to create value for your audiences. That way, they’ll keep coming back for more, and when the time comes, choose you over your competitors. The better you know your target customer, the more valuable content you can curate for them, and the more successful your brand stands to become.
Furthermore, it is highly recommended to create a buyer persona. A buyer persona is your ideal customer, which is informed by your market research findings and existing customer data. You can use your buyer persona to determine the best type of content to develop, which will positively impact the way your real customers receive your content.
Select Your Platforms
Part of meeting your audiences where they are lies in selecting the platforms they’re most active on and establishing your presence in that space. Different people frequent different platforms—the same is true for generations and niches. For instance, older people tend to prefer Facebook and YouTube while younger people tend to prefer TikTok and Instagram. As such, brands looking to serve Gen Z might want to prioritize pumping out TikTok videos while those catering to say, middle-aged mothers, might fare better pioneering a Facebook trend.
As mentioned, video content has been incredibly popular for content marketers. Consumers are more likely to consume video over any other type of media, making it an effective way to impart your brand message. As such, you should consider incorporating video into your content marketing strategy and focus on creating engaging and entertaining video content for your audiences.
Some of the most popular mediums for content marketing are:
- TikTok
- YouTube
- External websites
- Podcast
Even discussion forums like Quora and Reddit can be great places to spark a conversation and engage with target audiences. Of course, the effectiveness of your platform still relies on how active your target audiences are on them.
How to Get Started With Organic Marketing
Organic marketing is a science, and you can start using it to strengthen your brand’s presence online immediately. Here are five strategies you can use to kickstart your organic marketing strategy today.
Add a Blog to Your Website
If you want to create value for your audience, consider starting a blog. You can use the blog to share industry-related thoughts and opinions, as well as provide users with a space to get their questions answered. It’s a low-cost means of producing content that sets the stage for long-term content creation and builds loyalty in the process.
Leverage Social Media
Believe it or not, social media can be a small business’s best friend. Most social media platforms have marketing tools for businesses that allow you to track content performance and gauge your audiences. You can also use your social media platforms to launch contests, start giveaways, and communicate with your audiences more closely.
Create a Long-Term Content Creation Strategy
Organic marketing works best in the long run. A long-term content creation strategy has many steps, with the end goal being to establish your brand online. By focusing on the long run, you can build a sturdier foundation for your digital community and establish longevity. You can also create content pillars that will provide you with endless content opportunities for years to come.
Incorporate Video Content
Video is a great way to reach audiences across all industries. By focusing on video, you can provide your audiences with information and ideas in an entertaining and digestible manner. Today’s consumers are also more likely to watch video content than ever before—so leverage it to share your messaging!
Strengthen Your SEO Efforts
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is what gets your brand to rank higher on search engines. Ranking higher means you can drive more traffic toward your site. This is also likely to be quality traffic as searchers already have an interest in what you have to offer. Not to mention, how often do you scan the second page of Google? Yeah, us neither. Help your customers find you by earning yourself a space in the top few search result spots!
Partner with WriteForMe to Boost Your Company Presence with Organic Marketing
Organic marketing can help your small business grow and enjoy longevity in the digital world—while cultivating meaningful relationships with your customers in the process. All of that stands to cement your brand as an industry authority and further pad your pockets for years to come. That being said, mastering the art of organic marketing is a lot easier said than done. So, don’t go it alone!
Partnering with WriteForMe means your audience will enjoy high-quality, consistent, SEO-optimized content that offers value while drawing engagement.
Are you ready to level up your marketing game? Reach out to WriteForMe today.
We’ll even create a fully customized, 100% free content marketing playbook for your unique brand. That’s right, free. What are you waiting for?
Arezou Zarafshan, the Founder and CEO of Call Emmy shares her experience working with WriteForMe and how working with a team of professional content experts has helped Call Emmy get consistent with a rock-solid content strategy.
Arezou appreciates the highly collaborative nature of building their content strategy and being held accountable. WriteForMe’s professionalism and efficiency are unsurpassed.
We LOVE partnering with clients like Call Emmy! Huge thanks to Arezou!