Growth in marketing, whether paid or organic, can feel lethargic and exhausting at times. Especially in the beginning! It’s natural to want to find the quickest way to the top for the business you’ve put so much time into. But which direction should you turn? Should you pour time and money into ads, such as on Google and Meta, and risk not getting the return you are looking for? Or should you “take the long route” with organic growth, using on and off-site SEO strategies and relying on word of mouth, referrals, etc.? This may or may not be what you want to hear… but what if we told you that with the right game plan, you could leave your competitors in the dust with both paid and unpaid strategies at the same time? We’ve seen it work many times before, and we want to help you figure it out.
Defining Paid Growth vs Organic Visibility
Before we get into any hefty details on these two strategies, let’s first break down what each one of them means. As we briefly mentioned, paid growth is just paid ads. Often referred to as PPC (pay per click), this growth strategy involves setting up ad campaigns with images or videos, a brief summary of who you are and what you’re selling, and a few other assets. This process takes some time to test, run, and then tweak at the right moments for your ad to be ‘successful’ (whatever that means for you).
Organic growth can understandably be just as complicating, as it also takes a lot of time and a lot of creative elements. However, organic growth often refers to SEO (Search Engine Optimization, aka, visibility on search engines that aren’t ads). But what does this actually mean? We get this question a lot. SEO refers to blogs, keywords, backlinks, meta data (just what Google reads to see what each page on your website is about), listing data (such as your Google Business Profile), and more. A healthy social media presence can influence your organic visibility as well.
The Catch With Paid Ads
Paid ads pretty much always work, but they are not easy to setup and you can’t just alter them on the fly. In 2021, U.S. advertisers spent over $190 billion on digital ads. But how many of those worked efficiently and paid off?
Unless you’re a multi-trillion dollar company, like Amazon, then you are going to need some assistance with your ads. First, think of how you search for things online, and think about the types of ads you see. Which ones are the most effective? Which ones make your eyes roll? You want to make a visually appealing ad, without spending too much time on it, so that people won’t see it and go, “ugh, another ad.”
But it’s way more than just visuals. You need to know which keywords to focus on to catch the right audience out of Google’s 5+ billion searches per day. You also need to be able to play your way through the ‘ad auction’ so you won’t be throwing your ad budget away. A team like ours can handle this for you and provide you with a way to track performance efficiency, customer data, and more.
Being Patient With SEO
At the risk of sounding repetitive, we want to emphasize again that organic growth takes time. Weeks or months worth of content can’t be written, optimized, and released in a day! Even if it could, you would only see a slight change in results for a period of time. Algorithms change daily. In other words, phrases that are being searched now likely won’t be searched at the same volume next week or next month.
We understand that this makes plenty of businesses want to turn to paid ads, or even just give up altogether. I mean, as of 2023, Instagram was bringing in around $43 billion in ad revenue. Meta overall brought in about $113 billion in 2022. If that many people are spending that much money on ads, how can you even compete?!
You have to use paid growth and organic visibility combined, the right way.
Not “Versus,” but rather, “And”
The question is not “which is better, paid growth vs organic growth.” Rather, the question is, “how can I use paid growth strategies along with organic growth strategies to scale my business in the most beneficial way.” And InnoVationV has the answer!
While we monitor and optimize your ads, we simultaneously work in the background to develop a system that will help scale long-term. We can help you set up your Google Business Profile (GBP) so that you can run local service ads (LSAs). On the other hand, we can create unique landing pages for you to use with your ads. These landing pages will direct leads to the right place so that when they submit their information, everything remains organized within your customer relationship management (CRM) system. Utilizing two strategies that bounce off of each other is the secret your business needs to grow in 2026. Don’t listen to agencies that just want to take your money and drag you through the mud for months at a time. It’s time you see and feel the ROI that you deserve!