Blog Writing: Organic Marketing 101

Blog Writing: The Only Content Strategy Necessary for Organic Marketing

There are eight main different types of online marketing. These are Search Engine Optimization, Pay-per-Click, Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Marketing Analytics and Affiliate Marketing. Each of these types of online marketing can be divided into two broader categories: organic marketing and paid marketing. 

Paid search delivers fast and measurable traffic, though this footfall may not necessarily lead to conversions, whilst organic search can be slower to develop but can still generate a huge amount of traffic, even if your website ranks outside of the Google top ten results.  Here’s everything you need to know about choosing between organic marketing and paid marketing: 

Differences in Organic Marketing and Paid Marketing

When it comes to choosing between organic marketing and paid marketing, there is no right or wrong: only what is right or wrong for your business. Organic marketing is a marketing strategy that naturally attracts the right audience to your brand or business. Using organic marketing you will attract traffic without using paid advertising, and this is most commonly achieved by giving users something of value that will attract them. Content marketing is the best example of this and takes the form of search engine optimisation (SEO), blogging, and social media marketing. 

At the other end of the digital marketing spectrum, you have paid marketing. This is a method of gaining traffic to your website by using paid advertising techniques. The most common way of engaging in paid marketing is to pay for clicks from platforms like Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Sponsored blog posts and website banner adverts also fall under the paid marketing header. 

The main difference between organic marketing and paid marketing then is that using one method you will pay for the traffic you generate, and in the other you will work to generate it naturally. But this isn’t the only difference between the two. Other differences to consider include: 

• The Cost. Whilst paid marketing can be expensive, as you will pay for each click or lead that is generated, organic search is often considered to be more cost-effective (and if you’re prepared to do the hard work yourself, it can even be free). Once you have created an evergreen piece of optimised content, it can live on your website and keep working hard for you without costing you an extra penny indefinitely. 
• The Timescales. If you’re looking for instant results, then paid search might be the best option for you: paid search will certainly drive traffic to your website fast. However, what it might not do is drive the most engaged or relevant users to your site, and therefore your conversion rate would be lower. By contrast, it takes time for organic marketing to generate results, but when it does the conversion rate tends to be much higher. Growth with organic marketing is slow, consistent and valuable. 

The Main Benefits of Organic Marketing 

Organic marketing can offer your company a huge wealth of benefits. Some of the most significant of these include: 

• No Upfront Costs. If your marketing budget is tight then you may be interested to know that, if you’re prepared to do the work yourself, generating organic search costs nothing. You can either choose to invest time, or pay a reputable provider to invest that time for you; you have the freedom to choose, and are not committed to any financial investment for each click you generate. 
• Enviable ROI. The return on investment (ROI) of organic search is considerably higher than that of paid search. That is because you are offering value, via your content, to consumers that were already looking for the services you provide. Whilst ROI from organic marketing techniques is harder to measure, we do know that you are to attract and engage potential customers using these means. 
• Organic Search is Considered My Credible. 77% of users are confident they can recognise paid search ads: if your user is aware that you are paying to generate leads, and that the content your are promoting is effectively an ad, that can negatively impact your credibility. The value of organic marketing, much like organic recommendations (from a friend rather than a paid influencer, for example) is considered to be much more valuable. Many web browser users are ‘blind’ to the paid section at the top of their search listings and will scroll directly to the organic search results, because of their perceived value. As a result, organic search is excellent for reaching top-of-the-funnel users and building credibility.
• Attract the Right Users. Paid search listings can be quite broad, with many brands adopting a blanket approach and hoping that by saturating the market, they will harvest results. Whilst this might be good for brand awareness, it is terrible for conversions. By contract, organic search attracts relevant users. It doesn’t matter whether you are hoping to make top, middle, or bottom-of-the-funnel users aware of your company, this can be achieved with organic search.
• Organic search marketing is the best approach if you want to take advantage of content marketing. Whilst there are some elements of content marketing involved in paid search (after all, if you want to attract and keep the attention of your potential users, they have to land somewhere of value on your website) content marketing, and SEO through blog writing in particular, are the cornerstones of a good organic marketing strategy. 
• Organic search is a reliable source of up-to-date data. You can look at how much traffic each of your evergreen and optimised blog posts are generating in real time, which can be incredibly valuable to your overall marketing strategy. You can use this data to make improvements to your approach and see instantly whether the changes you make have any effect. You will need an SEO toolkit capable of data analytics (Google Analytics is a great example of this) to best harness the power of this. 
• Organic marketing supports social media strategies. More than half of the world (58%) or 4.62 billion people globally, now uses social media. By using your social media marketing campaigns to support your organic search campaigns, you are more likely to achieve results. In fact, both organic search and paid search realise the power of social media and are working to harness that power to their own advantage. A great example of this from a content writing strategy perspective is that if you create a series of blog posts that will help and inform your user base, you can then repurpose that content for your social media channels, using it to draw in a broader audience to your blogs, and ultimately your website. 

The Right Way to Utilise Blog Posts as a Marketing Strategy 

According to a recent study 70% of users prefer getting to know companies through articles versus ads. The vast majority of web users are incredibly savvy: they know when they are being advertised to or when they have found genuine and valuable content, and they have a much stronger appreciation for this organic content. For this reason, if you’re considering an organic marketing approach then this doesn’t need to be complicated: blog writing is the only content strategy necessary. 

When you utilise organic search through content, and support it with a competitive SEO strategy, there are several ways in which this approach can benefit your company. It will allow you to build your presence across search results, write and publish helpful content that will appeal to your audience, and drive later purchases, store visits, quote requests, and other actions that you have encouraged as a part of your campaign. But as with all marketing techniques, there is a right and a wrong way (or rather an effective and an ineffective way) to utilise blog posts as a marketing strategy.

Here are four essential steps that you should take to ensure that your content marketing strategy (via blog writing) is as robust and successful as possible: 

• Understand Your Starting Position. Before you can assess the impact of any new content marketing strategy, you should understand your current traffic habits and the ways in which existing users are currently accessing your website. But analysing your audience’s current traffic habits on your site you can then compare them to your ideal audience. Where is the majority of your organic traffic currently coming from? What approach are your closest competitors taking? What work bests in your industry – do users discover businesses like yours through blogs, newsletters or social media? Understanding the type of organic traffic your target audience consumes is key to knowing what kind of organic content you should create for your business. Understanding your audience, and giving them what they want in this way, is the only way an organic content strategy can be successful. 
• Start Creating Content. This is the most important element of using blog writing as a content strategy!  should focus on creating evergreen content, so that you don’t have to keep removing it from your website. It should add value to your readers, and should be considered an asset to your brand. Conduct keyword research and competitor analysis, and then build a list of keywords you can create posts around. This will give you a list of evergreen content blog ideas that can become your editorial calendar. You’ll also consider which platforms and channels you want to use this blog content for (I.e will you repurpose it for social media?) before you start to create your content, as this may impact your keyword usage and writing style.
• Optimise your Content. SEO is the cornerstone of an organic marketing strategy, particularly a blog writing strategy. In the simplest terms, it is what makes organic content work! Whenever you write a new piece of content for your website, you should analyse it and ensure that it has been fully optimised using the target keywords that you had in mind when you chose the topic title. Other strategies you can use to optimise your content, outside of incorporating keywords, include having a great design, and using metadata to let search engines know what your content is about.
• Evaluate and Improve Your Existing Content. Content does not exist in a vacuum. A key element of your content marketing strategy should be to evaluate the impact of each piece of content that you create, then use this to inform any decisions about future content creation. Organic marketing is all about bringing people to you, instead of using paid methods to attract users, who might not be the right users for your brand. If your users are searching for the type of content you are creating, at least you already know that they’re interested in what you have to say. Your content will attract them, inform them, introduce them to your brand and then keep them interested in your brand. Even if they don’t make an immediate purchase decision, by adding value to them, they’ll think of you first when they’re ready to make a purchase. 

Conclusion

When it comes to choosing between paid search and organic search, the right or wrong decision will be different for each business. Only you can decide which approach will be best for you. But if you’re looking for slow and consistent growth with good conversions, we believe that organic search in general, and blog writing in particular, is the best approach. It is a long-term approach that, once implemented can continue to reap benefits for you. Whether you’re busy in the office or relaxing on holiday, those blog posts you’ve put in place will continue to work hard for you, driving traffic to your website and adding value to your users, 24/7. 

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