Organic Marketing vs. Paid Marketing with Facebook | 131
Have you ever met someone who boasts they have never used ads to grow their business? Maybe you hoped to see that same success in your business. Or maybe you felt *ashamed* that you’re interested in paid marketing and ads.
I want to give you my honest opinion on paid marketing with Facebook versus organic marketing. Which is better?
Organic Marketing vs. Paid Marketing
When we talk about organic marketing, that means anything that isn’t being paid for. That includes social media, Pinterest, long-form content, like a podcast, blogs, or YouTube. In this episode, I also talk about collaborations as a form of organic marketing, but I normally wouldn’t put it in that category. However, typically it is unpaid traffic (though can absolutely also pay for collaborations).
Paid marketing, on the other hand, covers anything paid, including billboards and radio ads, as well as online digital marketing like Instagram and Facebook ads, Pinterest, Google Ads, and so much more.
When Should I Run Paid Ads?
If you’ve listened to my podcast before, you know I often talk about making sure you have a proven offer before you run ads. If you don't know who your ideal customer is, what you're selling, or are lacking a lead magnet and email list, then putting the money into paid marketing on Facebook or Instagram doesn’t make a lot of sense.
However, that doesn’t mean you can’t run ads. Or that organic marketing is better than ads. It just means that to truly get your money’s worth from your ads, there are a few things that need to be established first.
Is Organic Marketing Better Than Paid Marketing?
It is really easy in business to get caught up in what everyone else is doing. Suzie Q doesn’t run ads? Well, then maybe I shouldn’t… But Joe Shmoe does, and he makes 10k a month! So, maybe I should! *eye roll*
The fact is that all of our businesses are different, and we need to treat it that way. It’s not about if paid marketing with Facebook or Instagram is better, it’s about if it works for you at this stage in your business.
You need to consider your time, energy, and money. Do you feel comfortable on video? Do you want to do reels? What kind of content are you creating? Can you create enough content? All of these things, and more, need to be considered. And everyone will have a different answer.
Instead of thinking of organic marketing and paid marketing as two separate things, instead, I would challenge you to think of them as working together. Your paid ads are getting more eyes on your long-form content, growing your email list, and retargeting people who land on your sales page but don't buy.
Therefore, paid ads aren’t replacing the organic marketing you’re doing, it is amplifying it. When done right, paid marketing and organic marketing work together in a symbiotic relationship, and that my friends is where the magic happens!
If you are ready to amplify your business with Facebook paid marketing, I would love to help you with my Facebook Ad Sprint. This is a six week VIP experience where we amplify your lead generation. We get the ad campaign created, set it all up, test all of the assets, and optimize the campaign. At the end of six weeks, you have a lead generation machine running on autopilot so that you can grow your email list every single day. And it works right alongside all of the organic things that you are doing to grow your business.
Click HERE to get started with a free call to learn more about FB Ad Sprints.
Don't forget to follow me on Instagram @heyitsjenzaia and tune in next Saturday for more business tips and strategies!
xo, Jenzaia
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Episode Transcript:
Hey there - I'm Jenzaia and this is Market Scale Grow - a podcast created for ambitious teacherpreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, flexibility, and ultimately make more money. With weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers just like you, my goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dreams.
Today we are going to be talking about two different types of people in marketing and my thoughts about that. So, we are going to be talking about our organic-only friends and our paid ads friends. And before we get started, I just want to make it very, very clear that I don't think that there is a wrong way.
I don't think that there is a mistake choice that you could make or that you could pick wrong. And that there's so many different variables in deciding whether you are going to promote your business organically or if you're going to use ads, or if you're going to do both.
When I say organically, I mean, all of the different things that you could do that aren't paying. And so in this episode (and probably this episode alone) I am including collaborations in the organic piece of the puzzle. Collaboration is when you're working with someone else, and maybe you're doing a workshop for them, or maybe you're presenting in a summit or a conference. You are promoting it without paying. It could also be social media, Pinterest, long form content like a podcast or blogs or YouTube. Basically all of the different avenues of marketing that aren't paid.
Then when we talk about paid, that's the exact opposite. This is all the different avenues of marketing that are paid. So, things like billboards, radio ads, newspaper ads, online digital marketing like Instagram and Facebook ads, Pinterest promoted pins, YouTube ads, Google ads, LinkedIn ads, TikTok ads, like all of the paid variations of promotions that you can do online.
So one of the first programs that I joined, the creator person was very anti-ads. I struggled with that because she herself was running ads. So there was this duality that I didn't understand at the time, which I do understand now, but her view was that ads don't have a place in businesses until they hit a certain point. The target market of this program was more beginner level businesses.
I 100% agree that there's a point when ads start to make sense. And before that, there's a lot of hustle and a lot of time and energy that needs to be put into your marketing, and less money. But I also don't think that there's a problem if you start your business today and you decide to pay for marketing, pay for advertisements, if that's what you want to do.
There's all kinds of different reasons why it may not be the right option. If you don't know who your ideal customer is, if you don't know what you're selling, if you have no free offer and no email list, then putting the money into growing these things might not make the most sense, but it's an option that you can do.
But anyway…So there was what felt like a lot of shame around wanting to run Facebook ads and a lot of shame around growing my email list with Facebook ads. And when I decided I wanted to start helping other people grow their businesses using Facebook ads, I felt like I couldn't publicly announce it because the only “right” way to do it was to grow your business organically. And that was the vibe of that community.
There's many examples of people that have grown their following organically, and they are very proud to say, I've never used ads - I've grown this all through referrals and networking and amazing social content and whatever it might be. I'm not saying that's wrong, but I also don't love the vibe that if I do it organically, I'm superior. Because it's not true. Because there are times when paid ads is the more logical choice.
So we're just going to pause on this for a second and I want you to think about a garden. I love gardening. I grew up gardening. I have gardens in my backyard. We grow tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers. We're putting in some corn this year. I've never grown corn before in my life, so I'm pretty excited about that. And we have peas. My kids pick out broccoli. We tried cauliflower last year, and it didn't go well. So we'll see how the broccoli goes. And then we also have a little herb garden, like rosemary, basil, parsley, and cilantro.
So let's just think about tomatoes, because I love tomatoes. And there's so many different things that you need to factor in when you're growing tomatoes. What type of soil do you have? What kind of climate do you have? We live in zone 5b, which means that our last frost is sometime in May. Where I live, if you plant your garden before Victoria Day, or two weeks before Memorial Day, then you're crazy pants. You are insane, because there's gonna be another frost, likely, and you're gonna kill all of your plants. So, for the last couple of weeks, I've had some indoor-outdoor plants, if you will. During the day I put them out on the deck, but then at night they come in and they live in our kitchen.
Now, somebody who lives in Texas or California with significantly warmer weather, they may have already planted their garden, right? It makes more sense. If you have a different type of soil and you're watering your plants at the same frequency as I'm watering them, then you might get root rot because you're just over-watering them, or vice versa. And what type of tomato? Are they cherry tomatoes? Are they beefsteak? Are they Roma? And then this is just tomatoes! The cucumbers need something different and the corn needs something different.
So all the different plants need different things to grow, and that's the same as our business. Even if you have the same business as somebody else, there's other Facebook ad strategists out there. You might not be, you're probably not going to be, the only person that does what you do. But you're the only person in this type of soil, in this climate. So the way that you need to treat your business is going to be very different from the way that somebody else needs to treat their business. Just like the way I treat my tomatoes is different from the way you're going to treat your tomatoes.
And that doesn't mean that we're not both going to have amazing tomatoes in our sandwiches or our salads. It just means that we need to take care of our gardens and take care of our plants in a way that is going to help them based on all of the other factors. And so taking it fully back to our businesses and marketing and organic versus paid, there's tons of different factors that are in play when we're considering whether or not organic or paid marketing is right for you in your business.
Right now, time is a consideration. Money is a consideration. Energy levels are a consideration. Do you feel comfortable on video? Do you want to do reels? What kind of content are you creating? Can you create enough content? I just started making a dashboard for my business where I'm tracking different pieces of information. And one of the things that someone told me is to track was the number of Instagram posts I did every single month. I was shocked to find out that I only posted on Instagram six times in February. That's insane. I never would have guessed that it was so low.
But I don't love social media. I don't love creating social media content. So I'm not that surprised that it was low because this kind of thing doesn't come easy to me. But someone that social media comes really easy to and they enjoy showing up and they want to show up and they're constantly creating content and they're happy to post every single day, if that is who you are and that's your personality, you're likely going to be able to grow a following on social media significantly faster than me.
So there's those things to keep in consideration. Something else is what type of business you're running. I primarily serve clients on a 1 to 1 basis. If you have a service based business or a 1 to 1 coaching model, you might not need to use paid ads. You might not need to grow your audience with paid ads.
You may be able to grow your audience sufficiently to keep your business at capacity through organic means, through referrals, through word of mouth, through networking and collaborating with others. And so what I really, really, REALLY want you to take away from this is that it's great, amazing, fantastic if you are growing your business successfully at the rate that you want in a sustainable way through organic means. It is also absolutely great, fantastic if you are using paid ads to grow your business in a way that feels good for you and is sustainable and makes sense.
There is no right or wrong option. Neither one is better than the other and in fact, I would fight to argue that the best option is a combination of both, where your paid ads are amplifying what you are doing organically. Your paid ads are getting more eyes on your long form content. Your paid ads are helping you grow your email list and your paid ads are helping to retarget people who land on your sales page but don't buy.
When paid ads and organic marketing work together in like a symbiotic relationship where everything is working together. Like the rhinos and those little birds that sit on them. They work together and everybody's happy because the rhinos don't have the bugs and the birds get to eat the bugs. That is absolutely the best option.
Now, if you are ready to amplify your business with paid ads, I would love to help you do that. My favorite way is our Facebook Ad Sprint. It's a six week VIP experience where we amplify your lead generation. We get the ad campaign created. We set it all up. We test all the assets. We optimize the campaign. So at the end of six weeks, you have a lead generation machine running on autopilot that you can be growing your email list every single day. And it works right alongside all of the organic things that you were doing to grow your business.
So I hope that this puts you at ease if you are in organic camp or paid ads camp and just reminds you that you are doing it right, whichever way you're going. And there is no problem with growing your business to seven figures organically only. And there's no problem with starting paid ads if your business is not even at six figures yet. They're both completely acceptable and I'm so proud of you either way! Thank you so much for being here with me and joining me on this journey. I'll be back with another episode next Saturday!
Thank you for listening to this episode of Market Scale Grow. I'm so thankful that you've taken some time out of your busy schedule to make me part of your journey. If you love this podcast, don't forget to share it with your friends. And then head to your favorite podcast app to subscribe so that you won't miss next week's episode or any of the upcoming ones. And if you loved it, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcast so that other people can find this podcast and we can impact teachers and teacher business owners around the world!