Heroes in Business - A Look at Paid ADs Versus Organic

Episode Date: May 5, 2021

Peek under the surface of the many things to consider when deciding between paid ads or boosted posts vs. posting with organic content to your channels. Big takeaways! On this episode of Social Media on Steroids with Dan Shinder.    

Hi, and welcome to the Social Media on Steroids podcast. I'm Dan Schindler, and I created the Social Media on Steroids brand of education, training, consulting, and services to help others learn from my experience of achieving extraordinary results with content marketing on social. I attracted a following of over 1 million people and reach millions more online each month, 100% organically. In this series, I share the strategies that helped me cross all the milestones it took to get there and that we still use. And please, before we dive in, take down my email address in case you have questions. I answer all questions and I take suggestions for topics to be covered in this

series. You can reach me directly at dan at advancedsocialmarketing.com. And of course, the website is the same URL. Follow the blog there and the Advanced Social Marketing YouTube YouTube channel. Okay, let's jump in. All right, so welcome to episode nine. Paid ads or organic? Which is best? Be sure to check out more episodes you may have missed by searching Dan Schinder, that's S-H-I-N-D-E-R, on Eliancer.com or your favorite podcast platform. The series is on about 40, so it should be easy to find and subscribe to it on your favorite platform. So we're going to talk about paid ads on social versus organic content. So, but let's define that. What is organic content? Organic content is exactly what it sounds like. It's put on your channels and it's not boosted and it's not a paid advertisement or your followers of that channel and that paid ads are the only way to reach outside of that box because of targeting. And on most of the platforms, especially like Facebook, LinkedIn, you can get really granular with the targeting, which is really cool. We'll get to that. But none of that's true as far as only paid ads reaching outside your following. And here's why. Reach beyond your followers

happens in two ways, 100% organically. One is that your content is so compelling and relevant to the sensibilities of your target market, and don't overthink that, but do think about it. It's so compelling that it's shared by like-minded people to other like-minded people. It's shared in messaging. It's shared in emails. It's shared to someone else's page. A brand might share it to another page, their own brand's page. And it's also shared into groups. You, yourself, this is number two, or someone on your staff, strategically shares it into groups as well, relevant groups where your target market is, where the content fits. It has to be relevant to that group. So if you follow

this series, you may have heard me talk about how promoting and advertising is not marketing. Your organic and paid posts can achieve both. Paid or not isn't what defines that. The content itself defines that. You can refer to my episode number seven, which was advertising and promoting is not marketing. And it goes into that a little bit deeper. But basically, you really need both. You need both paid ads and organic. But I will tell you this. Having said that, my founding brand, Drum Talk TV, we'll refer to DTTV for short, and fondly, DTTV has an amazing organic content story. Over the years, even from the very first year, 100% organically, we have grown by leaps and bounds, an average of 2,000 to 3,000 new followers every seven-day period. We have driven hundreds of thousands of people and clicks of traffic to our own destinations

and destinations of our sponsors and have helped them acquire new followers, all 100% organically. So I do know that it can be done without paid ads because I personally have done it. I personally have designed those strategies and have tweaked them. I've got about 50,000 hours in this, okay? So please trust me on this. And I've got the great results to show for it. Over a million followers. And that's just on Facebook alone, 100% organically. The mistake that most businesses and most people make with paid ads is this. Well,

there's a few, but the first one is that they see that their content isn't getting video views. They see that it's not getting reach. It's not getting comments. It's not getting shares. That's if someone's even astute enough to look for those things. Those are what matter. Don't worry about the emojis or the likes on a post. They don't matter as much except maybe on LinkedIn, it'll help. But other than that, what happens is they freak out and then they see that carrot that some of the platforms are dangling that says, if you give us $300, we'll show your post to 12,000 more people. And someone inevitably in the office says, quick, give me the

credit card. So what they do, think about this. What they do is they spend money on a post that's already not working organically to show it to more people. That will increase reach, but it will not increase the performance. If the post is already not working organically, it's not going to work better if you spend money on it. It doesn't mean people will respond to it, share it, comment on it, watch the whole video, click on the call to action, all the things that matter. It won't fix anything. The other mistake people make is they don't make A, B, C versions of their ad or post that they're boosting to compare. So they're just creating an ad and just throwing it out there. And they're never looking back at the numbers. Well, they

might be, but they might not be doing it in a strategic manner to tweak it, to shape it, to polish it, to mold it, to file down the edges so that it performs better. And you need to use the numbers to do this. So if a post does very well organically, that's your tip off to say, let's turn this into an ad or let's boost this post. If it already worked on your platform, it's going to work just as well, if not better when you show it to other people.

That is what you spend the money on. But if all you do is rely on this invisible non-existent silver bullet of paid ads, you are missing out. And I'm going to describe to you one of the big, big, big, big, big reasons why. One of them, then we'll go on to a couple others. So one is the larger market formula. I learned this from following Subhi Sabri. Brilliant sales guy. Follow him on YouTube. Follow his podcast. Get his book. So what we're talking about here is that only 3% of your target market are buying now. Only about 3% of your target market will respond

to ads and purchase right away. The other 17% of your market are information gatherers. They're always in information gathering mode until they purchase. 20% more are problem aware, but they haven't acted on it. 60% are walking around with their head up their, I mean, they're not problem aware. So they're not acting on something that they're not aware of. And this brings me to NLP. I'm a certified NLP trainer, have been for years. And when I first saw this, it reminded me of judgers and perceivers. Judgers are people who want closure. They just want to get it over with. I'm like that with one thing, and that's purchasing a car. I pretty much know what I want. We have our budget and I just want to get over

with. I'm not going to five different dealerships. I'm not going to eight people's homes and driving eight different vehicles. I'm just not doing it. I pretty much have my heart set on what I want. Just want to get it over with, get in the car, go for a nice ride. But with everything else, I'm pretty much a perceiver and a perceiver is exploring. A perceiver is comparing. A perceiver is going to take their time before they purchase. So that's why it's important to not just rely on paid ads or you truly are missing out. But let's back up. In order for either of those to work, paid or organic,

you can't just assign a blanket persona to your entire target market and just post content assign a blanket persona to your entire target market and just post content for that blanket persona. Even if they're all buying the same thing from you, even if they all are of the same target market for the same item or for the same service, they are all different people with different reasons for buying with possibly a different problem to be solved with whatever you're offering and the same thing and at different stages in their life. There's other factors too that we'll get for. Therefore, they will process everything differently through the filter in their brain due to their life experiences. Let's talk about purchasing a van versus a sports car. And there is a deep matrix of reasons why someone might buy

one or the other. But let's just look at a couple here. And I've been through these myself. I remember having to get rid of my Porsche because another kid was on the way. So reason for buying a van needed another family car. Family was growing. I used to have vans and trucks years ago when I was hauling all my musical gear around. But growing family had to get out of the sports car and into the van. How about a reason to get out of the van and into a sports car? Because the kids have grown. They've moved away, maybe gone off to college, maybe got married off,

and now you can get the sports car again. And those are sort of two items where there could be two reasons to get one or the other or get rid of one or the other. So that right there shows that you may be selling sports cars, you may be selling a van, and for two different, completely different reasons, people want to buy the same thing. So you've got to market to them differently. You've got to promote to them differently. People need to see themselves in the promoting and the advertising. So when it comes to targeting, there are things to consider because of this. You've got to think of gender. You've got to think of age. You've got to think of geographics.

Where are they? You've got to think of interests. Probably the biggest thing to consider, what are their interests? And just if we take gender and age for a moment, a 24-year-old woman is going to have a different filter for purchasing the same midsize sedan as a 72-year-old man, or switch those genders around, keep those ages, same thing. So it's very important to understand and drill down and compartmentalize all these personas in different boxes and create content that will resonate with all of them, even though you're offering the same thing. Whether it's consulting, whether it's a workshop,

whether it's a free webinar, whether it's a $10,000 course, whether it's a van, whether it's shoes, whether it's a boat, an RV, potato chips, knick-knack, paddywhack, what? Hey, what? It's very important to understand this. So in order for either of those to work, you need to define who the content is for. Who is the content speaking to? Because if they don't hear or see in the visuals that it's speaking to them, they won't be listening. It's that simple. Can paid ads and boosting posts grow awareness for your brand and your product or your service? Can it drive traffic and help your business? Of course. I'm not a dummy. I wouldn't say that they never can. But to put it into perspective with truly effective

organic content, it's the storytelling. It's the posting about their common interests, the common interest between themselves and you, the brand, and what you offer, and much more than just about what's for sale or what this week's hot deal is. Facts tell, but stories sell. Successful social media marketing is all about storytelling. And when done effectively, it will help with your five to keep your brand alive. These are things that paid ads won't do. Truly effective storytelling and social media marketing, content marketing will help you stay present. That's number one. Number two, help you stay relevant. Number three, help you to be helpful to others, your target market. They like that.

Number four, my favorite, help you to be inclusive. And you'll hear me be inclusive at the end. And number five, positioning. Positioning yourself as an expert in your field. That's what the storytelling does. That's what a lot of the organic stuff will do. And you could do organic ads. You could do organic promoting. You could do organic advertising. And when you build your following and create trust, likability, and brand love, they will pay attention to that. And you may not have to spend money on it. I never have.

That's marketing. You can refer to my episode number one of this series to get a deeper scoop of that. It's so critical to understand that that's why I started this series with it. I have over a hundred topics in a folder to cover. We're up to number nine with this episode, but that one in episode one is so important, I had to kick off with it. I mentioned earlier that paid ads, you can get very granular in your targeting. On most platforms, you can target many, if not all of the following.

You can target age, gender, geography, interests. I stressed how important that is. Education level, income brackets, and more. But remember, it's the content that will determine whether or not you are successful in driving traffic, growing your following, building trust, brand love, and whatever else your goal is, paid or not. It's always going to be about the content first. So apply what I teach and begin getting better results right away. Guaranteed. Much more to be covered in more episodes. Need more? Want more? Need more information? Want your team trained? Do you want to get trained?

You need a service provider who knows how it really works, or if you just have questions, please reach out. I'm easy to find on LinkedIn. You can go to my website, advancedsocialmarketing.com, and you can always suggest things that you would like covered. There, be part of it. And I just have three more words for you. Cue the music. So remember, if you're serious about what you do, get serious about how you market it. Sign up for my newsletter and get my Six Steps to Daily Success PDF at advancedsocialmarketing.com

and get notifications about my free workshops and other learning opportunities, as well as the wacky changes on the major platforms. Stay up to date and see how I can help you further at the same URL. Check out the blog there and follow the Advanced Social Marketing YouTube channel as well. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn at linkedin.com slash in slash Dan Schindler. Happy marketing.