What happens if you make a good amount of sales, but you made them by spending an unreasonable amount of money on advertising? This means you have the revenue you wanted to see, but not necessarily the profit that allows your business to thrive.
To keep acquiring new clients or customers at a reasonable cost, start focusing on organic (unpaid) marketing. In my little corner of the internet, I don’t mean just any type of organic marketing. I place a huge emphasis on long-form blog content.
(It’s one of the core reasons why KQ Writing Studio exists.)
Let’s look at the contrast between blog content and paid content.
When your blog content lives on a self-hosted website (like mine), you don’t have to continually pay the web hosting company (i.e. Bluehost) each time you publish a new post. You’re positioning yourself in front of the right audience organically, without extra costs.
On the other hand, when you go the paid ads route, you’re continually sending money to a media channel (whether it’s social media or otherwise) and risking your ad landing in front of the wrong audience.
Organic content can be life-changing, especially for small businesses with little-to-no financial wiggle room.
Why I Discourage Paid Ads
Paid ads often work based on a particular demographic you input into the ad system. Unfortunately, ads don’t necessarily tap into the psychographics of the people you want to become your clients or customers.
While you might get more eyes on your business, brand, or social media profile, they’re not necessarily the right eyes.
For example, you find an Instagram account through one of their sponsored (paid) posts. You click on their profile and see they have 50,000 followers. You click on their three most recent posts, and they have weak engagement (likes and comments).
This is often – not always – a sign that a company’s paid ads aren’t as effective as they had hoped.
(I recognize I’m making a lot of assumptions in this imaginary scenario.)
The caveat here is that not every audience hangs out on social media. So for certain businesses, social media engagement becomes an irrelevant metric.
The bottom line for this type of business is this: I’d rather have three clients buy my services than have 1,000 likes on Instagram and no clients.
This opens up another conversation about vanity metrics. I’ll save that for another time…
This is where organic marketing comes into play. And this is where we shift away from paid ads and social media marketing, which you don’t really own… Toward marketing pieces that you actually own.
In other words, put more energy toward content that lives on a domain that can’t randomly be deleted or blocked like an Instagram account that is suddenly upsetting the Instagram gods.
I wouldn’t suggest completely eliminating paid ads if it truly fits into your marketing strategy. (I’m also not anti-social media!) But I would also suggest shifting your focus toward organic content in the form of videos and written words.
Rant over!
