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Paid Advertising vs. Organic Advertising

Keith Kakadia's Profile Picture
13th July, 2024

As millions of companies are present in this day and age, grabbing users attention to promote sales can be difficult. One way to promote your company is through advertising. Advertising can be summed up as anything that gets a good or service’s name into the mind of potential clients. For the most part, advertising consists of carefully formulated campaigns that are designed strategically and that are accomplished to reach a set end. However, advertising is more organic and inorganic than it is carefully planned. Both organic and inorganic advertising have an important role in the world of social media. If marketers understand and use both methods, they will fulfill their efforts and reach more people. 

Let’s examine what paid advertising, organic advertising, and inorganic advertising are before we get into the benefits of each.

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Organic Advertising

The results of organic searches are based upon the merits of each site, which come from search rhythm algorithms. Organic advertising is like a cousin of word of mouth advertising. Organic advertising is used by companies to take advantage of online search engines and social networking sites. It provides clients with information about their products without the sole use of sales pitches. 

Paid advertising

Paid advertising sits alongside organic results. The difference is paid advertising is bought instead of earned. This is the type of advertising you are used to seeing. It is easy to recognize and can vary in form. Forms vary from billboards to sponsored social media posts. 

Now it’s time to dive into the benefits and drawbacks of each…

The Benefits of Organic Advertising

I’ll state the obvious first. Organic advertising is very inexpensive or even free. Advertisers are able to organize a word of mouth campaign and spread product information without a cost. Further, organic advertising feels less like a sales pitch and more like a friend’s recommendation. This will increase the chances of consumers buying your goods or services. Organic searches can be run in the background to improve your company’s presence in the search revenue. With time, organic traffic can replace paid traffic and allow you to reduce your advertising costs. 

The Drawbacks of Organic Advertising

The first drawback to organic advertising is clearly the time commitment. It takes a great deal of time to develop a successful social media presence without the use of paid advertising, especially if you’re a startup company. Another drawback of organic advertising is resources. If you rely solely on organic advertising, then you’ll need resources to get high ratings. Some of these resources include: internal employees or external contractors to create content and use SEO tactics that will lead to your high ranking. This can be pricier than using paid advertising.

The Benefits of Paid Advertising

With paid advertising companies are able to control who the information reaches and what information gets out to the social world. Paid advertising allows companies to specifically select what information they want to spread about their goods and services. Therefore, they can create a brand and an image for themselves that is admired by all. Also, paid advertising allows companies to save time. Once you pay for the ad, it will be immediately placed at the top of rankings. Additionally, paid advertising will amp up traffic and kickstart a business at its beginning stages.

The Drawbacks of Paid Advertising

Paid advertising has its drawbacks too. First, paid advertising is momentary. As soon as you stop paying for the ad, it will disappear. Continuing, paid advertising does come at a cost. If you choose to use a competitive keyword, the bid price will be more expensive for each click on the ad. The campaigns using paid ads can also be difficult to manage and if they are done wrong money will be spent uselessly, attracting unqualified traffic. Lastly, consumers don’t always trust paid ads and they look to avoid them. People would rather purchase based upon a personal recommendation than a paid ad that is shown online.

Combining the Two

By combining organic advertising and paid advertising, you will have the best results. Paid and organic campaigns can work together to support each other, which will give your company a much more effective marketing strategy. Together is better and you’ll want to use both forms of advertising to make the most of your campaigns.