Organic marketing: Metrics to watch

It’s all about identifying your target audience and devising marketing campaigns that speak to them effectively. 

There are a lot of ways to do this, and many of which cost money. Not all of them do, though, such as the strategy of engaging in organic marketing. 

Organic marketing can be a tricky thing to navigate, but if you are able to master it, you’ll find it’s one of the most cost-efficient—and effective—ways to draw attention to your brand. 

But what is organic marketing, and what are some ways in which you can capitalize on it? 

What is Organic Marketing?

When you build a marketing campaign, there are multiple kinds of strategies you can use. Those strategies are high-level recommendations for actions you can take to promote your campaign. 

Each strategy is supported by tactics. These tactics are concrete steps you can take to accomplish your marketing mission—for example, crafting a specific kind of content. 

Some of these marketing tactics involve paid ads or some other kinds of sponsored posts. This can be anything from social media ads to billboards to print or TV spots. 

Not all marketing is paid for, however. The opposite of paid marketing is known as organic marketing.

Organic marketing represents any marketing efforts you take that aren’t specifically sponsored. For example, posting a single tweet—without promoting it—would be a form of organic marketing. 

The Benefits of Organic Marketing

There’s one patently obvious benefit of organic digital marketing and that’s the value you get for your investment.  

Of course, that’s not to say there aren’t indirect investments involved in organic marketing—you’ll be dedicating time and resources to crafting content in support of it. But unlike paid advertising, it doesn’t cost you anything. 

That’s not the only benefit. 

Organic marketing helps you understand which parts of your marketing machine are connecting with your audience. When you’re able to create content that resonates with people in a way that doesn’t require as much of a financial investment, you know your marketing is doing something right. 

Rather than relying on advertising dollars, organic marketing relies on the content itself and word-of-mouth marketing to build content that one could describe as “sticky.” It has a lasting effect on people, driving them to share it with others. 

How to Build a Consistent Stream of Organic Traffic

There are multiple organic marketing strategies that you can use to help support organic traffic in your marketing campaign.

Some of those include: 

• Social media campaigns
• Attracting interest via your website
• Harnessing the power of search engine optimization

Social media campaigns

A well-written and carefully planned social media post has the potential to attract thousands of eyeballs to your brand. 

Having a high-quality post go viral has the same effect as a paid campaign—for a much lower cost. 

A piece of content that engages your audience—whether it’s a Tweet, LinkedIn post, or stunning image captured on Instagram—has the chance to spread far and wide depending on how much it resonates. 

This has the potential to attract new attention to your social media accounts and, more importantly, new customers. 

Attracting interest via your website

Your website can serve as more than just your online business card. It can demonstrate your ability to help your potential customers while at the same time building an emotional connection with your readers. 

There are numerous ways you can use your website to build organic reach (more on that in a minute), but having organic content (and quality content) posted there can do a lot to build brand awareness. 

Harnessing the power of search engine optimization

Whether it’s via your website or social media channels, search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the key drivers of organic traffic. By knowing what search engine results your audience is looking for, you can use this information to include these keywords within your content. 

Examples of Organic Marketing Tactics

The strategies outlined above are only the beginning of what you can do to tap into organic marketing efforts. The type of content that you develop will depend on your specific industry or campaign, but the ideas listed below are a good start for just about anyone. 

Here are some organic marketing tactics you can use to foster better customer engagement: 

• Blog content
• Social media content
• Podcasts
• White papers

Blog content 

Creating engaging, thought-provoking blog content is one way to organically attract a wider audience to your website. A blog allows you to position yourself as a thought leader in your industry. 

By interweaving targeted keywords within your content, you ensure you’ll capture the attention of people looking for the solution you offer. The more website traffic you have from the right audience, the better your chances of having genuine engagement that leads to a lasting relationship between the brand and the reader. 

There are multiple ways a blog can organically increase awareness of your product, service, or goal. Along with SEO purposes, you can also insert backlinks into your blog content. 

Backlinks are links to your old blog posts that are related to the current one. Doing this is a powerful tool. 

For one thing, it shows that this isn’t your first rodeo. You’ve already developed content in the past that speaks to your reader. 

Secondly, if those older posts were high-quality but lacked engagement, they can use a high-engagement post to draw new attention to them. It gives them a second life. 

There’s no limit to the ways a blog can increase your organic marketing efforts. 

Social media content

Your social networks have a built-in audience—people who have followed you and are already interested in your brand. That’s why leveraging these social platforms to push out content sure to stick with that audience—and hopefully others beyond that—is a great idea. 

Inserting the right hashtag can increase the number of people who see your post, ensuring the right audience is being exposed to your content. 

Podcasts

Similar to a blog, a podcast gives you the opportunity to not just speak to your audience, but to build a new one by sharing value-laden content showcasing your expertise. 

Where it differs from a blog is that it appeals to your audience members who prefer an auditory experience. 

The format of podcasting continues to grow in popularity by the minute. According to research, one-third of Americans listen to a podcast on a daily basis. 

A well-produced, interesting podcast has the potential to be shared countless times, increasing brand awareness in a fun, consumable format. 

White papers

Think of white papers as much longer, more in-depth blog posts. White papers are documents that feature research, statistics, and other evidence backing up a central thesis. 

White papers don’t have the viral potential of a social media post or podcast episode. But for customers who are in the research stage of their journey, seeking out more information, reading white papers can be a great way to connect with a brand. 

Organic Marketing Metrics to Watch

So now that you understand what type of organic marketing tactics to use, what organic metrics should you keep an eye on? 

Below are a few key performance indicators (KPIs) you can track to evaluate how your organic marketing efforts are doing: 

• Call-to-action clicks on a blog post. Your call-to-action (CTA) should come at the end of your blog post and provide an opportunity to engage. Looking at your website metrics to see how many people took this action will help you understand how successfully the content is performing. 
• Social media engagement metrics. Likes, impressions, views of videos, retweets, and shares are all useful in determining how successful a social media post is. Do keep in mind that these aren’t always the the final word of engagement metrics; they don’t tell the whole story, just a part of it. 
• Content downloads. If you’ve got a downloadable piece of content like a podcast, knowing how many people downloaded it is helpful. You’ll also want to look at other deeper level metrics like time spent listening, and these types of metrics are available on platforms where you post materials (i.e. Apple Podcasts for podcasting). 

What you really want to look for with organic marketing content metrics is shareability. How many people have shared and viewed it?

This tells you how engaging the content is and while it is not the only set of metrics you’ll want to look at, it’s great at helping you understand just how effective your organic marketing metrics are performing. 

Are you looking to improve how you measure your organic marketing efforts—or better yet, build organic marketing content that’s sure to help your metrics increase? Having one platform to develop, manage, and track all of your marketing efforts is one of the best ways to do that. 

The best platform for that is Optimizely CMP. 

Optimizely CMP offers a full suite of marketing services ready to assist you and your team as you build organic marketing campaigns that appeal to the right people at the right time. We’ll help you stay on target while getting the most out of your organic marketing approach.