Organic growth or paid ads, what’s best for you?

Choosing the right tactics to market your business across SM is vital to achieve the success you’re looking for.

But what’s the best method to use to achieve it?

Do you pay to advertise to your prospects or is relying on organic growth the best course to take?

We look at both options and when it’s best to use them.

What are you looking to achieve from SM?

This is the fundamental question that you need to answer before deciding on what tactic to use.

What are you looking to promote on SM?

Is it your personal account?

Or the company one?

Are you looking to create a personal brand, or are you looking to promote the company itself?

If it’s your own business, what are your long-term intentions towards it?

Are you looking to grow it with a view to maybe selling it in the future?

To come up with the right strategy you need to know exactly what you want to achieve from your marketing efforts.

The personal brand

There is much talk on SM about the importance of personal branding.

Personal branding is all about how you choose to present yourself, and the people you are trying to connect with in the hope of a future business, as well as personal relationship.

It’s a long-term process and a long-term commitment, good relationships take time to create and develop, they don’t happen overnight.

They all stem from your personal account because people build relationships with people, not an anonymous company page.

People are connecting with you because they like what you say and appreciate your ideals and values.

You hope, in time, that the personal relationship will develop into a professional one too, if the product and the fit are right for both parties.

And because it’s a personal account, your connections will follow your career journey with you, regardless of whether you stay in the same role or move elsewhere.

This is organic growth at its finest.

And the key to it is consistency.

Regularly posting, commenting and sticking to your 25 connection requests a day will help you steadily grow your network and possible business prospects.

Mind your own business….

It makes a difference if you own the business as opposed to managing the marketing on SM on behalf of your employer.

If you don’t own the business, you are using your personal account to explain who you are, what the business does and your role is in it.

You’re in effect selling both, people are buying into the business because they are buying into you!

But you won’t be the one with the final say in what the business does in the future, so from your perspective it is best to concentrate on growing your network organically.

If you do own the business, it’s a different kettle of fish!

Looking into the future

If you own the business, there may well come a time when you are looking to sell it.

Perhaps you want to retire early, perhaps you feel you have taken it as far as you’re capable, whatever.

If you own it and want to get the best possible price for it in the future, you want to ensure that your business brand can stand alone as a going concern.

Prospective buyers will be more interested in the balance sheet than the personality of the current owner.

They will care about the values of the business which naturally reflect the founder, but the decision to buy will be based on business, not personal considerations.

In this instance, making the business too ‘personal’ may well put potential purchasers off, so it is vital that you don’t overdo the personal at the expense of the professional.

Paying for those company leads

If you are looking to add additional prospects into your funnel with the hope of turning them into sales, it makes sense to consider paid advertising as a means of doing so.

The approach you take naturally will depend on the size of your ad budget.

There’s always a cost consideration, which isn’t as clear cut as you might first think.

Yes, you’ll pay for Google Ads, which can be tailored to suit your budget.

But for truly effective Linked In marketing you’ll need to have Sales Nav to be able to compile lists and target prospects effectively.

However you decide to market, there’s always your budget to bear in mind, which will give you the best value for money and ROI?

Paying for short term gain

Paid advertising is effective as a short-term fix to drive enquiries into your sales funnel.

Because it isn’t the personal approach it doesn’t take as much time to achieve results, but it comes with cost implications that organic doesn’t.

At the same time it will bring you more enquiries quicker than organic reach can, which makes it vital that you are set up to handle such queries quickly and efficiently in order to maximise your prospects of converting enquiries into sales.

It’s a complete waste of money spending to gain leads that aren’t worked on so it’s vital to be able to respond quickly to the enquiries that you generate!

An obvious point to make but one that can be so easily overlooked, so worth making!

Time pressures

Whatever you are looking to achieve from your SM marketing, one thing both methods require is time to implement them effectively.

Time you often can’t spare with all your other business plates to balance.

This is why so many businesses turn to SM marketing agencies to come up with a strategy and implement it on their behalf.

If marketing isn’t one of your strengths it makes sense to entrust it to experts who can project manage the entire process on your behalf.

We can help you with this if you can’t spare the time or feel you lack the expertise to do it effectively yourself.

But at least now you have more of an idea as to what will work best for you and your business to get the best possible results from your SM marketing.

Because without a clear strategy any marketing efforts are just a shot in the dark, and shots in the dark rarely find their target!