During uncertain times, businesses must go against what is natural which is to hunker down and wait for this to blow over. To become successful and grow your brand, businesses need to double down on this opportunity as their competition goes into hibernation, leaving a wide-open market, ready for the taking. Yet when it comes to creating or adjusting marketing plans, businesses seem to rely solely on what they currently do, whether that's; wait for referrals, rely on their brand for new leads to come in, or just put the occasional ad in the local newspaper hoping that it boosts revenue.
There is a disconnect between what business owners can be doing to consistently generate new leads for their brand, and what they are doing. This means a lot of brands out there are missing out on potentially growing their business, smashing through their revenue targets and exceeding all expectations. If you were to search for different marketing strategies, you would come across the 'Paid VS Organic' argument within a heartbeat.
Once you delve into it, you realise that there are arguments for both sides of the coin. If a brand was just starting and had little capital behind them, they should focus on organic (free) marketing tactics such as creating a blog, doing outreach on social media, creating content etc.
One the other hand, a business with a larger marketing budget may look to paid strategies such as pay-per-click campaigns, purchasing email lists, putting outs out on other media such as newspapers or radio. But is it always going to be like this? The smaller brands use organic strategies and wait until they are in a position to use the paid ones? Are the paid tactics worth it?
Bill J Clarke is here with us today to talk through common misconceptions when it comes to online marketing, and what brands can start doing today to generate high-value clients using both methods.
When he first started his agency - Mustard Fox Marketing - back in 2018 after dropping out of university to pursue his dream of entrepreneurship, he was sure that he was going to create content for businesses. Yet after struggling to find clients, he soon realised that it wasn't an active social media account that businesses wanted, it was new clients.
They were looking for a steady stream of new business coming in week after week, so Bill made a key pivot in his business. After making the change from a content creator, he focuses now on lead generation and right now he uses strategies such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads and social media content to do this. Bill's clients are now seeing success from his agency's work from both paid and organic methods and this isn't a coincidence. Bill learned along the way that it isn't a case of Paid VS Organic, but more of a Paid + Organic = Consistent New Clients.
Utilising both methods brings a 3-dimensional approach to his work, as he explains that paid strategies are great for bringing new prospects into your network, and the organic methods help to nurture those prospects by adding value to them and establishing relationships with them which are key if a brand is to sign new clients predictably and repeatedly.
One of Bills most successful paid strategies for expanding his clients' networks and filling them with dream prospects is through a combination of Facebook and Google advertising. Bill says that pay-per-click campaigns aren't the Dark Arts, they are just systems that need setting up and managing correctly. Once you have them sorted, they work like well-oiled client generating machines! What's more, is that you don't even need a large budget to use these. From a few dollars a day, you can start bringing new prospects into your network. What's next now that they are in your network? We move on to the organic methods.
Whichever methods are used by businesses to bring new prospects into their network, it's important to realise that these prospects likely aren't ready to buy. This key fact is often overlooked as some brands throw offers at them as soon as a new prospect comes along. Would you ask a woman you just met to marry you? Hopefully not. You'd get to know each other, find out their likes, dislikes, passions, goals, struggles and more. That's when the relationship begins and it's the same (mostly) in business.
How do can a business court their prospects and deepen the relationship with them? One of the most effective methods nowadays is through valuable social media content - not videos of cats, sorry - but meaningful content that will be beneficial to them. What Bill focuses on is high-value content that he knows his ideal prospects would love to see on their News Feed. By providing consistent content like this, he can establish his brand in the industry and his prospects now trust him. From there, it's a case of starting conversations with prospects and the rest is history...
The key takeaways from our chat with Bill J Clarke are that it's important not to view your marketing as a paid vs organic war, but as a cooperation between the two, helping you build a steady, predictable flow of new leads coming into your business month after month. Remember step one is to use paid strategies to build your network and then use organic methods such as providing valuable content to nurture the relationships you have with your new audience.
Stay consistent, optimise your campaigns, and reap the rewards.
