The Underestimated Power Of Organic Reach
The decline of organic reach has been evident over the past few years due to content overload, shortened attention spans, and the creation of algorithms to curate a user experience. As a result, many businesses have given up on it altogether. Thus, it appears that search engines and social media are both the creators and the destroyers of organic reach. The true power of organic reach is being grossly underestimated, which will be detailed throughout the article.
What is Organic Reach?
Essentially, organic reach is the people that you can reach via marketing content for free. It is defined as the total number of unique users who see the content of a page through unpaid distribution.
Organic Reach is primarily referred to in the context of social media platforms and search engines.
Organic Search
(Source: Danard Vincente)
Organic Search results are the web page listings that appear when you type a query into a search engine. The results displayed closely match the user’s search query.
Search is one of the most effective forms of marketing as it is often the consumers’ first point of contact with your business. When you increase your rank among search results you improve your online visibility and domain authority.
The organic way to increase your ranking on the Search Engine Results Page (SERPS) is through Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). For instance, if SEO is implemented effectively, the chances drastically increase that the target audience will find your business when searching for things related to your product or service. Local SEO has been proven to be especially effective. In fact, If you’re not ranking on the first SERP, people may never know your business exists. Organic Search results have been found to be 5.66 times better than paid search ads. In addition to that, the number one organic position on Googles SERP experience 33% of the traffic.
Organic Social Media
(Source: socialautomotive)
Organic Social Media refers to “the free content (posts, photos, video, memes, Stories, etc.) that all users, including businesses and brands, share with each other on their feeds.”
As mentioned already, organic social media should be treated as the foundation on which your paid strategy rests on. Organic social media is the best way to nurture a connection with your customers at scale, which in turn increases brand awareness and brand loyalty.
What makes Organic Reach so Powerful?
1. Organic Reach as an inexpensive powerful Marketing Tool
Both organic search and organic social media content are two of the cheapest and correspondingly most effective marketing tools there are. It has the potential to reach both current and potential consumers at large and across borders. Although paid search and paid social media posts are also effective, there is often a large cost incurred such as cost-per-click (CPC), ad auctions, etc. Paid marketing reach interrupts users with content they don’t want and weren’t looking for, whereas organic reach draws in consumers with content they love.
Although those in digital marketing tend to view the introduction of algorithms as having a negative impact on organic reach, it actually leaves us with an even more powerful marketing tool than before. If you’ve built up a good following during the early adopter and mainstream periods of growth you can still optimise organic reach on a mature platform. Read more on the ‘Law of the Double Peak’ and how to optimise timing.
2. Organic Reach enables Brand Awareness and Loyalty
Time investments into quality and relationship building through organic reach enable brand awareness and loyalty. Investment into such effects increases the impact of organic reach through both direct and indirect effects. By indirect effects, I am referring to what has been dubbed as ‘Word Of Mouth Marketing’ (WOMM). WOMM is most likely to occur through organic reach as consumers don’t feel as though they are being sold to. Certain interactions that happen on social media such as ‘refer a friend’ features, sharing posts, and discussion in online communities further boost brand awareness and loyalty, which in turn boost sales.
3. Organic Reach enables more Trust
Lastly, Trust is becoming increasingly important to consumers and organic reach is an effective way of enabling such trust. As mentioned above, there are both direct and indirect effects of organic reach and how it in hand enables trust.
Relative to the direct effects, to put it frankly, people don’t trust paid ads as they feel they are being sold to. This is evident through individuals’ use of ad blockers. In fact, nearly 80% of users ignore paid ads in search results. People tend to trust organic links more than paid ones, and of the links search users click, about 70% are organic Consequently, As consumers are becoming more aware of these ads, and their format and location, the more they are going to be ignored.
The indirect effects as mentioned above include word of mouth etc. People trust each other much more than brands. Organic content provides a level of brand identity and authenticity that simply cannot be achieved through paid reach.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this article effectively highlights how the power of organic reach is extremely underestimated. Understanding the algorithms and your consumer base is key to having a successful organic reach campaign.
The purpose of this article is in no way to belittle the impact of paid reach, as it is also a very powerful marketing tool. The purpose was to highlight that organic reach should not be abandoned and should be continued to be used as the powerful marketing tool it is in conjunction with paid reach.
An organic-first strategy is key for longevity and strong conversion performance. Get ahead of the trend and focus on reviving your organic reach on search engines and social media today. Read more on how to improve your organic reach here.
Sources/ Additional Links:
https://buffer.com/resources/law-of-the-double-peak/
https://blog.hootsuite.com/organic-reach-declining/
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/seo?_ga=2.101314819.367580586.1563374290-527251855.1560789477
https://www.wordstream.com/serp
https://blog.hootsuite.com/organic-vs-paid-social-media/
https://blog.hubspot.com/agency/how-online-word-of-mouth-marketing-is-changing
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