Organic Marketing 101: Why Organic Growth is The Best for Small Businesses

Organic marketing is kinda our jam! In our past life, we worked at a big marketing agency where we touched everything, but mostly paid advertising. It wasn’t until we started our own business that we truly understood the power of organic marketing and the potential it had to grow our business exponentially. So what the heck is organic marketing and why is it so essential for small business owners? Let’s get into the good stuff!

What is organic marketing?

Organic marketing is the act of generating leads and sales for your business without using paid or boosted ads. Sounds magical right? You spend less money and still generate sales. Sign us up!

However, there is one very important distinction between organic and paid marketing and it’s that organic marketing tends to take more effort and time in order for you to see success. But wait, don’t let that discourage you, because these efforts are long-lasting. We aren’t just talking about a few months’ time, but rather the marketing content you create now, could still bring in sales 3, 5 or 10 years into the future. 

Want to know how? Keep reading… we will teach you our ways!

Why is organic marketing so important for small businesses?

In our opinion, organic marketing is non-negotiable. As a new business owner, not only is it a great way to generate leads without pouring money you don’t have into paid ads, but it’s a great process to instill in your business from day one. As your business grows, you will most likely continue these processes, but you might have a dedicated team helping you along the way. We aren’t saying there isn’t a space for paid marketing. But what we are saying is that crafting a strong organic marketing strategy first should be a priority and here’s why. 

• Organic marketing generates high quality traffic and leads for a much longer period of time than any type of paid marketing. 
• Organic marketing creates credibility, trust and loyalty amongst your audience. 
• 59% of consumers prefer to purchase from brands that they trust.
• Many amongst your audience may use ad blockers and anti-spam solutions to filter out paid ads.
• And if you are worried about needing to match your large competitors’ paid efforts, remember that some 76% of consumers trust small businesses more than large.

Organic marketing tasks to grow your business

Now that you understand the basics, it’s time to dive into the “what” that goes into organic marketing. Here are some monthly, weekly and daily tasks to consider incorporating into your small business to establish a strong organic marketing strategy. 

• Write a blog post 2x per week.
• Post on your primary social media feeds daily – Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. 
• Ask your clients and customers for reviews. Google My Business is our favorite solution for managing and generating customer reviews. 
• Create a new podcast episode 1x per week.
• Re-share your video content to YouTube.
• Focus on outreach to secure guest speaking engagements on podcasts or long form content like guest blog features. These opportunities create trustworthy backlinks that will exponentially improve your SEO.
• Email your list 1x per week with an educational newsletter.
• Batch and schedule your pins for Pinterest every other week. Tailwind is our favorite resource for this.

This isn’t an all-inclusive list, there are many other tasks that would also qualify. Just remember that any task that doesn’t require your dollars, but still generates new traffic and leads would be considered organic marketing. 

Tips for building an organic marketing strategy

Maybe you write a blog post once every six weeks. Or you find the time to post on your social accounts three times on Wednesday but then disappear for two weeks. Or maybe, when you have time, you focus on creating video content, but that is probably only a couple times a year. Unfortunately, we have some bad news for you. Although these would be considered organic marketing tasks, they lack the potential to bring in high quality leads. Why? Because there is no consistency. There is no strategy behind your content. So let’s talk about a few tips to crafting a strong organic marketing strategy.

1. Be Consistent

Looking at the tasks above, you’ll notice that we identified daily, weekly or monthly goals for each task. Setting strict goals for crafting organic content is very important when talking about building brand trust. Showing up consistently is the best proof for your audience that you will also be dependable when it comes to your services and products. 

However, there is another thing to consider when it comes to consistency; your brand visuals and voice. These organic marketing tasks bounce around from one platform to another. A consistent look and voice is essential for creating deep brand recognition amongst old and new audiences. Your Instagram feed, website, Pinterest visuals and even your Gmail signature should all look like one brand. In addition to that, your brand’s voice, tone and personality should be consistent whether you are writing an Instagram caption or typing a client email.  

Not sure where to start? Send us an email! We would love to share our various brand packages with you to help you conquer your brand consistently regardless of which platforms you show up on. 

2. Batch Your Content

So how in the world do we remain consistent in our organic marketing strategies? Say hello to our best friend, batchwork. Whether it’s batching a month’s worth of Instagram Reels in a single day or setting aside time to write our weekly email newsletters in advance, this is our go to solution. Make sure to add these batch tasks to your calendar to keep your organic marketing goals on track. 

3. Set Realistic Goals 

Choose a goal that is achievable for each organic marketing task. Keyword here is achievable. If something feels out of reach or overwhelming chances are you won’t accomplish it. What are some examples of this? 

I will write 1 blog post for my business each week that is published on Mondays. 

Every Tuesday morning I will deliver our weekly email newsletter. 

I will post 3 Reels a week as a part of my social media strategy while still posting daily to Instagram.

Once you’ve set these goals, you must identify how you’ll measure success. Whether it be a monthly, quarterly or annually, you’ll need something to refer back to.

Organic marketing does not create quick results. Let’s say that again. Organic marketing does not create quick results. Instead, it creates high quality, long lasting results that generate leads over time. Meaning without goals and a chance to pause for learning, you might find it hard to consistently dedicate the time to your efforts. Using the examples above, let’s focus on the measurement goal for each. 

I aim to see a 20% increase in website traffic each quarter with 10 new keywords indexed by Google each month. 

I will grow my email list to 500 subscribers by the end of the year.

I aim to secure 2 new leads per month in my Instagram DM’s.

These goals and measurable results will keep you motivated and help you see the dramatic effects that organic marketing can have on your small business.

4. Strong Content Strategy

This is our number one tip when it comes to creating social media content and beyond. Here are just a few examples of questions we uncover as we are building a strong social media strategy. Why are you creating this content? Who is your audience? What does your audience need? What types of content should you be sharing? What kinds of content will actually bring in sales? 

These are all questions we ask ourselves when crafting a social media strategy. If you find yourself constantly asking yourself questions around what types of content to post and share, chances are you either don’t have a strategy or you are lacking some key information into whom your audience is. 

5. Find a way to love these organic marketing tasks

When you love something, you will make the time for it. It’s as simple as that. Let us tell you a little story about this from experience. We started our email list pretty dang close to day one. We created those freebies, yet we struggled to email our list consistently. Why? Because we didn’t feel passionate about the way we were showing up. 

So we turned to our friend and copywriter over at Between The Lines Copywriting to help us craft a unique, on-brand email newsletter that would make us passionate to show up in our audiences inboxes. So, Tuesday Tips & Sips was born! And guess what, we will never miss another Tuesday email again. We have an incredible way to deliver content in a format that our audience craves. Plus, sneaking in that word “Tuesday” into the name, helps keep us accountable to deliver our content consistently. The best part about it? Our list is growing faster than ever!

If you are struggling to hit your content goals, maybe it’s time to take a step back and figure out why. Let’s find a way to bring that passion back into these tasks. 

And there you have it… organic marketing 101 for your small business

Growing a business is hard, but focusing on non-paid marketing tasks makes things a lot easier in those early days and years. Plus, did you know that a lot of the organic marketing tasks we mentioned above are actually considered SEO – or search engine optimization – strategies? If you know us, you know we are SEO nerds and our favorite part about organic search is how simple the strategies can be. 

Curious what the heck SEO is and how to get started? Start here with our simple guide to SEO for small businesses. Or learn all of our secrets with our SEO On Tap course and Keywords Crash Course!