Organic or sponsored promotion? The eternal debate of digital marketers - voila! Marketing & Digital

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"Digital marketers! Stop selling advertising packages to small business owners who barely do organic and scratch the surface of the month! Excellent sponsored will work when there is excellent organic. Do not rush to sell to the customer - understand his business first of all. And if he doesn't do organic, then don't offer him any sponsorship at all!"

This was the post he opened with last week in one of Facebook's largest marketing groups. Judging by the variety of different opinions that came up in the comments, it turns out that this is a real bone of contention. While many claimed that organic promotion was dead, the evidence of business owners being 'screwed' as a result of pouring money into paid promotion without an organic strategy to support it piled up. So what is really behind the claim, and is it true? Opinions in the industry are divided. Proponents of sponsored marketing argued that "organic is long dead, you will be overtaken in a round with a little or a lot of sponsored.", while others argue that without organic promotion it will be very difficult to establish a presence over time and dependence on sponsored advertising tools will increase.

Is it possible to do effective sponsored advertising without organic advertising?

"Quality sponsored marketing based on knowledge, experience and understanding can take you from zero to a hundred in a very short period of time efficiently and effectively. The reason that Google, Facebook and the other marketing chains roll tens of billions and with increasing budgets from year to year is because marketing in these channels works and therefore more advertisers join or increase their marketing budgets. You can succeed in sponsored marketing without investing a minute or a penny in organic promotion. Every new business under construction should save at least half the cost of setting up the business for marketing in the first months of operation."

Others argued that "not every business will have a good organic because not every business needs a good organic. Sponsored is suitable for many small businesses, and a small business that doesn't earn much should invest the limited resources it does have – time and money – on performance-based marketing, rather than on brand awareness. That way, they can start creating flow, getting to know their real customers, and fine-tuning their value propositions. Once significant traffic has been streamed to your website, landing page, or CRM system, you can start using data to create more accurate audiences and build mailing lists."

If all this is true, why do so many businesses fall short on sponsored advertising?

In this regard, the professionals blame the phenomenon of amateurism that has been rampant in the industry for years: "It is likely that they took a beginner campaigner or with not enough experience, who does not understand marketing in depth and does not have the knowledge and ability to look at things in a broad strategic way. By the way, this is one of the biggest problems in this profession, because most campaigners know how to look specifically at what is happening in their campaigns, and fail to understand that there are many other factors around. If the website isn't good, the products aren't priced, the pictures aren't good, they haven't done upsells, and they don't understand how to build funnels, then the campaigns won't convert anyway."

However, some people think that "none of this is relevant to the discussion of organic or sponsored, because it is an issue of user experience (UX) and conversion. Sponsored works without organic and vice versa. It is true that we should strive to strengthen both, but from here to saying that funded will not work without organic is very far from the truth. Each of them has an advantage that the other does not have. Organic will bring higher quality leads, strengthen and retain existing customers, and be a better platform for content. The sponsored will generate leads faster, and more than the organic in the long run."

Regarding the failed campaigns that sometimes cost small businesses their lives, there are those who chose to emphasize that the customer is not always right: "Customers who save every shekel and want packages that include design, sponsored and organic advertising, content writing and customer relationship management service, are customers who do not want to understand that everything has to be paid for and there are those who work hard for it. I'm also someone's customer and I get some kind of service and understand that it costs money, even for me sometimes it's expensive and difficult, but I'm aware. I'm in favor of characterizing customer needs and providing a realistic quote according to the client's budget, but it's enough to ask for your whole hand when you are given a finger, be realistic."

Others attacked the issue from a different angle, questioning the credibility of the advice small businesses receive from professionals: "Today everyone becomes a prophet and recommends only the service he provides. It does organic - so everything else is regret. He does sponsored - everything else is drake. He's a website builder - as far as he's concerned, there's no business without a website. If it provides a service of videos - then every business must have videos. He did a two-day course and pretends to be a business consultant - must have business consulting. At the end of the day, every business needs leads – and sponsored is a great tool to bring leads."

In conclusion,

Yes, paid advertising can still be effective even without organic advertising and vice versa, however, you have to balance the two. For example, if it's a website, you have to embed keywords, whether sponsored or not, because that's the basis for everything. At the same time, if we don't raise our hand and wave it past the competition, it's doubtful they'll see us just because of organic advertising. The ideal way today to succeed on the network is to combine both - this is the algorithm, and all the upgrades and developments go there.

While organic advertising, such as search engine optimization and social media management, can help improve brand visibility and awareness in the long run, paid advertising can provide instant, targeted exposure to your audience, running conversion-focused campaigns across platforms to drive practical results. This is very difficult to do without a sponsor, but there is no shortage of solutions in the marketing industry. For example, you can structure the strategy in such a way that the sponsored looks a bit like organic - work on quality content and then add sponsored promotion to those that have been most successful, and through them promote sales offers.

The effectiveness of paid advertising ultimately depends on factors like your targeting strategies, ad quality, budget and campaign goals, as well as any steps that follow the initial equity. It's important to continually monitor and optimize your campaigns to ensure you get the most out of your investment.

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