Organic promotions are the promotions an organization does not pay for. It is the result of a user’s search query or his social media interactions. There are two types of promotions in general – organic and paid. As the name suggests, a paid promotion is the opposite of organic promotion as it is an advertisement that the company is required to pay for.

Organizations are always in search of the best approach to promote their products and services through digital marketing. A decade ago, when organizations were still in the early stages of dabbling with digital advertising, it meant banner ads, spam emails and other forms of advertising. However, these were just precursors to the current forms we see today. Brands realised that the potential of digital can be explored by building value and credibility. A great strategy requires a good share of organic reach. Thus, the organizations shifted their focus from the earlier paid forms of advertising to creating quality content and then promoting it through various modes of promotion.

The Relevance of Organic Promotion

The organizations of today have risen up to digital marketing and understand that content quality is a must for generating a genuine interest in the brand. However, with an increase in digital traffic and competition, the terrain has become more slippery than ever. The customers have been exposed to a variety of promotional tools on the internet and have become immune to the presence of most of them. The brands of today cannot rely on paid display ads or marketing emails to drive home their message. Therefore, it has become crucial for them to have a genuine and organic presence into the lives of their intended audience. Therein comes the need for organic promotion.

Organic Promotion Through Offline & Paid Media

Organic promotion requires brands to follow the rules of search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is the method of making content attractive to search engines so that it can appear higher up in the search results. Brands are very particular about their keyword placements, inbound link quality, headline length and its quality, website navigation, load times, directory submissions etc.

Brands focus on creating visibility on social media channels. For example, the use of hashtags on Instagram and Twitter make it possible for a brand to appear in search results of users searching for relevant content. Influencer marketing is another way to create a credible form of brand engagement. Famous online bloggers like cookery show hosts, lifestyle and fashion bloggers etc. have a strong connect with their followers. There are millions of people who watch their videos and read their content every single day. Companies promote their brand via these influencers to create a lasting impact on a relevant target base.

Big Bazaar Food Organic Campaign

The catch is that in today’s digital diaspora all brands understand the basic rules and adhere to them. Therefore, the brands that succeed have a consistent message across all mediums. Offline promotion is still all-pervasive and strong across all segments of audiences. Brands need to merge the world of online with the offline world for organic campaigns to succeed.  The customer lives in both real and virtual worlds in parallel and organic promotion should be fluid enough to move across all customer touchpoints, re-emphasizing the same message consistently. Many brands promote their social media “#” tag in their offline campaigns like print and television. For example, the handset brand Oppo is promoting a keyword “big game big cashback” in their TVCs. This is an organic campaign that spreads through customer engagement. Another Example is of Big Bazaar Promoting their Search for“big bazaar food” on Google on paid mediums like Facebook and Instagram is helping them boost Organic traffic on their website.

Pros and Cons of Organic Campaigns

There are many significant benefits to a campaign like Oppo’s  “big game big cashback” and Big Bazaar’s “Big Bazaar Food”. SEO through Offline & Paid media does not need to be in a place with the internet. It just needs to happen in a place with the right target audience who can later access your website. A small business can distribute paper fliers in a mall with its hashtag or its website link. All this helps promote organic traffic to the website and leads to an improvement in search rankings of the business. Since its user-generated, it continues long after the campaign ends. It obviously has a better Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) than paid and social media campaigns. However, since its user-generated, an organization cannot control the rankings on Google search, unlike paid campaigns. Secondly, a competitor can easily hijack the keywords and use it smartly to get traffic on their own website through paid campaigns.

Organic promotions through offline media leverage the reach of offline media and extend it to the online properties of a brand. It is a must for a brand to incorporate such campaigns in its digital promotions. With time and experience, a brand can create a great brand to connect and reach through it.

During your digital marketing training, you must have learned several metrics that give you insight into how social media campaigns are performing and what returns they are giving. When you actually start tracking the analytics, it can get an overwhelming exercise. You may feel at loss on proving to your customers how your social media strategy is reaping the desired results.

It is imperative to pick the right metrics and track only what really matters. Here is your quick guide to understanding it further.

Determine the Social Media Goal

What is the goal of the brand’s social media strategy? Setting goals will outline the expectations clearly. Ideally, these goals should be specific – get 10k likes in a month or drive a footfall of 2k on the website. But, if the brand is new in the market or has launched a new product, the goal may be to create a buzz.

Shortlist the Social Media Channels

A professional travel photographer would benefit more from Instagram while a B2B organization can grow the business by generating leads from LinkedIn. Select the social media channel(s) (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Google+, etc) where the brand is likely to get a number of users and engagement. The next step would be to identify the content types that the brand would like to push – blogs, white papers, e-books, infographics, images, videos or SlideShare.

So, in the case of the travel photographer, a blog (content-type) on his or her travel experiences featuring photographs (content-type) of the location can be shared both on Facebook (social media channel) as well as Instagram (social media channel).

Decide the Metrics That Need to be Measured

Social media analytics can generate mines of data you may find difficult to navigate through. The good news is that since each social media channel has its own metrics, your half job is done. Had you been randomly promoting the brand on any channel using any content type, you wouldn’t have been able to decide the specific metrics to monitor. Now, you only need to select metrics which enable the brand in the decision-making.

For example, Facebook has metrics such as a number of likes, post reach and number of page views. If the social media goal is to increase the page likes, this is what is to be measured. If the number of likes is less than expected, you will have to think ways of boosting them.

Whether you are a novice or an expert in social media metrics, it is always a good idea to enhance your knowledge further with online digital marketing courses. These courses include detailed modules on social media metrics to make even the most complex concepts easy to understand.

More Information:

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MICA Advanced Certificate In Advertising Management And Public Relations