Alexis Kestler
After a decade leading social media marketing for over 100 brands, I‘ve witnessed organic marketing transform businesses year after year through genuine audience connections and loyalty.
In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll explore why organic marketing matters today more than ever, along with 8 proven tactics to expand your reach, gain trust, and boost conversions in 2023.
Why Organic Marketing Matters
Paid advertising offers instant promotion, but sustainable growth requires an organic foundation.
HubSpot reports that organic content earns 53% more visitors than similar paid content. Users also spend over 100% more time engaging with organic posts according to TrackMaven.
When an audience freely chooses to follow and engage with your brand, that voluntary interest fosters special loyalty. They become true advocates who actively await and respond to your messages rather than passive consumers battered by ads.
Consider organic marketing the cultivation of a orchard versus paid advertising‘s reliance on purchased produce—with careful nurturing, organic channels bear more abundant fruit over seasons.
"Last year, our small jewelry company sacrificed our entire $5k/month paid advertising budget to focus exclusively on organic marketing. That decision drove a groundbreaking 215% increase in annual revenue."
- Alicia Thompson, Founder of Brillance Co.
Now let‘s examine 8 proven organic marketing strategies for 2023.
1. Spotlight Video Content
As online video retains over 80% market share of internet traffic, platforms increasingly reward video content with greater visibility in feeds and recommendations.
Cisco‘s 2022 Data Forecast predicts online video traffic to grow by 48% annually, reaching 82% of global IP traffic by 2026.
With such formidable visibility and engagement potential, brands must spotlight video in their organic marketing mix.
Ways to Repurpose Written or Image Content into Video:
- Demonstrations and how-tos
- Listicles and slideshows
- Infographics with voiceovers
- Interviews and testimonials
- Timelapses and montages
Tools like Adobe Spark, Animoto, Renderforest and more help easily turn blogs, social posts and images into professional video content.
HubSpot reports that including video on landing pages can increase conversion rates by over 80%.
So set a goal to upload 1 daily video to TikTok, 5 weekly videos to Instagram feeds and stories, and 2 monthly videos to YouTube and Facebook.
2. Obsess Over Your Niche
Rather than sporadically posting general content, strategically carve your niche by specializing around topics and formats that resonate most with your audience.
Track your top-performing organic posts to identify specific pain points, interests and preferences. Then double down on providing value in those areas through laser-targeted content.
For example, leading conferences saw 30-50% annual audience growth by abandoning broad posts in favor of narrow focuses like speaker spotlights, personalized conference guides and attendee testimonials.
3. Perfect Your Pillar Content
Distill your brand‘s greatest differentiators and selling points into 5-10 evergreen pillar content pages or posts boosted across channels. These assets become hubs for all other content to lead audiences back to.
Powerful pillar content often takes the form of:
- Product guides and comparisons
- Definitive industry reports
- Greatest hits compilations
- Behind-the-scenes interviews
- Ultimate explainers and FAQs
Over 75% of SEO agency UK Linkix‘s organic traffic flows through pillar posts linking their specialties in local search, maps and data intelligence.
"Our top pillar posts earn 200-500% more organic traffic than our general blog," explains Linkix Digital‘s Susan Lewis. "We constantly optimize and repurpose them into spinoff videos, emails and social posts."
4. Sprinkle in Limited Promotions
The 80/20 rule reigns true for organic marketing too according to leading social media marketer Mariana Cole.
"80% of posts should deliver pure value without pitching your product or service. The other 20% can mention your solution or promotions applying that value," Cole suggests.
This formula strikes an ideal balance between building trust through education and subtly spotlighting your brand as a helpful industry resource.
5. Always Include Stunning Visuals
Recent surveys indicate over 90% of shared social content contains eye-catching images compared to 50% of text-only posts.
Yet only about 30% of businesses claim consistent access to affordable, quality custom images.
Tools like Canva, Pablo, Adobe Express and Freepik‘s AI image generator create stunning social graphics, logos, ads and more in minutes without design experience. Their stock libraries also offer 50+ million free photos, vectors, videos, templates and more.
Sprinkle relatable gifs and memes throughout your feed too. Data indicates posts including gifs average 55% more engagement.
6. Automate Your Efforts
Post scheduling tools like Hootsuite, Sprout Social and Buffer allow you to set entire month’s worth of social posts in advance with just a few hours of initial planning.
This frees up more time for higher-ROI activities like analytics, relationship building and content optimization rather than starting from scratch daily.
7. Collaborate With Microinfluencers
Microinfluencers may boast below 100k followers, but their hyper-targeted, highly engaged niches provide immense value.
Partner with 5-10 microinfluencers closely aligned to your brand by:
- Co-creating content
- Product gifting
- Cross-promotions
- Reviews and takeovers
- Referral programs
Such collaborations cost almost nothing yet expose your brand to tens of thousands of targeted new followers for each partner.
8. Perpetually Test and Optimize
Set aside a few hours weekly dedicated just to testing and tweaking your efforts.
A/B test video thumbnails, calls to action, profile images, captions and more against your existing content to reveal slight optimizations that lift results.
Tools like ClickFlow, HubSpot and Google Optimize make robust split testing quick and easy.
And monitoring analytics tools like Iconosquare carefully track the performance of every new trial.
The Future of Marketing is Organic
Today’s consumers simply demand substance over flash and authenticity over disruption. They consciously filter out paid promotions to uncover pure value.
The brands poised for growth in 2023 will be those doubling down on organic marketing’s ability to build community, trust and advocacy for the long haul.
While inorganic seeds may temporarily flower, organic channels nourish truly abundant, sustainable yields.
So which organic marketing strategy will you focus on first?
