What is the best way to market on Facebook? Organic or paid advertising?
The answer depends on your business and how you want it to grow.
In this blog post, we will cover organic marketing and compare it to paid marketing so that you can decide which one is best for your business.
Organic vs. Paid Facebook Advertising: What’s the difference?
If you’re looking to grow your business on Facebook, you might be wondering what the difference is between organic vs. paid marketing and which one should you choose?
Organic Facebook Marketing
Organic Facebook marketing is a great way to gain exposure for your business. This type of Facebook marketing involves sharing posts that get seen by the majority of your fans and followers, without paying anything for them to see it. You can create a Facebook page for your business and be active on it.
When you post on your page, you’ll want to share photos and videos that are engaging. You can also create Facebook Live videos where people will comment or ask questions.
Benefits Of Organic Facebook Marketing
There are many benefits to organic Facebook marketing, including:
It’s free.
You don’t have to pay anything for your posts to show up in the newsfeeds of your fans and followers.You just need an account on Facebook to get started.
Increased trust from customers
When you create a page on Facebook and actively engage with people who follow it, they’ll be more likely to believe that your business is credible.
Gain valuable information about your customers .
When you post on Facebook, people will comment and share it with their friends. This can help you learn more about who your target audience is so that you know how to market to them better in the future.
Cons Of Organic Facebook Marketing
With the good, there is some bad when it comes to organic Facebook marketing. Some of these cons include:
Not everyone will see your post .
While you can share posts that reach most of your followers and fans (depending on their settings), not everyone who follows or likes your page will automatically see what you post. Their newsfeeds are full of other posts from pages that they follow, so yours might not show up. – You don’t control who sees your post .
Organic Facebook marketing means that you can’t choose who exactly will see your posts. People decide which content they want to engage with and what they ignore, based on their interests and newsfeeds.
Time-consuming
When you invest time into organic Facebook marketing, it can be a lot of work. You’ll want to share new content regularly and engage with your followers so that they keep coming back for more. This means spending several hours every week posting on your page and reading through comments from customers.
Paid Facebook Marketing
With paid advertising on Facebook, you’re basically paying for your posts to be shown in the News Feeds of more people than you could organically. If you want a post about an upcoming sale or event to show up on hundreds, thousands, or even millions of news feeds at once – paid Facebook marketing is how it will get there!
There are few formats for Facebook ads:
Facebook News Feed – Your post is shown in the news feeds of more people than organically possible.
Facebook Stories – This is a new section on Facebook. It is like an Instagram story but it only shows up in the news feeds of your followers for 24 hours or less – unless they interact with it by clicking “like”, sharing”, etc.
Facebook Canvas – This format allows you to create a full screen experience where people can swipe through your ad. This format is only available on mobile devices right now, but it could be good for promoting large events or products that people can experience in more depth than a photo.
Video Ads – This is a great way to promote your products or services. The video can be up to 90 seconds long and you get the power of Facebook advertising behind it, including targeting specific audiences.
Benefits Of Facebook Paid Ads
There are many benefits for paid ads on Facebook:
More exposure
You can target people who haven’t Liked your page yet, which means more potential customers.
You can easily track your ads
When you create an ad, the Facebook Ads Manager will show you how many views it’s received and where people are clicking. This makes it easy to know what works (and what doesn’t) with your campaigns so that you can make changes if needed.
The reach of your post is limitless
With paid Facebook marketing, you can have your post show up in the news feeds of hundreds or even millions of people at once. This is great for promoting big events and sales to a wide audience quickly.
Target specific audiences
You can target your ads by age, relationship status, interests & likes, location and more. This makes it easy to reach the right people for your business. You can even target a custom audience if you have an email list.
You can try different ads or messages to see what works best
With paid Facebook marketing, you’re not limited to one post that will reach your entire following. If something isn’t working as well as expected , it’s easy enough to create another ad and keep trying.
The results are instant
You can see how many people have seen your ad and even track where they’re coming from. This means you know right away if something isn’t working, so that you can change it up as needed. The good thing about Facebook ads is that the more specific an audience you target, the better chance you have of success.
You can test new audiences
You might find that your ads perform better for specific age ranges or genders than they do overall, so you can refine them to be more effective over time by changing the targeted audience. If paid advertising isn’t part of your marketing budget yet , it’s a great way to get started with Facebook ads and see quick results!
Cons Of Paid Facebook Marketing
There are some downsides to paid Facebook marketing, too.
Your ad costs money!
Paid ads are not free, so they don’t come without costs. You’ll need to spend an initial amount of money on creating the ad and then more every time you want it to be shown, depending on your budget.
You need to know what you’re doing
This isn’t a format you can just jump into without doing your research. You need to know what audiences look like and how best to reach them, otherwise the ads will be expensive flops .
Which Option is Better – Organic or Facebook?
Organic vs paid Facebook marketing both have their pros and cons, and they can work well together.
Organic marketing is more affordable, while paid advertising lets you target an exact audience of people who might be interested in your products or services.
If you’re debating between paid ads vs organic SEO, consider your budget and the speed at which you want to see results.
Paid ads are a great way to get started with Facebook marketing if organic posts aren’t bringing the results that you need for your business, but it’s also a good idea to keep up organic posts so you can have a balanced content strategy.
You might find that your Facebook page is doing well with paid advertising, but there are other ways to grow your following on social media too. Paid ads aren’t the only way to use Facebook for marketing , and they shouldn’t take away from what you’re doing organically.
If you’re starting out to find which path is better, here what you can do.
Try paid ads for a few months .
It takes some trial and error to figure out what works best, so start with a small budget until you get the hang of it. Once you have an ad that’s performing well , then consider increasing your spending or switching up your targeting options to see if there are any other audiences that will work for your business.
Don’t forget the organic side .
Don’t let paid ads take up all of your time and energy, but continue to post relevant content organically so you don’t lose followers or engagement with potential customers who have shown an interest in what you do by following your page. You can test different types of organic posts to see what works best , just like you would with paid ads.
By using both types of Facebook marketing, your reach will grow and so will your following! You can help yourself by being patient, testing different audiences over time, trying new ideas for organic content as well as paid ads, and diversifying strategies that work.