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The debate between organic and paid marketing strategies continues to challenge many companies.
Which approach delivers better results? Are there specific circumstances where one clearly outshines the other? When should a business start using both channels?
Organic marketing focuses on building genuine relationships without a hefty budget. It comes down to creating valuable content, optimizing for SEO, and leveraging social media to attract and nurture prospects.
On the other hand, paid marketing provides you with immediate visibility and quick returns on investment, making it an attractive option for businesses looking for more rapid results.
But how do you decide which approach to take? Well, we turned to the experts for help.
To answer these questions, we teamed up with multiple partners and surveyed 130 companies and professionals to get their take on what works best today.
In this report, we’ll dive into the insights and experiences shared by these experts, examining the benefits and drawbacks of each approach. We’ll also explore real-world examples and provide actionable advice to help you determine the best marketing strategy for your business.
Let’s dive in.
Organic marketing refers to strategies and tactics businesses use to organically acquire customers over time, without spending money on paid advertising.
This approach involves search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, social media, and word-of-mouth referrals to build brand awareness and drive traffic.
The primary goal is to create valuable, relevant content that builds authentic connections with the target audience.
Paid marketing means spending money to reach a specific audience through various paid advertising channels.
This includes methods such as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, display ads, sponsored content, and other forms of paid promotions. The goal of paid marketing is to quickly generate traffic, leads, and conversions through targeted advertising.
Before we get into the specific insights our respondents shared, let’s first check out who exactly we talked to for this report.
Alongside our partners, we surveyed 130 companies to find out where companies invest more and why – in paid ads or organic marketing.
Out of this, 45.38% of our respondents belong to Marketing & Advertising (most likely agencies).
And more than 75% of the surveyed companies have less than 50 employees.
As for the size of the marketing team, more than half of our respondents have 2-10 (both in-house and outsourced) full-time equivalent people.
Most of these companies have annual paid advertising budgets under $50,000. The same applies to organic marketing.
However, what’s really interesting is that it seems that more companies have slightly higher budgets for organic. Also, 22.34% of them don’t have a formal budget for organic marketing.
What about actually managing these channels – who is in charge?
Well, over 60% of the surveyed companies manage both their organic marketing and paid marketing in-house. 9.47% of the surveyed companies stated that they don’t do paid marketing at all.
If your company uses organic and paid marketing channels, you can join our Organic and Paid Marketing Benchmarks for All Companies benchmark group for free. The benchmark data that’s shared within the group is anonymous for all participants.
Once you join the group, you’ll get the opportunity to anonymously compare your own results with other companies – all you have to do is connect your tools to the group.
The group has more than 8,000 members and shows metric values from Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, TikTok Ads, Microsoft Advertising, and more – in real-time.
Still not sure whether to join our group? In that case, here’s a sneak peek of what you can expect to find within it. Below are just some of the insights we extracted from the group.
According to the data provided by the Benchmark Group Organic and Paid Marketing Benchmarks for All Companies, CTR in June (Google Search Console) was 1.85% (median, 3105 contributors).
In the same period, CTR for Google Ads was 5.13% (median, 5727 contributors).
At the same time, the CTR for Facebook Ads was 1.64% (median, 2232 contributors).
Want more benchmark data like this? You can access it in just a few minutes, if you join the Organic and Paid Marketing Benchmarks for All Companies benchmark group. It’s free for everyone.
Now that we’ve covered our benchmark data, let’s take a look at how companies responded to our surveys and some of the key insights we were able to extract.
Let’s start with the effectiveness of organic and paid marketing.
When it comes to the effectiveness of the organic marketing channels companies use, all given options were marked as at least moderately effective.
When it comes to the effectiveness of the paid marketing channels companies use, Google Ads, Facebook Ads (including Instagram), Email marketing, Display Advertising (e.g., Banner Ads, Retargeting), Sponsored Content or Influencer Marketing, and LinkedIn Ads were marked as at least moderately effective by most companies.
We also asked companies to tell us which marketing approach delivers better results for their company in various areas.
Organic methods prevailed in most areas, except for ‘Reaching our target audience.’
Most companies we talked to review both paid and organic marketing campaigns at least once per month.
And most surveyed companies assess the return on investment (ROI) for their organic marketing initiatives through:
As for assessing the ROI for paid marketing initiatives, most surveyed companies do it through:
Do any of these companies combine both organic and paid marketing channels? They sure do.
Surveyed companies integrate paid and organic marketing strategies for a cohesive approach by:
When used properly, both organic and paid marketing strategies can bring a wealth of benefits.
Below, we’ll check out some of the success stories our respondents shared and get into the details of exactly how they leveraged these channels for best results:
Referrals and word-of-mouth advertising are powerful organic marketing strategies because they use the trust and credibility of happy customers.
When customers love one of your products or services, they naturally share their experiences with friends, family, and colleagues. This kind of promotion can increase brand awareness and attract new leads.
Companies can encourage this by offering referral programs that reward customers for bringing in new business. For instance, like Dropbox famously gave extra storage space to users who referred friends.
Or, you can even ask them to refer your services to others in the business, just like Colt Agar of Red Stag Fulfillment recommends:
“We kindly request referrals from our clients. Word-of-mouth advertising and social proof have been our strongest organic marketing strategies thus far. Satisfied clients automatically speak to the quality of our services, so it boosts our trust factor with cold audiences in record time. It’s also the least costly marketing approach, generating consistent results for us each quarter.”
When companies create unique studies and gather valuable insights directly from experts, they can build authoritative and credible content that sets them apart.
This type of content is often more interesting and shareable, as it provides fresh perspectives and data that audiences actually find useful.
You can use this original research in infographics, social media posts, YouTube videos, or blog posts (just like we’re doing here!).
Here’s how Pete Caputa, the CEO of Databox, explains this organic marketing strategy:
“We have created 1,000+ articles based on original research. For each piece of content, we ask 100s of people the same questions. Some of those questions are multiple choice questions which allow us to determine the % of respondents who do something specific. Some of those questions are open-ended questions, which allow us to collect stories about how different people have done things.
We weave this data and these stories together in articles. These articles tend to get a lot of inbound links and social shares because they are first-of-a-kind data points and original stories.”
Peter Caputa
CEO at Databox
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Grouping content around a main topic is a great way for companies to offer a complete resource that covers different subtopics in detail.
This not only helps with search engine rankings, as it shows your site is an expert on the topic, but also makes the user experience better by providing a wealth of related information.
For instance, a digital marketing company might have a central hub on SEO, with blogs and videos linked to it that talk about keyword research, on-page optimization, and link building.
Jason Sealand of Mad Vikings Beard says that his team uses “content cluster targeting, where we create a series of interconnected blog posts, articles, or videos that all focus on a central theme or keyword, like: “How to use Beard Oil”?
Each piece of content is then optimized for relevant long-tail keywords (more specific searches with lower competition) that relate back to the main theme. By building this content cluster and working on our backlinking, we establish ourselves as an authority on the topic of beard care, by improving our website’s ranking for those specific keywords, and keeping visitors engaged by offering a comprehensive resource in our niche.”
PRO TIP: Is YouTube part of your content marketing strategy? If so, you might benefit from our free YouTube Channel Performance Dashboard that you can use to track all of your most relevant video metrics in one place. From watch time to subscribers, you’ll have everything laid out in a single dashboard.
You can also leverage advanced content optimization techniques like semantic SEO, AI-driven content analysis, and personalized content recommendations, to make sure your content hits the right audience and keeps them interested.
These methods help create more relevant content that speaks directly to your prospects, which means higher chances of conversion.
Ashok Sharma of Techmagnate shared his results with this strategy and the techniques his team used:
“We increased 627.24% website traffic and leads 504.28% through organic search by leveraging advanced content optimization techniques.
First, we used semantics entities and NLP where we utilized advanced semantic analysis tools, such as neuronwriter.com, to optimize content for search engines and user intent. We also leveraged content template implementation, where we developed a standardized content template across the website to ensure consistency and user intent.”
LinkedIn’s robust targeting capabilities allow companies to focus their ads on users based on job titles, industries, and other professional criteria.
This way, you can also tailor your campaigns and messaging to resonate with the unique needs you know this audience has.
Riley Timmins of Cacheflow has seen great success with this LinkedIn Ads strategy:
“We continue to invest in paid marketing because it guarantees we can reach our core audiences consistently. Each job persona has its own cold prospecting campaign in LinkedIn ads, and we update a new set of creative monthly to educate, gain interest, and source demos across our 4 ICP personas. We use tools like Metadata.io to increase our ad targeting quality, as well as exclusion lists. After you can confidently target and reach your core audience, it just comes down to the mix and quality of ad creative to consistently convert ‘buying-mode’ prospects.”
High-performing SEO pages, which already rank well and attract organic traffic, can be further leveraged through dynamic search ads.
These ads automatically create ad copy based on your web page content, making them relevant to the topic and increasing click-through rates. This way, you can attract a bigger audience and get more qualified traffic to your site.
Plus, dynamic search ads can cover areas where your organic search might miss, giving you better overall coverage in search results.
Blake Smith of ClockOn is one of our respondents who use this strategy:
“We’ve been leveraging high-performing SEO pages with dynamic search ads while setting a CPC bid limit. This strategy uses the strength of your SEO efforts by utilizing pages that already perform well in organic search.
Since these pages have optimized metadata and high keyword relevance, by setting up dynamic search ads, we get relevant ad headlines and landing pages based on the content. This ensures that the ads are highly relevant to user queries, increasing the likelihood of engagement.”
Blake Smith
Marketing and Sales Manager at ClockOn Australia
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Using dynamic product ads on Facebook is an effective strategy for promoting products to users who have shown interest in similar items.
DPAs automatically display relevant products to users based on their browsing behavior, making the ads highly personalized and likely to drive conversions.
You can connect to your product catalog and display a variety of items without needing to create separate ads for each one.
Here’s how Arum Karunianti of Voisse uses this strategy in his business:
“One specific strategy I implemented to maximize results from paid marketing efforts was the utilization of dynamic product ads (DPAs) on Facebook for an e-commerce client. By leveraging Facebook’s pixel and catalog features, we created personalized ad experiences based on user’s browsing behavior and interests.
This strategy allowed us to showcase products that users had already viewed on the client’s website, increasing the likelihood of conversion. We also implemented retargeting campaigns to re-engage users who had previously visited the website but did not make a purchase.”
Google Consent Mode allows you to adjust how your Google tags behave based on the consent status of your users. This way, you can still track conversions and get insights while respecting user privacy choices.
Enhanced Conversions take this a step further by making conversion tracking more accurate. When users consent, it captures conversion data from your website and matches it with Google’s user data, even if cookies are limited.
These tools together help keep your ads effective and compliant, giving you a clearer picture of how your campaigns are doing while respecting user privacy.
Zac Terry of The Search Labs shared his successful results with using these features:
“We recently implemented Google Consent Mode and Enhanced Conversions on all of our clients’ sites. We also added conversational forms to gather more user data. All these have led to a conversion rate increase from 3% to 9%. Clients had reported more qualified leads turning into clients.”
Most companies we surveyed the budgets for both organic and paid will increase in the next 12 months (Organic budget will increase – 67.37%; Paid budget will increase – 50.53%).
But that’s not all the changes these experts plan to introduce going forward.
Here are some of the most common planned changes to organic and paid marketing strategies that our respondents talked about:
Content marketing is all about creating valuable content that attracts and keeps your audience interested – and if you’re doing a good job at it, why not do more of it?
By regularly producing great articles, videos, and infographics, you can become a go-to expert in your industry and build trust with your audience.
Several respondents in our survey talked about planning to invest more in content marketing going forward.
Andre Oentero of Breadnbeyond shared that his team “plans to invest in content marketing, producing more informative blog posts, video tutorials, and downloadable resources to establish our expertise in explainer videos. Additionally, we’ll enhance our social media presence by exploring new platforms and engaging content formats.”
Paul Burke of Oakwood Management Company is also “investing a good amount of time on dozens of landing pages and blog posts to help us build topical authority for the most valuable organic searches we’re targeting.”
Mateusz Calik of Delante shared how they “experienced a trend where leads and customers from paid traffic have a much shorter lifespan than the one from organic searches. Even if we count all the costs in, and conversion cost is the same, we prefer organic marketing, as it has more long-term positives.”
That’s why Mateusz says that “for 2024, we’ll be increasing our organic marketing budget, keeping the paid one on the same level as it was. In our 5-year plan, we want to keep on reducing the paid strategies and improving our organic efforts.”
Posting on industry-specific forums helps you join discussions, share your expertise, and build credibility in niche communities. Quora is another excellent platform where you can answer questions related to your field, showing your expertise.
What’s more, with Google prioritizing search results from Reddit and Quora since this past update, this can also be a great way to get more leads organically.
That’s exactly what Philip Mann of iDesignYours plans to do:
“My organic marketing strategy over the next year will be to focus more on social media and forum posts like LinkedIn articles and Quora. This seems to be the direction that Google is taking with SEO.”
PRO TIP: While LinkedIn Ads can bring some impressive results, tracking the performance of your campaign still isn’t quite as intuitive as it could be. If you’re one of the marketers who still struggle with this, you can download our free LinkedIn Ads Account Overview Dashboard to simplify the process. Here, you can track metrics like campaign performance, ad performance, clicks, and more all in one place.
Webinars let you show off your expertise and interact with attendees in real-time, which helps build deeper connections with your target prospects. You can cover a variety of topics, like product demos or industry trends, and give participants the chance to ask questions and get immediate answers.
Live Q&A sessions are another great way to connect directly with your audience, addressing their concerns and curiosities.
Brendan Brown of The Expert Editor says that his plan is to “refine our organic marketing strategy to focus even more on user engagement through interactive content. Specifically, I’m thinking of introducing webinars and live Q&A sessions to connect with our audience’s ongoing thirst for knowledge about writing and editing.”
“I believe that this direct interaction will lead to a deeper connection with our clients. Additionally, we aim to explore the potential of AI tools to fine-tune our content for even better organic reach. This approach aligns with our commitment to being at the forefront of educational resources in the editing space.”
AI is changing how search engines understand and rank content, so it’s crucial for businesses to stay updated. The SGE is the next big thing in search technology, aiming to make search results more intuitive and relevant with the help of AI.
To stay ahead, businesses should integrate AI tools for creating content, analyzing keywords, and understanding their audience. Also, make sure your content is optimized for AI-driven search algorithms.
There’s still a lot on this topic that’s yet to be released, so it’s important to stay ahead of the latest information.
Jonathan Aufray of GrowthHackers says:
“With the rise of AI and the upcoming SGE (Search Generative Experience), search engines might be disrupted and consequently organic and paid traffic. The goal will be to follow those changes and adapt.”
Jonathan Aufray
CEO at Growth Hackers
Jamie Thomson of Brand New Copy shared that “in response to the rise of AI in SEO and marketing, I plan to repurpose written content as videos and embed them into articles to provide readers with more of a ‘human’ touch.”
“I think it’ll become important to readers and search engines for content to be based on personal experience and insights. Also, I believe that Google will start to show AI-generated content as featured snippets in search results, which may push organic results further down the page and decrease organic traffic for businesses as a whole.”
We asked companies if they had an extra $25,000/month to invest in marketing, what they would invest it in. A slight majority (52.63%) of respondents voted for paid marketing.
Let’s check out exactly what they had to say about this choice:
If you need instant leads and conversions, paid marketing is undoubtedly the better choice between the two. Or, perhaps you already have a decent organic marketing engine in place and you want to increase your presence on paid channels.
Whatever the case is, there are plenty of reasons why it’s a good idea to allocate your extra budget to paid advertising.
Tim Simpson of ScaleNorth says that “despite my affinity for organic channels, I think $25k/month would be worth throwing at paid channels. We could easily increase the budgets on our advertising, while focusing man hours on creating real, organic relationships and trust with our followers and prospects via organic channels.”
“To me, that’s a win-win. Having the budget to spend on search and display networks, while using your thought leadership to create rapport on a more personal basis with your target market.
Antonio Tinoco of Kinsta says that while they would “probably split the $25k between paid and organic, we would be skewing heavier towards paid because there is room to increase conversions without drastically affecting our other metrics.”
If you want to set your business up for the long run and create marketing assets that will bring in leads months (and even years) after they’re created, then organic marketing is the way to go with your extra budget.
Milo Cruz of BuddyCRM says that he would invest the extra $25k in organic marketing and that “the rationale behind this decision is our observed long-term value and sustainability of organic growth.”
“Investing in content creation, SEO, and improving user experience on our website would not only attract more quality leads but also enhance our brand authority in the CRM industry. While paid marketing offers quick wins, the enduring impact of a well-executed organic strategy offers more significant benefits to our business stability and growth.”
Tihana Muric Lalic of Made Online says that the answer is simple for why she would invest in organic:
“The answer is simple – paid works only until there is a budget to burn. Right after the campaign stops, you can’t get anything out of it. With SEO done the right way, that budget can help you scale up content production that will rank, and once the budget is spent, that content will continue to grow exponentially for months and years to come.
I already have some examples of clients who stopped their SEO activities and they continued to rank 2 years after that and still got organic leads. SEO is compounding and exponential. BUT I would definitely do the combination of both and use 15-20k for organic and 5-10k for Paid.”
Martin Kanaan of Makolab says his choice would be organic because it “creates stronger audience relations, better brand awareness and has led to a bigger and more sustainable lead generation than the paid marketing.”
For some, the best solution with the extra $25,000 would be to split it equally between organic and paid marketing.
Here’s how Jessica Shee of iBoysoft puts it:
“If given an additional $25k per month in the marketing budget, I would invest it in both paid and organic marketing strategies, albeit with a focus on different areas.
For paid marketing, I would allocate a portion of the budget towards scaling up our successful paid advertising campaigns. This could involve increasing the budget for high-performing ad campaigns across various platforms such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or LinkedIn Ads. Additionally, I would explore testing new paid advertising channels or experimenting with more advanced targeting options to reach new audiences and drive more conversions.
On the organic marketing side, I would use the additional budget to invest in content creation and distribution efforts. This might include hiring additional resources to produce more high-quality content, such as blog posts, videos, or interactive tools, that resonates with our target audience. I would also focus on expanding our organic reach through search engine optimization (SEO), social media engagement, and influencer partnerships to attract more organic traffic and improve brand visibility.”
Choosing between organic and paid marketing strategies can be a daunting task, especially with so many experts offering varied opinions on these channels.
But as we’ve seen from our extensive research, both approaches have their unique benefits and can be incredibly effective when you use them properly.
From the long-term benefits of organic strategies like SEO and content marketing to the immediate impact of paid campaigns, the key is understanding how each can fit into your overall marketing plan.
But there’s one more thing – how do you know if your efforts are truly paying off compared to your competitors?
This is where Databox comes into play.
With Databox’s Organic and Paid Marketing Benchmarks for All Companies group, you can gain instant access to real-time insights into how other businesses in your industry are performing with both organic and paid marketing. This helps you see where you stand and find areas for improvement.
And that’s not the only benchmark group you’ll have at your disposal – with our product, you can check benchmarks for all the different departments, from finance and accounting to sales and marketing.
You also get free access to Databox Dashboards, which provide a comprehensive view of your most critical metrics in one place, making it easier to track your progress and adjust your strategies accordingly.
What are you waiting for? Join a benchmark group today and start leveraging these powerful tools to stay on top of your organic and paid marketing efforts.
Are you maximizing your business potential? Stop guessing and start comparing with companies like yours.
At Databox, we’re obsessed with helping companies more easily monitor, analyze, and report their results. Whether it’s the resources we put into building and maintaining integrations with 100+ popular marketing tools, enabling customizability of charts, dashboards, and reports, or building functionality to make analysis, benchmarking, and forecasting easier, we’re constantly trying to find ways to help our customers save time and deliver better results.
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Filip Stojanovic is a content writer who studies Business and Political Sciences. Also, I am a huge tennis enthusiast. Although my dream is to win a Grand Slam, working as a content writer is also interesting.
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