Organic and paid marketing are two fundamentally different tactics. One marketing tactic cannot be deemed better than the other as both can help you achieve different goals. Strategically using a combination of both marketing tactics can prove most beneficial for growing your digital brand presence.  

What is organic marketing?

Organic marketing is a digital marketing tactic focused on attracting attention to your brand and driving traffic to your eCommerce store without investing in ad spend. 

This primarily involves creating attractive brand (product/service) related content with meaningful messaging and consistently publishing it across digital media via multiple channels. You allow your target audience to discover it naturally—hence the term "organic."

This tactic, popularly known as content marketing, has proven to deliver long-lasting results. 

Organic content marketing supports a very effective customer acquisition strategy that begins with engaging your target audience, building relationships with your ideal customers and nurturing a loyal customer base by gaining their trust over time.

Organic channels

Both video and image-based content may be published. Some examples of types of content (unpaid) and publishing channels are:

• Email marketing
• Posts on Facebook business page feed
• Reels and Stories on Instagram
• TikTok videos
• Free lead magnet on Pinterest

What is paid marketing?

As the name suggests, paid marketing is a digital marketing tactic focused on investing in ad spending to promote your brand and eCommerce store. 

This tactic includes running paid ad campaigns across social channels, search engines, and other digital media to reach your target audience quickly and effectively. These ads typically appear with an “Ad,” “Sponsored,” or “Promoted” label attached.

Paid marketing allows you to strategize and plan budgets to advertise your products or services, showcasing to as large an audience as you want to reach, generating immediate traffic to your eCommerce store, and achieving faster results. 

With the ability to target specific demographics and customer persona with behaviors and interests, paid marketing is a powerful tool for businesses looking to scale quickly and achieve measurable outcomes.

Paid platforms

Text, image, and video based ads may be published. Some examples of types of sponsored ads and influencer partnership distribution platforms are:

• Pay-per-click (PPC) ads placed on Google search engine
• Display ads, shopping ads, and more on Google Ads
• Posts on Facebook business page
• Instagram Stories and Reels
• Email and newsletter campaigns
• Single video, Carousel, or Collection ads on Tiktok

Tips for combining organic and paid marketing campaign strategies

Here are some ways you can align your organic efforts and paid ad campaigns with demand-gen strategies to achieve eCommerce success. 

1. Promote your high-performing organic content through paid ads to expand its reach and engage a larger audience.
2. Maintain consistent branding and messaging in both organic and paid campaigns across channels to build trust and recognition.
3. Use a combination of paid ads for immediate visibility along with organic posts for continuous engagement during peak shopping seasons.
4. Analyze the organic metrics of your top-performing posts, to understand audience behavior and use the insights to guide your paid ad campaigns.
5. And vice versa, measure the ad campaign performance using analytics and refine your content marketing strategies based on data-driven insights.

Demand-generation strategies thrive on a balanced blend of organic and paid efforts. Take advantage of Glu's AI-powered campaign creation support, Bulk actions tools, Media editor, streamlined integrations, and Analytics dashboard to enjoy real-time traction for your Shopify store and eCommerce brand.

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