As consumers continue finding ways to block ads and opt out of tracking, the ability to reach audience segments organically is becoming an increasingly valuable marketing skill. While paid digital advertising remains the most impactful tool in a marketer’s proverbial box, organic content marketing can target audience segments while helping meet growth objectives at minimal cost. This economical nature, coupled with audience-relevant content, can make organic marketing more sustainable than paid advertising in the long term.
Without the analytical and targeting tools available through major digital/social advertising platforms, however, how can companies be sure their organic content marketing is reaching its target audience(s)? The answer is to know one’s demographics and their online behaviors, then to craft relevant messaging suited to the platforms they prefer.
What is Organic Content Marketing?
Organic content marketing utilizes strictly natural outreach rather than promotions and paid advertisements. Examples include unpaid social media, blog marketing, and email marketing. These marketing tactics attract and convert consumers via quality content that provides them with value at minimal to no cost to the business.
The objectives of organic content marketing are twofold: to enhance brand awareness and foster a meaningful connection with the audience. This is best achieved through educational or entertaining content. When executed correctly, organic marketing establishes enduring sources of traffic to your website, naturally growing your audience over time.
Content Marketing for Target Audiences
Effective organic content marketing helps customers feel an emotional connection to your brand through content that prioritizes assistance, education, or entertainment. Achieving this, however, requires a thorough understanding of your audience, including the platforms they engage with and the language they use.
Audience research can be conducted with insights from social media, your website’s Google Analytics, and by assessing market trends. You might find that your content marketing’s target audience can be divided into groups based on factors like age, gender, income, geography, interests, etc. This is known as audience segmentation, and categorizing your audience accordingly allows for more precise marketing.
Platforms & Content
Once your audience/segments has/have been identified, a look at the user demographics of major online platforms will reveal where they are likely spending their time online. This will, in turn, determine the type of organic content marketing to be crafted for them.
For example, will you be communicating with urban Millennial businessmen on X (formerly Twitter) via 280-character financial tweets, Gen Z students via shortform sketches on TikTok, or cooking enthusiasts via longform instructional video on YouTube?
Content Marketing for Organic Search & Social Media: Keywords & SEO
Content marketing for organic search and social media is most effective when keywords are included. Although paid services, marketing tools like SEMrush and Google Keyword Planner can suggest popular search terms related to your product or service and provide insights into the relative ease/difficulty of earning site hits with those words.
Including these search terms in your blogs and webpage content shows search engines that the information they contain is relevant to your audience’s searches. These words and phrases can also be incorporated into social media posts and can inform the creation of unique hashtags, making your organic content marketing more easily searchable on a given platform by its target audience.
Learn more about the relationship between content marketing and SEO.
Timing & Patience
Even when audience, platforms, and content are seamlessly united, planning and executing an organic content marketing strategy requires a time commitment. Research, audience building, content generation, and scheduling all take time on their own, but in the case of content marketing for organic search (i.e., blogs and webpages), it can take approximately 90 days for traffic to the page to gain significant traction.
The Result
By assessing audiences/segments, their interests, and the online platforms they favor then creating content accordingly, your organization can become not just a purveyor of goods or services but a trusted source of information on the topics that matter to your customers. When they go online looking for answers, your messaging will be waiting for them and anticipating their needs.
The strategic, marketing, and creative professionals at Niki Jones Agency, Inc. have countless years of experience planning, implementing, and managing organic content marketing initiatives and SEO campaigns for clients who understand the importance of a solid content strategy. Learn what our strategic marketing team can do for you.
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