For ecommerce businesses, especially those in retail, advertising your business effectively is important for continued growth and success. As a result, decision-making around advertising needs to be strategic, not to mention cost-efficient!
However, if you’re new to ecommerce marketing, it can be difficult to know the best route forward for your business. That’s why we’re here to help.
In this article, we’re going to take a deep dive into organic vs PPC for ecommerce business owners and share the best option for ensuring success.
What is Organic Advertising?
Organic advertising is when you make marketing decisions based on driving customers to your shop naturally. In other words, attracting more customers without paying for advertising.
Organic advertising is often a longer-term strategy than PPC. However, it is typically more sustainable, growing with your business over time and providing you with better and more lasting results.
Organic advertising includes strategies like:
- Social media engagement
- Customer referrals and testimonials
- Content Marketing
- Word-of-mouth marketing
The Benefits of Organic Advertising
Long-Term Results: The best thing about an organic marketing strategy is that it helps you establish a strong digital presence. Organic content creation, for example, can drive ongoing traffic to your website without you incurring any additional costs.
Build Credibility Over the Long Term: Organic advertising is one of the best ways to build your long-term brand credibility. When a brand is well-established online, with a quality, trustworthy presence, it is more likely to attract loyal customers. What’s more, when you gain traffic organically, your users are more likely to stick around for the long term.
Cost-Effective: when you run a retail business, you want to save money where you can. So, you’ll be pleased to know that organic advertising is a cost-effective way to grow your business. It doesn’t require ad spend, making it ideal if you’re an entrepreneur with limited funds. And, when you invest your time in organic marketing strategies, you can build a strong digital presence and grow your visibility over time.
What is Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ecommerce Advertising?
Paid search, otherwise known as Pay-Per-Click advertising, is the common practice of paying for ads in order to reach your target audience faster and more effectively. To successfully run a PPC campaign, a healthy budget and the support of a marketing expert is recommended.
PPC advertising involves paying for ads on platforms such as:
- Online spaces your target audience frequents
The Benefits of PPC Advertising
Immediate Visibility and Traffic: 77% of people search products online before committing to a purchase. Therefore, with the right PPC advertising set-up and strategy, you will see an immediate increase in visibility and traffic to your site. This means you often see impressions, clicks, and sales sooner than you would using an organic marketing strategy.
Scalable Campaigns: PPC is scalable to your business needs. So, as your business grows so too can your PPC campaign. This means you can increase your ad spend as you see positive ad results, therefore reaching more customers and continuing your upward trajectory.
Audience Targeting: paid advertising targets your ideal audience based on factors such as demographics, behaviours, interests, location, and more. This ensures your ads are shown to the right people, greatly increasing your chances of increased conversions.
Paid Search vs Organic Traffic: Which is Better?
As a retailer, you’re working in a highly competitive industry. You’re competing with big, often well-established brands, both in-store and online and, as a result, it can be hard to get your foot in the door, which is why you need a highly targeted marketing strategy.
When trying to establish whether organic advertising is better than PPC, having a clear idea of your business goals, target audience, and specific industry is essential, as it will play a key role in determining your trajectory.
Organic for Retail Growth Online
If you are focused on establishing your brand as reliable, trustworthy, and in it for the long haul, focusing on an organic marketing strategy should be your focus.
PPC for Fast Results
If you’re looking for fast results – for example, you need to get more customers through the door and quickly – paid search is your best bet.
With the right budget and target strategy, a paid search campaign can offer immediate returns. And, when built alongside a long-term organic strategy, it can help you gain visibility in a highly saturated industry.
PPC vs SEO: The Most Powerful Retail Marketing Strategy
While many retailers question whether to commit to PPC or organic marketing, the most lucrative strategy is to use a combination of both.
Paid advertising typically does a great job at increasing your brand visibility and bringing in more traffic to your website, while organic marketing works to establish a reputable online presence that supports positive and long-term brand recognition.
Basically, PPC gets you noticed and organic ensures that (even after the ads stop running) your website continues to achieve results for your business.
4 Ways to Market Your Retail Business Successfully
To help you in your marketing journey, we wanted to share a few tried-and-tested strategies that continue to stand the test of time.
Whether you have a big budget or not, below are a few of the best organic and paid strategies that will help you market and advertise your business effectively.
- Prioritise High Quality Ad Content
Whether you choose to take the organic marketing approach or PPC, focusing on producing high-quality content will be the key to your success.
Whether you’re writing blog posts, product descriptions, or social media posts, do your research, write following SEO best practice and EEAT guidelines, and write for your audience so that you can connect with them on a personal level.
When users are engaged with your brand and connections are established, conversions are sure to follow.
- Website Overhaul
If you want to succeed in your marketing efforts, you need a working website that is optimised for search engines and built for users.
When your website is fast loading, optimised, built with UI/UX in mind, and easy to navigate (to name a few), the user experience will be positive, increasing the likelihood of more conversions.
- Influencer Marketing
Partnering with influencers is one of the most effective ways to expand your reach and market your products to both existing and new customers.
According to Forbes, “by structuring partnerships thoughtfully by starting with test campaigns, providing clear expectations and maximising content usage, your brand can create meaningful influencer relationships.”
- Measure Everything
It can take time to find the right retail digital marketing strategy for your business. For many retailers, it’s a case of trial and error. However, the only way you can reliably know what’s working – and what isn’t – is through data analysis.
Using data to track website performance, identify trends on socials, and better understand user behaviour will help you make informed decisions. What’s more, it will avoid wasted money on no-return marketing strategies that simply aren’t working for your business.
Final Words
Selecting the best advertising strategy for your retail business can feel like a big decision. But ultimately, if you’re putting your efforts into establishing a strong digital presence and marketing your products to your target audience, it’s hard to go wrong.
Both organic and PPC strategies have their benefits. However, the best approach is to combine both to achieve lasting results. We hope the tips and strategies we’ve shared will help you put your best foot forward.
