An earlier version of this article originally appeared on LinkedIn. View it here.
Digital marketing is a robust beast of a tool: it’s enormously effective, but it can be challenging to navigate. There are so many components that go into a cohesive digital marketing strategy that it can be hard for a brand or business to tackle on their own.
At Kirkpatrick Creative, we know the benefits of an integrated approach that’s engineered for each individual client—and we know how to do it successfully. One of these “one-two punches” involves incorporating organic social media and paid digital advertising efforts to work together towards an overall marketing goal.
What’s the difference between social media and digital advertising?
Social media is used to build awareness and position your brand as an organization that’s ready to connect with its audience on a personal level. We use social media to push organic, or unpaid, content out into the world. Then, we use analytics to identify what content is most engaging to the audience. This works toward building and nurturing relationships with existing and potential customers alike.
Digital advertising, on the other hand, is all about pay-to-play. It can be as narrow or as complex as you like: the media bought can span from Google Ads all the way to influencer marketing. Paid digital ads can be placed in several different arenas to reach new and laser-targeted audiences that otherwise wouldn’t have been reached by organic traffic alone.
Digital advertising holds the key to converting social media followers into clients by presenting them with the right messaging at the right time: when they need your service or are open to buying your product. Organic social media simultaneously builds a brand presence and a relationship with audiences to keep your brand top-of-mind for when that time arrives. By using a hard “hook,” digital advertising is what drives potential customers to take action, such as making a call or filling out a form, and closes the sale.
How do social media and digital advertising work together?
On its own, social media is a free platform that can, over time, generate some leads and some brand conversation. However, when paired with digital advertising, social media becomes even more powerful. We’ve found that the integrated approach—with cohesive messaging in each medium—brings faster results with an increased and steady followership.
Our social and digital marketing managers often soundboard off each other in terms of content development and promotion. For example, if an organic social post is performing well, we will often recycle that post as digital advertising content to increase engagement even further. This is a great way to think smarter, not harder, in terms of content creation while also boosting overall paid and organic reach. Digital media buying on a social media platform can effectively increase engagement specific to your target audience.
What do the results look like?
Depending on your specific marketing goals, there are several opportunities to get creative with the integration of organic social media and digital advertising. We took this approach for our client Arkansas Surgical Hospital (ASH) and saw tremendous results:
Inviting new followers based on ads targeted to a specific demographic also refines the page’s follower base: now, the organic content served on social media reaches the exact audience we want to speak to.
How can social media and digital advertising help your business?
When you put dollars behind digital ads or spend time polishing your brand’s social media presence, you need to have a strategy that works like a well-oiled machine. At Kirkpatrick Creative, we take an integrated approach to all of our media, especially in the digital advertising space. By coupling digital ad buying dollars with an organic social media strategy, your business can efficiently and effectively drive your audience to your page to view and react to your content, creating loyal followers that are likely to turn into repeat customers.
If you’re already spending marketing dollars, this strategy will not just save you money—most of the time, it can make you money and get you more results. ROI is just as important to us, and we want to prove that we go above and beyond for each of our clients.
Cohesive strategies like this one are what we like to call advertising engineered to work. Give Kirkpatrick Creative a call today to start engineering your custom plan.