Organic vs Paid: Which One Builds a Stronger Brand?

Two Different Tools for Two Different Jobs

Organic content versus paid content. They're both important. But maybe you're at the stage where you should just be doing organic content while you get things structured, and maybe you're ready for paid advertising and don't even know it. Most people never stop to ask which one their business actually needs right now.

Here's the simplest way I can break it down. Organic content is for three things: education, entertainment, and inspiration. When you go to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, whatever, and you're giving one of those three things, that's organic content. Paid advertising is good at something completely different: promotion, testimonials, and lead generation. Two tools. Two jobs. Don't confuse them.

Organic Is a Garden, Not a Vending Machine

Organic content is just like a garden. When you plant vegetables, they grow with time. You've got to water it. You've got to take care of it. You've got to communicate with the people commenting and sending you messages. That's the watering. It does not happen overnight, and it doesn't happen fast. Some people grow quickly, some grow slower, but everybody who has a big following today started at zero.

I have somewhere around a hundred and something thousand followers across my social media platforms today, and it took me several years to get to the point where I have real attention from people, where I can educate them, inspire them, and eventually earn their trust. It doesn't matter what your name is. Mr. Beast, Frank Suarez, anybody. At some point they had zero, and then they got their first follower. You have to respect that road.

So what is the purpose of organic content? Build community. Exclusively to build community. Because eventually that community is going to do something for you, and that community is going to help you produce revenue for your business. You educate, inspire, and entertain because you're building trust, and by building trust you're building community.

You Can Build a Massive Company on Organic Alone

There are businesses that have created massive companies almost entirely on organic. My brand NaturalSlim is one of them. I do not need paid. I do paid right now because I want to grow, but I live off of organic.

Another great case study is Glow, the makeup brand. If you've ever walked past one of their stores in New York, there's a line of people waiting to get in. That was built on organic content. People sharing on social media, using their products, talking about them, testimonials flying around everywhere. They did not put a lot of attention on paid. The community did the marketing for them.

What Makes a Paid Strategy Actually Work

The purpose of paid ads is converting. You want to get people to take the next step of the journey with you. Get them out of social media and into your list, into your world, committed to eventually buying your products and services. And there are companies built entirely on paid that have done really well.

Dollar Shave Club went from zero to a one billion dollar exit in four years with a paid ad strategy. One video, mostly, is responsible for it. One very well made video that probably cost upwards of a hundred thousand dollars to put together. That's the first thing paid demands: high quality content. You create that one piece, or those ten pieces, that you can push advertising dollars behind, and once one of them catches fire, off to the races. Humor, attention grabbing, real creative minds behind it. These pieces take more time and more money, but when you hit a home run you can go and go and go.

The second thing is the funnel and the offer. When people come in, you'd better turn that ad spend into as much order value as possible. Upsells, cross sells, down sells. Do this correctly and that one to one ad ratio, a dollar in and a dollar back, becomes one to three, one to four, one to five. Think of the free plus shipping book offer. People say wow, you're giving me the book for free? How sweet of you. You see how marketing is perception and not reality? The creator isn't being generous. He just knows he has a really good funnel behind it. And your call to actions have to be strong, very strong, or those ads will not perform.

The Organic Rule Everyone Gets Backwards

Here's a very important point, and it's the opposite of the paid rule: with organic content, quantity is more important than quality. Perfect example, my brand NaturalSlim. We post 3,000 times a month. This is a nine figure a year brand. 3,000 times a month. How do we post so much? Because we don't paralyze over quality. If we paralyzed over quality, we would not be posting as much.

A lot of you have that problem. You want perfection. I don't want perfection. I want volume. Instagram stories, Instagram reels, Facebook stories, Facebook posts, you name it. As many placements as humanly possible. This world is giving you an opportunity right now to spread your message and capture attention by pressing a few buttons, without spending a single penny in advertising. That is a very unique opportunity, and volume is how you take it.

The other elements that make organic work: engage your community. Jump in there and answer DMs, comments, questions. If you leave a comment on one of my videos, I'm going to do everything I can to answer as fast as possible. And user generated content. Get other people excited enough to post about their experience with you and your brand, like Glow did. Some of the most successful strategies I've ever done were organic. In 2021, in the middle of the pandemic, I gave away a piece of my course that sold for two thousand dollars and told people: I'll give it to you for free, just help me spread the word, because together we're stronger. Those people went to social media and started posting like crazy. We brought in tens of thousands of leads in a matter of a couple of weeks. That's organic power.

The Real Answer: Personal Brand, Then Both

The best way to build an organic brand is with a personal brand. There is no better way. People trust other people more than they trust brands. You want to get in front of the cameras, talk about who you are and why you do what you do, and build with authenticity and transparency.

You want to build long term. You want to build a legacy. You want to be like my father, who four years after he passed is reaching more people today than he did before he passed. That's what authenticity builds.

In my opinion, and this comes from years of experience in the marketing industry, there is a lot more sustainability and power in organic than in paid. But the real magic, when you really do this right, is when you do them both in combination. So choose your path. But know what each path is actually for.