Get my Free Digital Marketing Jumpstart Kit<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nCons of Paid Traffic<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Aside from those three pros though pay does have its drawbacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cons of Paid Traffic #1: It can regularly change<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
One of the biggest cons to paid traffic is that factors can regularly change and evergreen campaigns can go from being super profitable to being completely unprofitable. A few years ago, I was in a regular group of founders that would meet talking about the sorts of ways that their businesses were generating leads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of my cohort classmates was spending tens of thousands of dollars on Facebook ads, and it was working really well for about six months, but then there was a major Facebook algorithm change, and all of a sudden he had no leads to his business and he was caught pretty much with the rug having been pulled from under him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so this is one of the biggest concerns with paid advertising is that things can change just as much as it can on our organic side. And it’s something in which, when that does change, you really have none of that benefit of having built up an asset, like an email list or something longer term in terms of a content base that you could repurpose in other ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cons of Paid Traffic #2: Traffic can be a lot colder<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Another con that I’d say about paid traffic is that sometimes the traffic can be a lot colder, if you haven’t validated your ad group yet. And what I mean by that is yes, you can definitely target campaigns to just the buyer intent keywords in your space, but that will often be really expensive in terms of the cost per click.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so it’s really important for you when you’re looking at paid advertising to consider which ad groups are going to be profitable for you and which ones will be way too cold of traffic. One time I set up a paid traffic campaign in which it was just sending people to get a freebie download from my website, but what I realized was that the traffic from that was way too cold and way too irrelevant to me. And that wasn’t something that I figured out until I had spent a couple of hundred dollars on that campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cons of Paid Traffic #3: You don’t own the traffic<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The third con that I’d say about paid traffic is that you don’t own the traffic. And so what that means is that whatever platform you’re using for paid advertising will always be looking to get you to spend more. I can’t tell you the number of times that Google has told me to increase my budget on something. And that is not necessarily in the best interest of that respective campaign I’m running and the same goes for different platforms as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ultimately, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google all make their money when you spend more money. And so naturally the recommendations that they’ll give you in the Ad Console are always going to be things that really will encourage you to spend more on their respective platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
3 Questions to Ask Yourself Which One is Right For You<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Now, that we’ve gone over the pros and cons of both organic and paid traffic, let’s talk about three key questions that you should ask yourself as a business owner as to which one is right for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Question #1: What exactly is your budget?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you’re only working with a couple of hundred dollars, you might want to go ahead and just set up a paid campaign because you’re going to get a lot more quicker wins with that sort of effort, as opposed to potentially investing in organic traffic and really building out some content marketing strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The reason why I say that is because in order to execute a meaningful content marketing strategy, it will take your business at least three to six months on the fast end in order to start seeing results. And so in the case where you’re tight on budget, you might as well just spend it on some paid spend just to get some initial results and learn a little bit more about your space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m assuming that if you’re in the situation where you’re exploring this sort of question, then you’re not even sure exactly what sort of traffic is out there in your niche. And so spending some on paid can help you start to understand a little bit more about your ideal customer profile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Question #2: What is your timeline for ROI?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This naturally kind of extends from the first question, but in the case where your timeline for ROI could potentially be six plus months or so then you should definitely consider investing in an organic search sort of strategy. The reason why you want to do this is because you’re going to be able to start building up that sort of content pool that is going to gradually be compounding over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If a person invests a hundred dollars in the US stock market, they’re only going to make about 8% year over year, all things considered on both up and down years. And similarly, you need to think about this on the same sort of timeline when it comes to investing in content. If you have a longer time horizon, you might as well start investing in an organic content strategy. That way you’re gradually building up the authority of your site. And by doing so you’ll also be providing valuable assets and content for your customers, as well as your prospects to consume.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Question #3: What is your capacity?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the case where you’re doing everything yourself, what I’d recommend is if you have the bandwidth in place to really spend the time to start writing SEO-optimized articles, then go the organic pathway. But in the case where you don’t have that capacity, then maybe you should go figure out how to set up a simple paid campaign. That way you can really just start to see some of those quick wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in other words, when it really comes down to organic versus paid, it comes down to your own preference for timeline and payoff, as well as your own capacity. Obviously, there are other considerations that you need to keep in mind for your business. Every sort of industry is different. So a bonus question that I would ask yourself as well, is, are there others in your space that are doing one more so than the other?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you notice, for example, that your five competitors are all doing paid campaigns, it’s probably a signal that you need to play the game as well. But in the case where all of your competitors are doing content marketing on the organic side, well, then that’s a signal for you to probably invest in that. And so that’s something that you want to keep in mind as well, is what exactly is the market telling you to?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you liked this article, be sure to\u00a0check out my YouTube channel<\/a>\u00a0to get new videos every single week. I\u2019ll help take you from zero to self-starter as you grow your business, get more customers, and hone your business acumen. Also, feel free to share this with anybody that you think might benefit from learning which content strategy is right for you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n