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Should you be putting all your time and energy into growing organically? Should you forget about organic and just run Meta™ ads? Do you need to be posting every single day before you’re ready to run ads?
My answer is actually really simple.
You need both.
But probably not in the way you think.
When I say you need organic marketing, I don’t mean you need to spend your entire working week creating content.
You don’t need to post multiple times a day, and you definitely don’t need to wake up every morning wondering what you’re going to film just so Instagram™ doesn’t forget you exist.
There’s a much smarter way to use organic marketing and paid ads together, because they aren’t competing strategies. They do different jobs and when used together will give you the best results.
What organic marketing does really well
I love organic marketing. I’ve used it in my own business for years, and there are some things it does incredibly well. It gives people somewhere to go when they discover you.
Think about your own behaviour. You see an ad from someone you’ve never heard of.
Something they say catches your attention, so what do you do?
There’s a good chance you click through to their Instagram™ profile. You have a little stalk. You watch a couple of Reels, look at Stories, and try to work out who this person is, what they talk about, and whether they seem like someone who actually knows what they’re doing.
That’s where organic content becomes so valuable. It builds recognition, demonstrates your expertise, shows your personality and point of view, and most importantly, it builds trust.
Where organic marketing falls short
The biggest limitation of organic marketing is distribution. You can create a brilliant piece of content that speaks directly to your ideal client, spend an hour making it, post it, and then cross your fingers and hope the algorithm shows it to enough of the right people.
Only a small percentage of your followers are likely to see any individual post, and you don’t control which of those followers see what you publish.
The usual advice is to create more, post more often, and jump on more trends, and suddenly you’ve got yourself a second full-time job as a content creator.
If you love creating content every day, that’s great, but most of the coaches, course creators and online business owners I work with didn’t start their businesses because they wanted to spend five hours a day making Instagram™ content.
They want to work with clients and grow their business, and their marketing shouldn’t require them to constantly feed the content machine just to keep leads coming in.
Why paid ads change the game
This is where Meta™ ads have a huge advantage: distribution. They let you take your best messaging and deliberately put it in front of more of your ideal clients.
You don’t have to wait for them to find you, and you don’t have to hope the algorithm decides today’s the day it shows your Reel to the right people. Ads can work for you 24 hours a day, bringing new people into your world, and you can build an audience far faster than you could organically.
Ads shouldn’t replace the marketing you’re already doing. They strengthen it.
Say you’ve created a Reel that speaks directly to your ideal client and performed well organically. Instead of feeling pressure to create another one tomorrow, you can get that same piece of content in front of thousands more of the right people, because the work is already done.
Inside my Meta™ Ads System, I use what I call Audience Building ads. These aren’t ads asking someone to buy something, and they’re not even necessarily asking someone to opt in.
They simply take great content, whether that’s a Reel, a carousel, a podcast episode or a blog post, and put it in front of more of the right people to grow your audience.
This runs in the background on a very small budget. I teach starting this type of campaign from as little as $1 a day. Just to be clear, this isn’t the same as hitting the boost button. I never recommend that. It’s about setting these up properly as part of your overall strategy in Ads Manager.
The relationship isn’t built by the ad alone
If ads can get your content in front of the right people, why do you need organic marketing at all?
Because the ad isn’t the entire relationship. It’s often the introduction. Someone sees your ad, watches your video, and then visits your Instagram™ profile. They see another post, maybe they follow you. A week later they see another ad, and eventually they register for your lead magnet or masterclass.
Now they’re on your email list, receiving your emails, seeing more of your content, and gradually becoming familiar with your name and your approach.
By the time you put an offer in front of them, there’s already a relationship there.
Organic content is fantastic for connection and trust, but you don’t control the distribution. Paid ads give you that distribution and let you consistently reach new ideal clients.
Email gives you a direct way to continue the relationship once someone joins your list, which matters because you don’t own your social media audience.
You can have thousands of followers and still have no guarantee you’ll be able to reach them when you need to.
Once someone joins your email list, you can educate them, nurture them, build trust and make offers, and over time those people become paying clients.
Final thoughts
Using paid ads doesn’t mean you stop creating organic content, and creating organic content doesn’t mean you shouldn’t run ads.
Some of your best organic content can become your ads, and the messaging that works well in your ads can inform the organic content you create next.
That feedback loop is what turns two separate strategies into one marketing system, all feeding an audience you continue the relationship with through email.
Create content that speaks directly to your ideal clients and demonstrates your expertise, then use paid ads to make sure more of the right people actually see it.
I’d much rather you create one really good piece of content and put it in front of thousands of your ideal clients than create 20 pieces that exhaust you while you hope the algorithm distributes them.
I would love to hear your thoughts...