🔦Community Spotlight

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​You may disagree with me but organic growth is a weird, senseless flex.

I’m sure you’ve seen it out in the wild: “I made 7 figures/got to 1 million followers/landed on the Moon 100% organically, with zero ads.”

Translation: my community loves me so much that they clicked, liked, shared, and bought without me having to pay to boost my reach.

That’s a nice sentiment but…why?

Marketing is marketing, whether you pay for it or not

To meet your goals, whatever they are, you use marketing aka persuasion:

• A well-crafted headline/hook
• Great copywriting to get people to click or buy
• Psychology to induce FOMO and/or agitate pain
• Visuals with carefully selected colors to amplify the need to buy or click now.

Paid growth isn’t inherently sleazy. It’s just as sleazy as your organic marketing.

You still need all of the above to make it work. Paid ads without catchy headlines or great visuals don’t work.

Psst, my subscribers read this before you did. Want to be the first to see analyses and roadmaps like this one? Subscribe to Ideas to Power Your Future and get them in your inbox every Thursday.

On the other hand, by throwing money at the problem, you can speed up your growth. And here’s the kicker:

Organic growth isn’t free. It costs time instead of money

Which do you value most? Your time or your money?

Do you prefer to spend hours engaging with people on social media to get some traction on your own posts? Or spend a few dollars to have your posts automatically pushed in front of a relevant audience

There is no wrong answer here.

Both organic and paid growth have their place in a well-rounded marketing strategy and, however big your budget is, you will still need organic tactics.

The top reason why businesses use paid growth:

Organic reach on social media is abysmal

A few years ago, I built an 18k+ community on Twitter through scheduled posts only. It took me less than two hours a week to get there.

Reach was predictable, just as it was one or two years ago on LinkedIn or TikTok.

However, every social media platform decays with time — and it all starts with organic reach.

Exhibit A: a recent post of mine on LinkedIn:

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It got reposted 17 times, got a ton of comments and likes and…it didn’t make it to 7k impressions.

I’m sure you can relate to this: you spend hours crafting an excellent post and engaging with your community, only to get…crickets.

It’s no cause for alarm or for hating social media in general. They owe you nothing and they’re gravitating towards a pay-to-play model.

But it is time to pivot. Other than building your own website and email list, why not try paid growth?

Is paid growth right for you?

Paid tactics can double, triple, quadruple, 86x your revenue, profit, or all-around growth. If you’re not sure it’s right for you, answer these questions:

1. Do you have the budget for it?

A rule of thumb says you should invest 20% of your profit in marketing. But that doesn’t have to be paid growth. It can be hiring a graphic designer or a copywriter, working with a mentor, joining a paid masterclass, and so on.

It’s up to you to decide what your priorities are.

2. Do you have the bandwidth for it?

Say you could get 4x more clients overnight. Could you handle the additional work? Could you 10x your business sustainably?

Getting this question right is crucial if you’re a service provider but it’s important if you sell products too. Selling more usually comes with more customer support inquiries, more accounting, more social proof gathering, and so on.

Before you get new clients, make sure you have the team and the systems in place to handle the extra workload.

3. Do you have a good conversion rate on your top channels?

​A good conversion rate is between 2% and 5% i.e. 2-5% of those who visit your landing page buy. There are countless variables here, so don’t get hung up on these numbers.

Your industry, your pricing (the higher the price, the lower the conversion rate), traffic sources, audience relevance, and dozens of others matter here.

If your conversion rate is around the industry average or higher, you can consider paid growth. Not there yet? Consider investing in better branding and better copy first.

Checked all the boxes and think you could use a bigger audience? Cool, let’s see how you can get that with paid growth.

By the way, I’m preparing an audience-building live workshop for mid-January. It will teach you how to build an audience you can sell to relying on organic growth, paid growth, or both. Need a bigger audience? Join the waitlist and you’ll be the first to know when registration goes live.

Your paid growth options

Rule 34 of the internet is a good analogy: if it exists, there’s a paid version for it too. There’s no shortage of paid tactics:

Google Ads

• Ideal if people are searching for your product/service (look for search volume to figure that out)
• You can optimize your budget by choosing the “pay for conversion” option, which means you’ll only pay if someone buys from you, fills out a form, signs up to your newsletter, or something else.
• Also great for retargeting and bringing back people who abandoned their carts.

Facebook/Instagram Ads

• Nearly everyone is on at least one of these two, whether they admit it or not.
• Ideal for B2C products and B2B brand awareness, but don’t dismiss it for B2B either — everyone’s on the Meta platforms, remember?
• For B2B sales, you have the Leads option — people fill out a form without leaving the platform and you get all their data.

Twitter/X Ads

• They’ve been going through so many changes recently that it’s hard to recommend them.
• Still, the CPC (Cost-Per-Click) is fairly good, and, with more and more companies cutting their spend, it may be your chance to pay even less.

LinkedIn Ads

• Pricier than Facebook or Twitter
• Ideal to message people at scale but avoid this if what you’re selling requires genuine personalization
• I’d use them for the consideration stage i.e. get more people to subscribe to your list or visit your website.
• Lead generation forms are excellent for service providers.

YouTube Ads

• Use them to grow your channel or take people to your website
• YouTube gets a lot of traffic on videos on literally any topic you can think of, so you can go really granular with your targeting.

TikTok Ads

• Still more affordable than the other platforms
• It’s not just a platform for teens. If you target older audiences, it will be even cheaper, and your chance to stand out more easily.

Media ads

• The world is your oyster here: you can buy an ad in The New York Times or get your advertorial placed in the online edition of Forbes.
• Don’t underestimate small media outlets — they’re usually better fits. There’s a publication or a blog for anything, including your target audience, from plumbers and contractors to coaches, tech entrepreneurs, and everything in between.

Influencer/creator campaigns

• Know a creator who has a similar audience to yours? Pay them to recommend your products/services.
• Pro tip here: micro-influencers often yield better conversions than huge stars.
• Each creator usually has more than one channel where they can place your ad: newsletter sponsorship, social media post, podcast ad, and so on.

Platform-specific ads

• ​Refind and Sparkloop for newsletter growth are good examples here.

How do you choose the right channel to invest $$$ in

Too many options, right? Testing is still the best way to figure out your ideal paid growth channel.

Start by identifying your most profitable channel: is it social media? Email? Organic traffic? How would you fare if you had a bigger audience/better traction?

Other yardsticks you can use:

• If you have a social media platform you’re already on and gaining some traction, you can speed things up with paid growth. You can pay for more visibility, leads, and so on.
• You can tap into a completely new channel. You already know you need to be on more than one channel but don’t have time to babysit so many? Use ads to get your first followers.
• Use tools like SparkToro to figure out where your audience hangs out. Can you pay for an ad in their favorite newsletter/podcast/media outlet?

A word of caution

Paid growth is a skill in its own right. I got my Google Ads certification back in 2016 but, since I haven’t touched the platform in the last two years, I’d be hesitant to run ads without brushing up my skills.

The big platforms (social media ads, Google Ads) have dozens of ad types and thousands of parameters you can set. It’s very, very easy to lose your money with nothing to show for it.

If you don’t have experience running ads, either spend some time learning the platform or hire a specialist.

Start small (don’t invest $10K your first month in) but understand that these platforms need time to learn. A $100 test, for instance, would be inconclusive, so allocate more time and a bigger budget. As with everything, the more you invest, the better your results.

No matter how well your ad campaigns go, don’t forsake your organic tactics. The latter compound, the former stop bringing results the moment you stop pouring money into them.

Lastly, don’t forget about the big picture: choose ad platforms that support your long-term growth and attract your ICP, not internet randos.

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Adriana’s Picks

1. I joined my friend Adam Costa on the Funnel Candy podcast to talk about lead generation and nurturing. If you’re struggling with either, you may find the answer to your problems in this interview.
2. Yikes: 33 US states allege that Meta knowingly hosts and collects data on millions of underage users. If found guilty, Meta faces fines of up to $50k per child. Meta denies the allegations.
3. Creepy: companies want to measure your emotions with AI.

That’s it from me today!

See you next week in your inbox!

Here to make you think,

Adriana

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