Passive Organic Growth 101: The Pros and Cons of Long-Term Marketing
If you spend any amount of time on LinkedIn or in professional Facebook groups, you’ll see people talking about passive organic growth. It’s something business owners want, but often don’t know how to get. Let’s break down the idea and discuss why organic growth online is not only possible but beneficial for your business in more ways than one.
What Is Passive Organic Growth?
Passive organic growth is any growth your brand experiences without you directly doing something to achieve that success. It’s word-of-mouth referrals that happen while you’re not around and marketing that generates web traffic without your direct involvement.
Two-thirds of business leaders agree that passive growth is at the top of their executive agendas. It keeps your brand growing while you focus on areas that need your full attention. There are many ways to accomplish that, which include your recurring blog posts.
Passive vs. Proactive Business Growth
Passive growth happens while you’re not actively doing something to promote your business. Let’s look at blogging as an example. Imagine you’ve got optimized blog posts scheduled for the next month. They’ll go live every other day. When they do, your website gains content that ranks on Google and attracts visitors via keywords.
Proactive growth is what you do to make your brand more successful in real-time. It’s creating ad campaigns for your latest product, scheduling your presence at a networking event or going to conferences. You’re involved in the effort and overseeing it to make it successful. It adds more to your schedule, but it couldn’t happen without you there.
Why Is Passive Growth Important for a Business?
Passive growth is important for businesses because it generates success without creating extra stress. While you take a vacation, enjoy your weekend or sleep through the night, your passive growth strategies continue building brand trust so your company thrives long-term.
Pros and Cons of Passive Organic Growth Online
There are a few pros and cons to organic growth when you focus on online efforts. These are the primary things to consider before investing in this type of business strategy.
Pro: You’ll Reach Professional Goals Without Becoming Busier
Your time is precious. It’s also limited. You can only devote your work hours to so many opportunities. Passive organic growth strategies generate your definition of success without complicating your daily schedule.
Digital strategies work in the background to get more traffic to your site and more engagement on your social media posts without your direct supervision. In-person growth would look like getting more referrals from previous customers, clients or business owners in your networking circles.
Con: Passive Growth Takes an Unpredictable Amount of Time
If you’re used to investing in active growth strategies, passive growth ideas might not seem as worthwhile at first. Paying to run an ad on Facebook provides instant insight with data like click rates and ad views. You can instantly see the effectiveness of your efforts long before logging into your sales tracking software.
Passive growth takes time. Experts estimate that strategies like SEO copywriting and blogging take three to six months to see your Google ranking change. As someone who’s been in digital marketing for a long time, I can tell you that the three-to-six-month estimate might even be too fast.
Passive strategies rely on factors that aren’t in your control. You aren’t telling people to click on your blog post links or updating Google’s rankings by hand. You can’t make potential customers interested in clicking your internal links. Building the brand trust and domain authority to get those results takes time. It’s sometimes frustrating for business owners, so expect to manage that frustration when you invest in passive growth ideas like professional copywriting for your blog.
Pro: You Can Customize Your Success With Numerous Passive Organic Growth Opportunities
Although it may take more time than you’d like, passive organic growth opportunities are flexible. You can choose the best options for your particular brand voice and customer base.
Someone running a visual brand, like a social media influencer, could hire an expert marketer to fill their content calendar while they attend events to network in person. They might even invest in AI programs that respond to comments automatically.
If you have a professional blog, an expert copywriter like me would optimize your future posts to help your site rank higher over time. 28.5% of people click on Google’s first link, but that number drops to 2.5% of people clicking the second link. Rising through search results to get those clicks is a valuable growth strategy if you’re willing to invest in it long-term. However, it’s not the only way to develop your brand if you also have social media accounts and referral networks.
Con: It May Take a While to Start
If you’re running a newer business, you may not have the revenue to invest in a long-term growth strategy. You’ll likely want to focus on more immediate results, like paying for ad campaigns. There’s no one way to run a successful brand. However, people often invest in passive organic growth ideas down the line. It might feel discouraging, but that doesn’t mean it’ll never be the right moment to start passive strategies.
Make Your Brand Grow With Less Effort
Your brand growth is within your control. Consider adding passive organic growth strategies to your business plan for the year. You could simplify your work with my customized blog post packages or invest in my services for a better content overhaul. Either way, you can make your blog a profitable part of your business by understanding and accepting passive growth ideas for the long-term strategies they are.
