Organic Traffic, Content Marketing, SEO and Customer Acquisition Cost

When it comes to customer acquisition, many business owners tend to overlook the potential of organic traffic, content marketing and SEO (search engine optimisation)… Big mistake!!

There is as much or more potential for a new company to invest in customer acquisition using organic traffic, and many of the large companies that truly believe in their business have dedicated teams for this.

This is one of the services Be-Wide Online Solutions provides to its clients: creating new content, optimisation, publishing and monitoring results.

Organic Traffic vs Paid Traffic

At the start of a company’s life, the most important part is customer acquisition. This is crucial to bring the company to life and start generating revenue, and typically, the initial strategy involves paying for advertising, whether it’s Google Ads or Facebook Ads.

The major disadvantage of paid traffic is the cost—an investment that many new companies don’t have (though they should)—and there is always the possibility that such adverts won’t convert.

The other option would be to invest in organic traffic, which, although not as immediate as paid traffic, if done correctly (the way Be-Wide knows how and has been doing for many years), can be far more profitable than any type of paid advertising in the long run.

As the image “Organic Traffic Graph, 12 Months – Be-Wide Client #1” shows, one of the clients I follow has achieved results with a steady growth in organic traffic over the course of a year. I won’t name the client for obvious reasons, but it is one of Be-Wide’s many clients.

There are several steps to achieving a steady (or growing) flow of potential clients like the one in the previous image, from market research and analysis, creating content targeted at the specific audience, SEO, page optimisation, etc.

Although organic traffic requires more time and work, it yields better long-term results. In the end, it can be far more cost-effective than paid traffic, and it is much more sustainable for helping a small business grow and capture more market share.

Content Marketing

As mentioned earlier, achieving a flow of organic traffic requires constant work and always involves a set of combined steps and strategies. One of the important steps for getting better organic traffic results is creating articles or any other type of content that can be “consumed” by the target audience.

When I talk about content marketing, I mean a set of phases that will help us increase organic traffic, these phases being as follows:

– Research keywords / market research;
– Create a page or blog article around a topic / keywords;
– Optimise the page or article following SEO best practices;

Eventually, any new content that follows SEO best practices is found by Google, and if the content is relevant enough, Google will start showing the content link in its search engine to people searching for that topic.

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation

Like any other strategy, content marketing alone is not enough, and that is where SEO comes in to complement the process. In fact, SEO is just as important as creating the content itself, as it allows search engines, such as Google, to understand what topic is being discussed on the page.

Pleasing search engines is the goal of SEO, enabling the page to be indexed and, consequently, allowing it to start appearing in search results. This is how we increase a website's organic traffic.

So, what are the best SEO practices? There are many good practices to consider, but the most basic ones are also the most important:

– Use only one H1 tag with the keyword;
– Use at least one H2 tag with the keyword;
– Place the keyword in the first paragraph;
– Have at least one image with the keyword in the ALT attributes;
– Use the keyword in the page's meta description;
– Have an article of at least 300 words;
– And much more…

The aim of this article is not to describe every point to consider in SEO, but the list shows the most relevant ones, which should never be left to chance.

The cost of customer acquisition

And now you are asking what the cost of all this work is? Won't getting organic traffic be more work than paid traffic? Won't it be more expensive?

The answer is yes and no… That is, it is perhaps more work, especially if carried out by someone with little experience, but it will not be more expensive, because if done correctly, over time, content that is well written and of interest to the target audience can spend a lifetime attracting new customers.

With advertising and paid traffic, the cost of acquiring a new customer will depend on the performance of the advertising campaign and the amount invested over a given period of time. As a result, the cost to obtain a conversion or new customer will be a fixed amount.

If we spend €50 per day on advertising and get 3 customers or conversions per day, the customer acquisition cost will be €16.66 on a given day.

Now applying the same logic to organic traffic, it depends on creating new articles and optimising them for search engines. So, let's imagine that a good article, including the entire process (market research, writing the article, SEO), costs €50 to create and publish on the site.

If the €50 article is truly worth its value, it is expected to be indexed by search engines and start gaining visibility. Over time, this article will begin to appear on the first page of Google and attract readers, to the point where some of these visits start converting into customers.

As soon as there is a single conversion, it is only a matter of time before a second conversion appears, then a third, and so on. With an acquisition cost of €50 for the first customer who comes to us through the article, the moment a second customer appears, the cost drops to €25; with a third, it becomes €16.66; with a fourth, €12.5, and so on.

The situation here is clear: organic traffic, over time, will be much more advantageous than paid traffic, but this advantage is only visible as time goes by.

What conclusion can we draw from all this?

Each case is different, and I cannot guarantee the same results for every type of business or activity, but so far I am confident in guaranteeing minimum results that justify this type of ongoing work in most cases.

One of the main problems I notice, especially with Portuguese business owners, is that they lack the patience to invest in a website, content marketing, and wait for results.

In some specific cases, I notice an insistence on paid traffic when organic traffic would be the right strategy for the type of company and activity in question.

We can bet on one strategy or the other depending on the company's objectives, but there is nothing stopping us from developing both.

Usually, paid traffic always helps attract organic traffic, and if both strategies are being used to attract new customers, eventually one will stand out, and that is the one we should focus our efforts and capital on.