How do you balance paid and organic digital marketing efforts in your demand generation strategy?

Balancing between paid and organic requires a nuanced understanding of their differing timelines, impact, and investment. Paid campaigns deliver immediate results, providing a quick influx of traffic or conversions. However, once the budget is cut off, so is the momentum, making it a short-term lever. In contrast, organic growth is a long-term investment with compounding returns over time—though it often takes months to gain traction, its effects can last for years. This is why it's important to treat organic not as a "free" channel, but as an effort that requires significant investment in people and resources. There's a common misconception that organic is costless, but the reality is it demands continual effort in content creation, SEO, and optimization.

My approach is to invest more in people for organic and more budget for paid. With organic, the goal is to be agile—creating content that addresses the needs of different audiences, personas, and lifecycle stages while allowing for iteration and refinement over time. Organic content also lends itself well to building customer journeys, where content grows and evolves to deepen engagement. I do allocate some budget toward organic efforts when specialized resources are needed—whether that’s leveraging external platforms like TechTarget to expand reach, or commissioning highly technical or research-heavy content when in-house expertise is limited.

This balance ensures that I’m generating quick wins through paid media while building a sustainable, long-term pipeline through organic efforts, which ultimately fuels continuous growth and brand authority.