Subscription Box Answers

Organic Marketing Isn’t FREE

• Liam Brennan

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A common misconception is that paid marketing is bad because you have to pay for it, while organic marketing is good because it's free. But in most cases, that’s simply not true. Effective organic marketing that actually moves the needle requires time, money, and resources. In this episode, I break down why.

If you have a question you want answered, head over to www.SubscriptionBoxResources.com and join the FREE Facebook group to post it there."

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Subscription Box Answers with your host, liam Brennan. You're no rubbish, no crap. Straight to the point podcast with real, actionable tips, real strategies and insights from the industry which will help you start and grow your own successful subscription box business. You ask the questions, you ask the questions, you ask the questions. Liam gives the answers. It's as simple as that.

Speaker 2:

Welcome back to a brand new episode of Subscription Box Answers. As always, I hope you're having a good day. I hope your business is going well. We're into March now. Crazy how quickly 2025 is going. It literally feels like a week ago it was Christmas, but things are moving fast.

Speaker 2:

On today's episode, we are back talking about marketing again, but we're doing it a bit different. We're discussing organic marketing. I've never really talked about this on this podcast before, so I think it's time I shared my perspective on organic marketing. Now, when it comes to organic marketing. Now, when it comes to organic marketing, there is a massive misconception in this industry. A lot of people think paid traffic is bad because you have to pay for it and organic marketing is good because it's free. The truth is, organic marketing isn't free. Well, the type of organic marketing that's actually going to move the needle and get a consistent amount of people signed up to your box isn't free. And remember, to have a successful subscription box business or any kind of successful business, you have to be able to get customers in a repeatable, profitable and scalable way. If you can't do that, you will always struggle. And scalable way. If you can't do that, you will always struggle and, when it comes to organic marketing, to do it in a way which is going to bring customers in in a profitable, repeatable and scalable way. It takes time and resources to achieve that. It takes a lot of effort. Getting some bog, standard Canva templates and putting them on your Facebook page with some quote is not organic marketing that will move the needle in your business. It simply won't do it. If your goal is to grow organically, you need to put time and effort and, most likely, money into that. Organic requires good and frequent content and most businesses struggle with that because it's time consuming and takes money. There is no free organic marketing for 99.9 percent of businesses. Yeah, sure, you may get lucky with the odd piece of content where the algorithm favours you on TikTok, facebook or Instagram or YouTube Shorts, but to drive consistent results you need to drive a lot of volume consistently. Bog, standard, cookie cutter content basically does nothing and it's just a tick the box exercise. You know what I'm talking about. You share a quote on your facebook page, three people see it and you get zero likes. You share some blog post on your facebook page that you got ai to make for you One person sees it and it gets zero likes Literally does not move the needle in your business. Now if you want organic to move the needle in your business, you need to give it time. You need to test different things and see what resonates with your target audience. You need to probably produce high quality content. That may involve working with creators and paying them. It may involve hiring somebody to edit the content for you. All of those things are a cost. They take up time and they cost you money. So it's 100%, not free. Now can it pay off? Yes, 100% it. It pay off. Yes, a hundred percent. It can pay off. If you're willing to stick with it long enough. You may get lucky and it may pay off quicker than it does for a lot of people. Or you may go along a very long slog where you don't know if this is working or if it's actually going to pay off for you. There may be signs with your follower account growing, but your sales may take a long time to catch up. Now do I think you should do organic marketing? I think you should consider it, but you should go into it with the correct expectations. A very common thing I see amongst subscription box owners that haven't really pushed on in a long time and they may be struggling to get people signed up, is they're like oh, we don't do paid traffic, we do organic. And you look at the organic they're doing and it's just simply not very good. It's not engaging, it doesn't make people stop and pay attention. It's exactly what I discussed previously, mainly Canva templates. It just doesn't get people to buy and the algorithm doesn't favor it because it's not very good content, so it doesn't show it to people. Organic can be great but, like I said, you need to have the correct expectations and for a lot of brands they simply don't have the time and resources to put into it long term without seeing results pretty quickly. It's simply the truth. Now my other business obviously I have buster box, but my other business my coaching and consulting business with subscription box experts and subscription box founders and the membership and some other things I have gone on that was mainly built through organic marketing. I have spent very, very little amounts of money on paid traffic. The majority of it has come from writing blog articles, from growing my subscription box resources, facebook group, putting out this podcast and from writing my book. Okay, all of that stuff is definitely not free. It may have not cost me a lot of money some of the stuff did but it definitely cost me a lot of time. Sitting down for hours writing articles, recording podcasts took over a year to write that book and get it out. All of that stuff was very time consuming. Now, sure I could cut it down and I could get ChatGPT to just generate cookie cutter articles for me and to write scripts for this podcast, but I wouldn't get anywhere because it's not good organic content. It's not coming from me. It's not my experience from being in this industry for a long time and from running BusterBox. It's just cookie cutter garbage and it wouldn't help move the needle. Next time I opened Subscription Box Experts, probably nobody would join, nobody would listen to this podcast and it would just be a tick the box exercise. That's a waste of time. My investment into this business is not money, but it's time. It takes time to do all of this stuff and I'm completely fine with that. I don't mind it. That's the barrier to entry when it comes to this business, and you need to think the same when it comes to producing organic content for your subscription box business Organic content that will actually move the needle If you want to do it well, it will most likely take time and investment. Good organic marketing is not free. We kind of went off on a tangent there, but I hope you know what I mean and I hope this resonates with you in some way and makes you maybe think about things a bit differently when it comes to organic marketing. Now, there's obviously a cost with paid marketing too, that's pretty obvious. But don't jump into organic with the illusion everything's going to be free and you can just put out some posts and your business will blow up overnight. It rarely works like that. We'll be back next week at the exact same time and, as always, if you have a question you want answered on the show, head over to subscriptionboxresourcescom, join the free Facebook group and post your question there. I'll chat to you there. Bye-bye.