02 Oct 2025
The secret to dominating social media is knowing how to blend them. Here’s how CEOs can combine both strategies to amplify reach, boost engagement, and get maximum ROI.
Blog
Social media is no longer a secondary marketing channel. It’s become a key driver of visibility, customer engagement, and revenue growth. Yet, many CEOs still face the question: Should we focus on organic reach or paid advertising?
The answer is simple: you shouldn’t have to choose.
The companies seeing the strongest results are those blending the authenticity of organic content with the targeted precision of paid advertising. When these two forces are combined strategically, you don’t just reach more people, you reach the right people, with the right message, at the right time.
In this guide, we’ll break down exactly how CEOs can integrate organic and paid social for maximum reach. You’ll discover practical tactics, examples from the Australian market, and a clear action plan you can take back to your marketing team, or to your Fractional Digital Marketing Expert, to execute immediately.
Before you can merge them, you need to be crystal clear on what makes each approach unique.
Organic social covers all unpaid posts, updates, videos, and other content you publish directly to your social platforms. Its strengths lie in building relationships, nurturing trust, and showcasing your brand personality.
Organic content works best for:
However, algorithm changes, especially on Facebook and Instagram, have significantly reduced the percentage of followers who see your posts. According to a Social Media Examiner report, average organic reach on Facebook can be as low as 2-5%.
Paid social involves investing advertising dollars to place your content in front of a chosen audience. Benefits include:
The challenge is cost control. Without careful targeting and creative optimisation, you can burn through budgets quickly.
Key insight: Organic content creates a trusted, engaged base, paid campaigns scale that impact far beyond your existing followers.
For CEOs, the integration of organic and paid is a business growth strategy.
When your paid campaigns are based on proven organic successes, every dollar works harder. You avoid wasting spend on untested messages.
A CEO’s brand vision should be reflected in every interaction, whether that’s an organic LinkedIn update or a targeted Instagram ad. Merging strategies ensures messaging is consistent.
Organic performance gives you early indicators of what works; paid campaigns validate and scale that content.
If ad costs rise (which Meta’s CPMs have in recent years), your organic efforts still keep engagement alive. If organic stalls, paid gives you a reach boost.
Integration starts with knowing your baseline.
Audit Checklist:
If your marketing team lacks the time or expertise to perform this deep dive, hiring a marketing consultant is a smart move. They’ll benchmark your performance against Australian industry standards and uncover hidden opportunities.
One of the smartest ways to save money and increase performance is to use organic posts as a low-risk testing space.
How it Works:
Example: If a LinkedIn article about your sustainability initiatives gets 3x your usual engagement, you can promote it with paid spend targeting industry decision-makers.
This “test before you invest” approach is widely used by brands like Canva to ensure only proven content gets scaled.
Retargeting bridges the gap between brand awareness and conversion.
Tactics:
This is where a Fractional CMO can be invaluable, ensuring your retargeting strategy works hand-in-hand with your organic content calendar.
Paid and organic shouldn’t be running in different directions.
If your organic calendar for September focuses on innovation, your paid campaigns should echo this with ads highlighting innovative products or services.
This alignment:
Certain events deserve more than just an organic post:
Example: An Australian retailer launching a summer product line can use organic Instagram Reels to build hype, then back them with paid ads targeting warm leads and lookalike audiences.
For CEOs, measurement is about ROI.
Organic Metrics: Engagement rate, reach, follower growth.
Paid Metrics: CPC, CPA, ROAS, conversion rate.
Quarterly reviews allow you to adjust quickly, dropping underperforming campaigns and scaling high-return strategies.
This blend requires expertise in both creative storytelling and data-driven ad optimisation.
If you don’t have a senior marketer in-house, options include:
Social media success is about building a strategy where both support and strengthen each other. Organic gives you trust. Paid gives you reach. Together, they create an unstoppable growth engine.
If you’re ready to make your social media work harder without wasting budget, now’s the time to hire a Fractional Digital Marketing Expert who can tailor and execute a strategy for your business.
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