The Ultimate Guide: Organic Marketing for Small Business and Indie Developers

Aug 1, 2024

If you are running a small business selling products or are an indie developer who just published your app or SaaS, you probably don’t have a large budget for marketing, such as paid advertisements. Fortunately, there are effective ways to promote your business without spending a single penny. This is a practical guide on 3 main organic marketing strategies.

Strategy 1: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a powerful method for increasing your product's visibility in search engine results. By optimizing your website and content for search engines, you can attract more organic traffic and potential customers. Though it may take 2 to 3 months to start seeing results, the long-term benefits are substantial.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is the process of identifying and analyzing search terms that people enter into search engines. The goal is to use this data to inform content strategy, optimize existing content, and improve overall search engine visibility. This process involves understanding the language your target audience uses when searching for your products, services, or content.

For example, check the keyword difficulty of “organic marketing” on https://ahrefs.com/keyword-difficulty/?country=us&input=organic marketing (Remark: the higher the keyword difficulty is, the more difficult it could go to a high ranking in search query results.)

Importance of Keyword Research:

  1. Match your customers’ need Keyword research helps you understand what your potential customers are searching for, ensuring that your content is relevant and valuable. Be aware that if you use high volume keyword to attract audience while your content is irrelevant to the keywords, your website will be penalized by search engine. In addition, you might expect low conversion rate regardless of high website traffic. So align your choices of keywords, you content and your customer profiles.

  2. Choose an effective approach If you choose keywords with high difficulty, you will need lots of backlinks to achieve high rankings, which is challenging with limited budget and resources. It's often more practical to target lower difficulty keywords, which are easier to rank for and can still drive significant traffic to your site.

Technical SEO

here are two key considerations on a good SEO content: technical SEO and content quality. Technical SEO is the basic requirements that allow your websites to be reached by search engine, and to reduce negative impacts. Meanwhile content quality approaches are use for postive impacts.

One bare minimum is that your website is visible to search engine crawler, so that your website can be indexed by search engine. Below are some requirements that you should check for your website. Check https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing for a more detailed documentation.

Good URL Structure

  1. Use Descriptive URLs: Ensure your URLs clearly describe the content of the page. Examples: Good: example.com/organic-marketing-guide Bad: example.com/page123

  2. Use Hyphens to Separate Words: Avoid underscores (_), as they are not interpreted as spaces by search engines Examples: Good: example.com/organic-marketing-guide Bad: example.com/organic_marketing_guide

  3. Avoid Dynamic URLs: Prefer static URLs over dynamic ones. If dynamic URLs are necessary, make them clean and readable. Examples: Good: example.com/tutorials/blogs/organic-marketing Bad: example.com/tutorials?topics=organicmarketing&type=blog

  4. Maintain a Consistent Structure: Organize your URLs logically to reflect the site hierarchy. Examples: Good: example.com/blog/marketing/organic-marketing-guide Bad: example.com/article/123

Adhere spam policy

When adhering to spam policies, it's important to avoid the following:

  1. Cloaking: Showing different content to search engine crawlers than what real users see. It also includes using keywords that are completely unrelated to the actual content of the web page.

  2. Scaled Content Abuse: Generating large amounts of content using AI without providing any real value to users. It also includes practices like running content farms that churn out low-quality articles.

  3. Keyword Stuffing: Overloading a web page with keywords in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings.

Rendering issues

If you are a web developer and you are trying to do SEO on a highly interactive web application, it can be challenging since content that are rendered afterwards might not be visible to the crawler. In this case, you have to consider server-side rendering or other rendering methods (for reference: https://web.dev/articles/rendering-on-the-web#server-rendering)

Content Quality

Once you have checked the requirements in technical SEO, now it is time to increase content quality. As said in the official Google Search documentation, you have to create helpful, reliable, people-first content. High-quality content increases user engagement (session duration) and the chance of your site being shared and linked by other websites (backlinks). So make sure your content is actually helpful to the audience.

Besides content quality, here are some additional things you can do to enhance SEO.

Structure Data and Rich Result

Structured data helps search engines understand the content on your web pages better and can enhance your search listings with rich results. Here are some steps to implement structured data:

  1. Identify Relevant Schema Markup: Use schema.org to find the appropriate markup for your content type (e.g., articles, products, events).

  2. Add JSON-LD Markup: Implement the markup in the JSON-LD format within your HTML <head>. Check all kinds of structure data you can add at: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/search-gallery

  3. Validate Your Markup: Use Google's Structured Data Testing Tool or the Rich Results Test to ensure your structured data is correctly implemented. Check rich results implementation on https://search.google.com/test/rich-results

  4. Monitor and Update: Regularly check your structured data for errors and update it alongside your content updates to keep it relevant. Get the latest updates at https://blog.google/products/search/

Page Experience

Google search engine tends to reward websites that provide good page experiences, include but not limited to: page loading time, mobile responsiveness, accessibility (eg: image description and alt text. Check out https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA for reference).

A quick hack is to check your website performance and accessibility on https://pagespeed.web.dev/. Optimize your website until the scores are improved.

Backlinks

One of the factor of high search result ranks is determined by how many legit websites has linked to your website, as known as backlinks. So your job is to find out websites with high authority, and get backlinks from those websites.

Go to https://ahrefs.com/website-authority-checker/ to check the authority score of any website. One simple hack is to check the backlinks of similar product on https://ahrefs.com/website-authority-checker/ and you will see which websites you should target.

If you are building product, one of the easiest ways are publish your product on product launching platforms which usually have high authority Here are a list of product launching platforms:

Check out this tutorials if you want to learn more about building backlinks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5ddo63kHHI

Remark: You should avoid bad backlinks, as Google Search Engine will penalize them. For example, if an educational site receives payment to host a blog and link to a gambling platform, it can negatively affect the site's ranking.

Strategy 2: Organic Shorts

Relying only on SEO can be risky because it takes a long time to see results. With the rise of AI and social media, search engines usage is getting thinner than before. Therefore, it's smart to focus on both SEO and organic shorts. Creating short, engaging content for platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts can quickly capture attention and complement your long-term SEO efforts.

How to make viral videos

Good Ideas + Trending elements (viral songs/slang/meme culture) + Branding + Platform optimization(video length/thumbnail/caption) + Consistency(content creation) = Virality

This video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHNR3ZHDXug) gives a solid formula on making viral shorts. But in the end it still depends on the algorithm so virality is not guaranteed. You have to be patient and consistent. Since overall it still depends on the platform algorithm, if you only post a single video it is hard to guarantee it could go viral. Post consistently and you will see results.

Channel/Account Branding

For effective channel/account branding, ensure you have a clear theme that defines the central topic of your content, maintaining a consistent style across all videos with uniform color schemes, fonts, and graphics. Develop recognizable intros and outros, and keep a consistent video format. Know your target audience by researching their demographics and interests, tailoring your content to meet their needs, and engaging with them through comments and social media. Such approach will make your channel easily recognizable and more appealing to viewers.

Content creation

Good short video ideas often revolve around quick, engaging content that captures attention immediately. Here are some suggestions:

  • Tutorials: Quick how-to videos or life hacks.

  • Challenges: Participate in trending challenges on platforms like TikTok.

  • Behind-the-scenes: Give a glimpse into your creative process or daily life.

  • Product Reviews: Short, honest reviews of trending products.

  • Q&A Sessions: Answer common questions from your audience.

  • Top 5 Lists: Quick rundowns of your top picks in a niche area.

  • Trending Topics: React to or provide commentary on current events or viral content.

To discover trending YouTube topics and grow your channel, it's essential to look beyond YouTube. You can start by using Google Trends https://trends.google.com/trends/ to track popular searches, checking the Trending tab on YouTube, and utilizing tools like vidIQ https://vidiq.com/ for rising keywords and daily video ideas. Additionally, exploring trending content on TikTok and monitoring real-time trends on X (formerly Twitter) can provide valuable insights. By leveraging these six sources, you can identify viral topics and create engaging content that resonates with your audience.

Platform adaption

There will be slight differences in different platforms. For example, YouTube shorts prefer slightly longer video. Memes can easily go viral on Reels. Make sure to engage with your viewers via comment section for example. Check out how Mr Beast optimize his videos for YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DBJXRy5dvk. So if you are making content and publish to multiple platforms, consider making slight variations to optimize for each platform.

Useful tools

iMovie (Video editing)

Adobe Premier Pro (Video editing)

Adobe After Effect (Video editing)

Veed.io (Video editing)

Capcut (Video editing)

ChatGPT (Script writing)

Thumbnailtest.com (Video thumbnail testing)

Strategy 3: Engage in Community

Engaging in communities can be a powerful strategy for organic marketing. Communities exist in various forms, including forums, social media groups, and chat platforms. Some popular places to find these communities are Reddit, Facebook Groups, and Discord channels. These platforms host groups focused on specific interests, industries, and topics, providing a ready-made audience for your product.

Below we will demonstrate the details of how you can engage in two communities, Reddit and Facebook group.

Reddit

Most subreddit don’t allow self-promo, so your goal will be to create interesting and engaging posts that provides value, then subtly plug your product to your posts. One simple hack is to share your win on the product you are building, while the product also matches the interests of the audience. Take MarketingAI as an example, MarketingAI itself is a SaaS so it makes sense to post in the subreddit r/SaaS. On the other hand, people who are building SaaS is also interested in product marketing, which may also be interested in using MarketingAI.

Check out the following sample strategy that you can use to promote in subreddit:

How I Doubled My SaaS Revenue Using AI-Powered Marketing Strategies”

Content approach: Detail your journey on how you used AI to create a comprehensive marketing plan that helped double your SaaS revenue. Highlight different tactics such as personalized marketing campaigns, data-driven decisions, and automation. The content will resonate with SaaS founders looking for innovative ways to grow their businesses.

Target subreddit: r/SaaS

Plugging strategy: Describe how an AI tool played a crucial role in formulating your marketing strategy. Without naming the tool directly, mention that you found an AI platform that provided a customized plan and ROI projections within minutes, which became a game-changer for you. This piques curiosity without being overly promotional.

Facebook Group

There is usually two types of Facebook groups: groups with huge number of members (5 to 10k above) but not active (<5 post per week); or groups with smaller number of members (under 10k) but active (5+ posts per day). It’s very hard but not impossible to find groups with large number of members and active. You should always find the second type because engagement and level of activity is the most important.

A good practice is to avoid using broad keywords (for example, like ‘Marketing’ or ‘SaaS’) when searching for groups to join. Focus on specific keywords that align with your target audience, such as ‘SaaS Growth Strategies’, ‘Startup Marketing Tactics’, or ‘AI in Marketing Founders’.

How to engage and post in Facebook group

Engagement is more important in Facebook group than Reddit, because everyone is showing their face so authenticity and contribution to the community will be key before you start asking from the community.

Try to engage everyday by replying to 5+ posts per day, continue for at least 1 week before you start plugging MarketingAI. In terms of how to engage, be genuine and give thoughtful replies to other members on your honest thoughts. You can do case study share in Facebook groups once you became a core and active members in the group, here’s an example:

Sample Content

Here is a sample of how MarketingAI can promote itself naturally in a Facebook group.

Hypothetical group: SaaS Growth Strategies

Content strategy: Share a detailed case study showcasing how MarketingAI helped a startup increase their user base and revenue, including a link to the full report.

Post text: Hey everyone! I recently worked with a startup to boost their user base and revenue using MarketingAI. Here’s a summary of the case study where they saw a 35% increase in user engagement within the first month! Check out the full report here: [Link]

Conclusion

This concludes our guide on organic marketing. We have developed a SaaS tool called MarketingAI, which provides a fully customized marketing plan (both organic marketing and paid marketing) to help you attract more users and grow your SaaS, complete with ROI projections. You can view sample reports at https://www.marketingai.co/sample. Try it out to start implementing the strategies mentioned above and save 20 hours+ of research time. Cheers!