What distinguishes paid social from organic reach?

Before we get into the strategy, it’s worth defining the term properly. Organic social refers to all content that you publish without a direct advertising budget – posts, stories, reels, contributions that are played out via your profile. Your reach here depends on the quality of the content, the algorithm and your existing community. Paid social refers to paid advertisements on social media platforms: you pay for your content to be displayed to defined target groups – regardless of whether they already follow you.

The key difference: with Paid, you buy reach and visibility immediately. With organic, you build them up over time – but the effect remains sustainable, even without an ongoing budget.

The direct comparison: Paid vs. organic at a glance

In order to choose the right strategy for your company, a structured comparison of the most important dimensions will help. The following table shows the key differences – without marketing platitudes, just facts:

When is paid social worthwhile – and when is it not?

Paid social is not a panacea. There are situations in which paid advertising delivers enormous ROI when used precisely – and situations in which it is a waste of money. The decision depends on your goal, your phase and your data situation.

Paid social makes sense if you:

• Want to launch a new product or brand and need visibility quickly
• Want to address a clearly defined target group that you cannot reach organically
• Want to use retargeting to bring back website visitors
• Have seasonal campaigns (Black Friday, Christmas, summer vacations) with a clear time window
• Want to run A/B tests to understand which messages, images and CTAs work
• Want to boost an already proven organic contribution with budget (amplification strategy)

Paid social is inefficient when:

• Your landing page or profile is not optimized for conversions
• You have not implemented tracking (pixels, events) correctly – then you don’t know what works
• Your budget is under €500 per month – the learning phase of the algorithms needs data
• You have no creative material – Paid needs strong creatives, otherwise the budget goes up in smoke

Agency tip: Never start a paid campaign without a functioning organic base. If your profile looks empty or inactive, users won’t click on your ads – even if the targeting is perfect. Organic gives paid the necessary credibility.

When organic growth brings more than paid

Organic reach has declined on all platforms in recent years – that’s true. But it is not dead. On the contrary: for certain goals, organic is clearly the superior strategy because it builds trust that no advertising budget can buy.

Organic is particularly worthwhile for building expert status and authority. Those who regularly share valuable content, answer questions and provide genuine insights are perceived as experts – paid advertising cannot replace this. Especially on LinkedIn, organic content is the strongest lever for B2B companies that want to reach decision-makers.

Organic content also has a long-term effect. A good YouTube post, a viral TikTok or a strong Instagram post generates reach for months and years after publication – without any additional budget. This is a fundamental difference to paid content, which ends as soon as the spend stops.

Organic also acts as a trust signal for paid. Platforms such as Instagram and TikTok prefer accounts with active, well-performing organic content, even for paid campaigns: Lower CPMs, higher relevance scores, better playout. Organic and paid are therefore not alternatives – they are mutually dependent.

You can find out more about how to increase your organic reach on social media in our detailed strategy guide.

The smart combination: Paid and organic as an integrated strategy

The most experienced social media managers don’t think in terms of “paid or organic” – they think in terms of synergies. The goal is a system in which organic content provides the data basis for paid decisions and paid campaigns reinforce the best organic content with reach.

The concrete procedure looks like this:

1. Test organic content: Publish content organically and observe which posts perform above average (high engagement rate, comments, saves, shares).
2. Boost top performers: These posts are advertised as paid posts (also known as “boosted posts” or “amplification”) with a budget. They have already proven that the message works – you massively reduce your risk.
3. Play back learnings: The A/B data from paid campaigns shows you which texts, images and CTAs convert – use these insights for better organic content.
4. Retargeting for engagement audiences: Use custom audiences from organic profile interactions for retargeting campaigns – you can reach users who have already shown interest.

If you are planning a social media budget, you should consider both pots right from the start: Content production (organic) and media budget (paid). A realistic starting point for SMEs: 60% of the budget in content, 40% in paid – adjusted according to performance data after 90 days.

Platform-specific recommendations: Where Paid, where Organic?

The optimal balance between paid and organic varies greatly depending on the platform. Here are the most important assessments for German companies:

Instagram: Organic for community and brand building, paid for product launches and e-commerce (shopping ads). Reels still have a comparatively high organic reach – take advantage of this.

TikTok: Organic has enormous viral potential – a good video can reach millions without a budget. Paid(TikTok Ads) works well for younger target groups and creator cooperations. Important: Content must be native, not classic TV commercials.

LinkedIn: Organic is indispensable for B2B – thought leadership, CEO posts, company updates. Paid (sponsored content, lead gen forms) is worthwhile for specific campaigns with a clear lead target. CPMs are high, but the quality of the leads is often better. More about the full-service strategy of a social media agency.

Facebook: Organic reach is minimal – hardly usable for broad target groups without paid. Paid via Facebook Ads works particularly well for retargeting and lookalike audiences based on website traffic.

YouTube: Organic via SEO-optimized videos is very valuable in the long term (YouTube is the second largest search engine). Paid (pre-roll ads, discovery ads) is suitable for branding and product demos.

Our guide to calculating ROI in social media marketing answers the question of whether your social media investments are paying off.

Budget planning and KPIs for paid vs. organic

If you want to strategically combine paid and organic, you need clear KPIs for both areas – otherwise you won’t be able to make a well-founded decision about budget allocation.

KPIs for organic content:

• Engagement rate (likes + comments + shares / reach) – benchmark: 1-3% on Instagram, 0.5-1% on LinkedIn
• Follower growth (month over month)
• Organic reach per post
• Saves and shares (signal for valuable content)
• Profile visits and link clicks from the profile

KPIs for paid social:

• CPM (Cost per Mille / 1000 impressions) – depending on platform and target group 5-30 €
• CPC (Cost per Click) – Benchmark strongly industry-dependent
• CPL (cost per lead) – particularly relevant for B2B campaigns
• ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) – revenue from advertising expenditure
• Conversion rate of the landing page

To measure the overall success of your social media strategy, we recommend an integrated dashboard that combines both areas. Our article on calculating ROI explains how to do this with specific formulas and examples.

The following applies to budget planning for social media: always calculate a buffer for creatives. Especially with paid, the first 2-3 seconds of a creative are decisive for success or failure – bad creatives destroy budget, no matter how good the targeting is.

Frequently asked questions about paid vs. organic social media

More on the topic: Performance marketing – Instagram Ads costs – Organic reach – Agency prices

Related articles

• Social media agency – full-service consulting and strategy
• Increase organic reach on social media – what else works
• Social media budget planning for companies
• Facebook Ads: costs, prices and budget planning
• Calculating social media ROI – formula and examples

KPI at a glance: This is what you learn here

Tip! Below you will find detailed explanation, formula and examples for all KPIs. This is what you learn here:

KPI calculators

Engagement rate

Formula: How to calculate the engagement rate?

• Engagement Rate = ( Engagement [Likes, Comments and Shares] / Followers ) x 100

Example

If a total of 120 engagements (such as video views, likes, comments, shares, etc.) are recorded on one of your social media channels and you have a total of 3,600 users following you, the engagement rate is about 3.23%.

Calculator

Calculate your engagement rate online for free:

• Engagement Rate Calculator

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) / Return on Invest (ROI)

Formula: How to calculate Return on Ad Spend?

• ROAS = advertising revenues / advertising costs

Example

If you spent 20,000 euros on Facebook ads in January and generated a total profit of 80,000 euros, the return on ad spend is 4 euros. This means that every euro invested generated a profit of 4 euros.

The ROAS analysis shows whether an analyzed social media channel is profitable for you. After all, you certainly don’t want to spend more money on advertising in the long term than it brings in. So a higher ROAS is better.

Calculator

Calculate your return on ad spend online for free:

• Return on Ad Spend Calculator

Impressions vs. reach

We’ve included this metric separately because it’s important to not just look at impressions or reach individually, but to combine both metrics. In a nutshell:

• Impressions = number of ad views
• Reach = number of people who have seen the content

Cost per thousand contacts (CPM) / Cost per reach (CPR)

Formula: How to calculate the cost per thousand contacts?

• CPM = (advertising costs / reach) x 1,000

Example

Let’s say you spent 10,000 euros on an Instagram ad campaign that was seen by 400,000 users. The CPM is then 25 euros per 1,000 users reached.

Calculator

Calculate your cost per thousand contacts for free online:

• CPM / CPR Calculator

Click Through Rate

Formula: How to calculate the click through rate?

• Click Through Rate = Clicks / Total Reach x 100

Example

For example, if an ad is displayed 500 times and is clicked on 10 times, the click-through rate is 2%.

The click-through rate is another key figure in online marketing. It indicates the ratio of the number of clicks on an ad to the total reach. If the CTR of an ad is particularly low, you should check whether the targeting is addressing the right target group or whether changes need to be made to the image, text or call-to-action.

Calculator

Calculate your click through rate online for free:

• Click Through Rate Calculator

Conversion Rate

Formula: How to calculate the conversion rate?

• Conversion Rate = (Conversions / Interactions) x 100

Example

Conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the total number of interactions that resulted in a conversion in the same time period. Assuming you have 100 conversions from 2,000 interactions, the conversion rate is 5% because 100 / 2,000 = 5%.

Conversion rate is the percentage of users who perform a desired action. A typical example is the percentage of visitors to a website who make a purchase. The conversion rate can also be related to the respective marketing channels, e.g. to calculate the conversion rate of your social media ads.

Calculator

Calculate your conversion rate online for free:

• Conversion Rate Calculator

Lead-to-Deal Conversion Rate (LDCR)

How do you calculate the lead-to-deal conversion rate?

• Lead-to-Deal Conversion Rate = (Deals / Leads) x 100

Example

Let’s say you generated 2,000 new leads through your social media ads in October, which resulted in 40 deals. Then the lead-to-deal conversion rate is 2% because 40 is divided by 2,000 and multiplied by 100.

Calculator

Calculate your lead-to-deal conversion rate online for free:

• Lead to Deal Conversion Rate Calculator

Cost per lead

Formula: How to calculate the cost per lead?

• CPL = advertising costs / leads

Example

To calculate the cost per lead, you must first track your conversions to determine the number of leads generated. This tells you what happens after a user clicks on your ad. The cost per lead is calculated by dividing the cost of an ad or campaign by the conversions it generates.

Calculate your cost per lead for free online:

• Cost per lead calculator

Cost per click

Formula: How to calculate the cost per click?

• CPC = advertising costs / clicks

Example

To calculate the CPC, you divide the total cost of advertising by the total number of clicks on the ad. Let’s say you spent 400 euros on an ad that generated 100 clicks, then the CPC is 4 euros.

Calculate your cost per click for free online:

• Cost per click calculator

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Formula: How to calculate the cost per lead?

• CAC = ( marketing costs / sales )

Customer acquisition cost is undoubtedly one of the most important metrics for a growing business. CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost), as the name suggests, tells you the total cost of acquiring a new customer.

This metric is critical because it gives you a clear guideline to evaluate your marketing activities. If a marketing campaign doesn’t generate new customers at a lower price than your current customer acquisition costs and instead helps increase them, it’s probably not an activity that justifies your team’s valuable time.

Calculator

Calculate your cost per click for free online:

• Customer Acquisition Cost Calculator

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Building customer trust and loyalty is a major challenge for companies. An important key figure in this area is the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). This value reflects the average value that a customer has for a company over the entire duration of the customer relationship.

Share of Voice (SOV)

Formula: How to calculate the Share of Voice?

• Share of Voice = (Sum of own mentions / Sum of all relevant mentions of all competitors) x 100

Example

For example, if your company hashtags were mentioned 60 times and the other relevant hashtags were mentioned a total of 100 times, you would have a share of voice of 60%. This would mean that you have established yourself as a thought leader in your field.

Calculator

Calculate your Share of Voice online for free:

• Share of Voice Calculator

Social media channel and content

Followers / Fans

Nowadays, the sheer number of followers or fans doesn’t tell you much about a social media profile. Many users buy likes or followers to look better at first glance (read more in our post about fake influencers). Even if you don’t, it’s not advisable to rely only on the number of your followers as a metric. For example, if you serve a niche topic, you will have a smaller audience.

Much more important are the following questions:

• How has the number of your followers developed in the last few months?
• How often do your fans interact with your content?

Share / Repost

The number of shares or reposts shows how often your posts or content have been shared. When your posts are shared further, you benefit not only from your own reach, but also from the reach of other users and their networks. This allows your post to go viral and reach new audiences.

So if your goal is to generate more reach and increase your visibility, you should work on getting the an

increase the number of shares and retweets.

Comments

The number of comments is also an engagement metric. On Facebook, the number of comments can also increase reach, as your posts show up in the feeds of those users who have commented. However, it’s important to not only look at the number of comments as a metric, but also consider the quality of the comments. Comments are expressions of opinion, and it is important not to neglect the qualitative aspect.

Reactions / Likes

This is about the number of reactions to your posts on social media, not the likes for your accounts themselves. Of course, you always want users to like your content and give it likes or emoji reactions on LinkedIn, for example. You can monitor this KPI over time to see if the quality of your posts continues to improve.

• Analysis and comparison of individual company divisions and (as in our example) investment properties
• Determination and evaluation of the performance of an investment (in the example) for a past period
• Planning and control of future investments

Before you start a campaign, there is a lot to consider in advance. From the sound concept to the elaborated strategy to the proof of concept, the functioning model. Through optimization the profit increases and negative campaigns are deactivated. Someday it will be there, the return of invest. From now on the campaign can be profitable.

Concept and strategy

Depending on the goals pursued in social media marketing, the corresponding concepts and strategies know each other.

Whether influencer campaign on YouTube, or media budget for the advertisement, with re-targeting for your own online shop. In all cases, certain funds are invested in order to achieve a certain objective. The question now is, which campaign promises more profitability? Which campaign brings more profit, per invested Euro?

Costs are an extremely important factor right from the start, in terms of concept and strategy. Ultimately, the campaigns are limited to a certain period of time. Sometimes by a fixed budget, sometimes by seasonal characteristics (fashion), sometimes by the half-life of the product, e.g. with trend products, or also video games, whose platform is constantly technically accessible.

Now in social media marketing we have different possibilities on our desk. Community Management, Advertisements on Facebook, Advertisements on Instagram, Advertisements on YouTube, Organic Reach, we all video clips, the whole range of possibilities is open to you. In order to make a comparison, the key figures of the individual divisions are taken into account.

Calculation and example

You have a media budget of 50,000 €. With this budget you ideally want to implement as much as possible. As much reach as possible, as much sales and as much turnover as possible. If your expected turnover is then 70,000, your return of invest is 0.40

Formula for calculation

• Profit generated / capital employed = ROI
• 20.000 Euro / 50.000 Euro = 0.4

The return of invest now means that you will earn 40 cents for every euro you spend. If you now compare different campaigns with each other and compare their costs as well as the expected profits, you can make statements about which social media campaign you invest in and which not.

Not everyone can or will want to book agent services or extensive software. Particularly young brands and start-ups operate their own online marketing, so also Influencer Marketing. But also students at universities and colleges have to prepare their first calculations. We want to give you today a first, small help to assess the success of influencing campaigns before the booking. Our form collection with a few of the important formulas in simplified form.

Why calculate success factors for influencers?

Everyone can buy Likes and Follower. In search engines you only have to enter the search term “Fans buy Facebook” and hundreds of websites already come. Likes from abroad, Likes from Germany, comments and fans. Everything is possible.

Making a channel 100% fake and artificially keeping it authentic through likes over a long time is not so easy, but equally possible. At the beginning of the year there was a best practice of a US-American advertising agency. She has been pushing for months a complete channel invented. The pictures came from the Fotostudio, the blogger was a booked model. All fans, likes and comments were added in a targeted and coordinated manner. At some point, the first Werbedeals came. The agency wanted to prove to its customers with the action how easy it is to create successful fake channels.

This, however, requires constant planning and is difficult for private individuals to carry out for time and monetary reasons. Nevertheless, there are many who buy 1000 fans. With 70,000 fans 1,000 bought not at all. To identify such purchased likes, agencies use social media software.

In principle almost all users are honest. Also because bought fans press the interaction rate. They are bought and do not interact at all. They will never liken, never comment. Therefore the commitment rate gives a good indication of the quality of the influencer.

Engagement rate: Interaction rate as a quality feature

This formula can be refined by additional elements. For this, however, you need data that, in turn, require software that specifically deals with the social network and permanently records the data of all users. It’s simple and fast:

• Engagement rate = Number of followers / (Likes + Comments * 2)

Digression! Social bots influence commitment rate

Social bots also play a major role in the social networks. Through social bots like Instazood for Instagram or even qualitative alternatives like Combin. Why? Comments and Likes are not distributed by organic users, but by a program. Maybe you know Kommtare like “cool picture” or “awesome post”. With high probability this is by a Bot. Gefakte Likes are (against without software) only very, very difficult to register or recognize. You can not exclude them with a simple formula. But they do not make up the bulk of the interactions.

Engagement Rate: Distribution by followers

The larger the blogger becomes, the more people follow him or her for reasons of familiarity. Easily writable by stars, musicians or soccer players. The more familiar the person becomes, the lower the interaction rate is by nature. Here are some rough experience for you:

• Up to 50,000 fans of 8-20%, partly also 25, 30% with extreme tips, on average 8-12%
• 50,000 – 100,000 fans of 6-14%
• 100,000 – 500,000 fans of 5-11%
• 500,000 – 1,000,000 fans of 4-9%
• 1,000,000 – 5,000,000 fans of 2 -6%
• 5,000,000 – 10,000,000 fans of 1-4%

Influencer Prices: So much cost Youtuber and Instgrammer

Facebook has become little attractive for organic traffic. Facebook is good for ads. Organic traffic is generated on Youtube and Instagram. The prices and costs for influencers differ on the two social networks.

Costs and prices for influencer on Instagram

Instagram is cheaper in relation to Youtube. Why is that? Posting on Instagram are generally relevant for only 24 hours of relevance. The trendings show content 24 hours. The stream partially longer, but only if you follow relatively few people. The more new content comes (the more people you follow) the less content remains for old content. Also the stories have only a short holding time of 24 hours. In addition, stories are almost exclusively seen by their own fans.

Costs and prices for influencer on Instagram

Calculate impressions: reach of postings and stories

On Youtube, the clicks are easy to read, for everyone. Likes, comments, everything first relevant can be seen. It is quite different with Instagram, because here, for example, Stories are only issued to their own fans. Monitoring is thus very time-consuming. With the postings, you see no information on the range. Who wants to calculate the range nevertheless, for which we have here a few guideline values for the calculation of the range of Influencer campaigns on Instagram.

• Impressions of a posting = number of followers / 1.52
• Impressions of a story = number of followers / 27.46
• Classification of Influencers: PAM (People Attraction Method)

As we reported in the article Classification of Influencers in the middle of the year, there are different categories. They are hardly used in day-to-day agency work, but provide a good way of classification for scientific work or even offers.

Classification of Influencers by PAM (People Attraction Method)

There are three subcategories:

1. PAM | Extraterrestrial up from 300.000.00
2. PAM | Global up to 300.000.000< PAM | Standard up to 3.000.000
3. PAM | Special Interest up to 600.000

Pico, Nano and Micro Influencer

All the values can be taken exactly from the table. The classification is carried out in the classical classification of pico, micro and micro. As a formula is also used to calculate the costs and prices of campaigners.

ROI Success Measurement: Calculation of the Return of Invest

Now, after the campaign has been planned and thought through, the ROI is now going to the real success measurement. The return on investment (ROI) shows whether the investment is profitable. The ROI can also be calculated for inflation campaigns. The easiest way is to use short links or pixels. They all draw clicks and so you can quickly see if enough people have clicked.

• Sponsored Posting is purchased for 100 euros
• 50 people click on the link
• 10 people buy the product for 25 Euro
• 250 Euro sales were generated

Now you can calculate the ROI:

• ROI = Revenue / Investment for Sponsored Post
• 2.5 = 250/100

The ROI (2.5) is positive and therefore profitable for the company. If different campaigns are active for a campaign, the different ROIs can be compared with each other at the end of a campaign.

The ROI, however, works only with products and only if the derivation is valid. Links and pixels allow a conclusion. They must therefore be placed in the influemecer’s posting. In Instagram this is not possible (only once in the profile but not in the posting), so here are also used gladly codes like “shop my style and get 10% discount with #bloggerXY10”.

These practical tips will help you as a young social media manager to calculate and calculate first influencer campaigns. You can find more practical tips and help at our social media blog.