There’s been so much noise regarding quality content in the past few years where people keep shouting that this or that content is the magic sauce to successful online marketing.
You get to hear a lot of other folks tell you that content is king in the land of digital marketing. Okay, I am not here to go into a debate with them, I am just here to inform you that if the world of marketing has leadership, then it must be made two kings, content and paid ads or paid advertising.
Let me try to paint a picture of this for you.
You own a bakery that is located just outside a school that has 3000 kids on its register. The kids normally buy their lunch at another bakery 4 blocks away because they are not aware that you opened up a bread shop just around the corner.
This is because you have black tinted windows so people can’t see in, your signpost says Mike’s shop.
The door is always closed so the inviting aroma of freshly baked bread doesn’t get past it and you refuse to go outside to attract customers.
Despite your bread having great taste, no one is coming to get it from you, that sounds pretty bad, right? Like you are about to shut down soon, that is sad.
Will you want your bakery to shut down and leave you with unpaid debts? I am not sure you will say yes to that question, so I will tell you what to do to save the situation.
You will pay a guy to get you transparent windows because people have to see that you are selling amazing bakery food.
You come up with a descriptive name for your bakery, one that tells exactly what your business is about.
You will then pay a guy to get you the best yumm-yumm-looking signpost out there.
You either get out yourself or pay someone again to wear a donut costume to attract the kids with flyers and freebies to start buying at your shop.
That’s what paid ad is in a nutshell. You have to pay to get your message out there,
To grow and promote your business, it is very important to get noticed. Organic marketing is a fine way for driving traffic to your business’s website, but it is time-consuming, hence something you shouldn’t lean all your marketing weight on.
This guide on paid ads is written to put you through everything you need to know to lead a successful paid advertising campaign. Let`s ride in deeper.
What are Paid Ads?
Paid advertising is any form of advertising for which the business has to pay to get seen by the targeted audience. Meaning, marketers pay advertising agencies to use their space in to promote the marketer`s products and services in exchange for money.
Using paid ads, a company targets its potential customers based on their interests, Preferences, intent, or previous interactions with the business.
Paid campaigns may leverage one or more digital platforms, like social media platforms, search engine optimization, and website rankings.
In addition to this, paid advertising can also take the shape of sponsored posts to get maximum reach for a business.
In comparison with organic marketing, paid ads bring faster results and more detailed targeting potentials.
With Paid ads, you can exactly reach the group of Target Audiences meant for your product.
For instance, you can advertise or promote your business only to a specific group of people through a Paid marketing Strategy, it empowers you to target your potential customers based on their interests, Preferences, age group, gender, and more.
What are the Benefits of Paid Ads?
#1. Organic reach on social media is sinking. Paid is the life Jacket your marketing needs
Paid ads are here to rescue your content marketing. Without paid ads your conversion rates for posts will be very low and kissing the ground each time your shoot a campaign out there, this is true for everyone.
Organic content on social media has been under the weather for a few years now on the Social media pitch where it is now a pay-to-play model for brands.
According to Wearesocial.com, the average reach of an organic post on a Facebook Page, for example, is a sad low 5.20%!
So only one in every 19 followers sees your non-promoted content.
The answer is to boost your distribution by improving your paid social marketing budget.
With paid advertising, you are guaranteed to reach a defined audience and can utilize your content to promote your brand with specific targeting and get more qualified leads.
But don’t underestimate the importance of organic marketing because that is not what I am implying. Behind any great paid ad campaign is a consistent and creative organic marketing strategy.
#2. Paid Ads are very affordable and measurable
When you are running paid ad campaigns, you can reach a very targeted audience. Costs related to paid ads are dependent on the goal or type of ad you are running.
For instance, if your marketing objective is website traffic or leads generation then you will go for a cost-per-click (CPC), or if your goal is brand awareness you will go in for a CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions).
Once your ads begin to run, you have a million and one tools out there to track and measure your performance.
#3. Specific and granular targeting is available when you use paid ads
Paid ad targeting can be very specific and enable you to reach relevant users who are interested in your brand, fit the demographics of your sales personas and reside in the exact geographic location you are out to target.
Let’s say you own a hair salon, you can advertise to potential clients within a 2-3 km radius of your saloon. This is unachievable with organic SEO or social.
Take a look at your analytics across all your digital platforms and analyze your audience to identify common factors such as keywords, demographics, geographic location, job titles, interests, and common topics.
You can use all of these insights to refine your paid ad targeting and pull in more qualified leads and clients.
#4. Test and earn valuable audience insights
Across all the paid ad platforms you can set up several versions of an advertisement and optimize based on audience engagement.
This information collected will help you refine your messaging and help you build a holistic understanding of your audience and their interests.
#5. Retargeting and retention are possible when you use paid ads
Once a user has viewed your website, clicked through an ad, or interacted with your business, you can run a retargeting campaign to draw them further into your conversion funnel.
Retargeted ads will show them highly relevant ads to continuously engage your prospects who have shown an interest in your product that otherwise could have slipped away.
#6. Rank now while your organic rankings are growing
Do you have a new business? Or a new site? Or even an old site that just doesn’t rank organically on Google?
If your site isn’t ranking on the first page of Google results, then paid ads to enable you to place ads for keywords and bring in high-quality website traffic to your brand.
Organic search rankings take time and investment to grow, but when they do, they bring in high-quality traffic.
While you are building your ranks through content and working on your Google reviews for your Google My Business profile – leverage paid ads to fill that gap.
Types of Paid Ads?
#1. Google Ads
Google Ads is a paid ad platform that falls under a marketing medium known as pay-per-click (PPC), where you pay per click or impression (CPM) on an ad.
Google Ads is an effective means to drive qualified traffic, or good-fit customers, to your business who are searching for products like the ones you offer.
With Google paid Ads, you can boost your website traffic, receive more phone calls, and improve in-store visits.
Google Ads enable you to create and share well-timed ads among your target audience. As a result, your business will show up on the search engine results page at the moment your ideal customers are looking for products like yours via Google Search or Google Maps.
This way, you reach your target audience when it makes sense for them the most to come across your ad.
#2. Bing Ads
If Googling has ever let you down, you may have gone in search of another and found another search engine called Bing.
This search engine is powered by Microsoft and strives to outdo Google at every tick of the clock.
Bing wants to revolutionize digital search marketing and rival the industry’s long-standing powerhouse Google.
It’s an ambitious desire, but one place where Bing differentiates itself is through its Pay Per Click ads or PPC.
According to our guide, Pay Per Click (PPC) ads are a form of search engine marketing (SEM) where the advertiser pays for clicks on an ad.
Put differently, the advertiser has to pay the publisher whenever a user interacts with the ad. In exchange, the ad is added to the search engine’s database, which shows the ad whenever the content matches a visitor’s searched query.
While Google Ads provides a popular PPC feature, Bing has unique advantages that distinguish it from the search engine giant.
And, if you are the owner of a small- to medium-sized brand, you may be more interested in Bing’s PPC benefits than what Google brings to the table.
#3. Facebook and Instagram Ads
Instagram and Facebook allow you to reach customers where they spend their time. And that’s on mobile.
One in five mobile minutes is spent on Instagram and Facebook together, more than the next ten mobile platforms combined.
So, what does this mean for digital marketers? By advertising across both platforms, you have more opportunities to reach your customers.
When you choose Instagram and Facebook for the same ad campaign, they will optimize delivery across their combined audience, which can make reaching your customers more successful.
Furthermore, running adverts across both platforms together offers comparable or better performance for website clicks, video views website conversions, and mobile app installs compared to running adverts on the Instagram or Facebook mobile News Feed separately.
#4. Native Ads
A native ad is a natural way of promotion through the media. Usually, it is created by the employees of the media, not the customer.
Due to this, an ad fits the context and environment of the publication, and even for a regular audience is indistinguishable from other materials on the website.
Cost of Paid Ads?
There is always a little more than you were going to spend on paid ads. A lot of factors impact the cost of a click, impression, or conversion, up to the time of day. However, all of them can be reduced to just two denominators:
#1. Competition;
#2. Ad quality.
In the paid advertising space, there is a supply-demand relationship — the more advertisers qualify for placement, the more costly the placement becomes.
In addition, it’s unprofitable for websites to display irrelevant ads. Therefore, Google, for instance, ranks ad content and reduces the price for ads with a high-Quality score.
Payment forms of Paid Ads
Some people call paid ad PPC, in other words, Pay Per Click — regarding the most common way to pay for it.
However, paid ads do not only sell clicks. Here are other ways to look at and evaluate a campaign.
#1. Cost Per Click (CPC): This is the cost for visitor interaction with an ad, transferred by the link.
#2. Cost Per Action (CPA): This is the cost per conversion. Not only the visitor’s transfer to the website but also the performance of targeted actions: subscribing, filling out a form, purchasing, etc.
#3. Cost Per View (CPV): This is the cost per ad displayed to the user. For instance, Google Ads uses this parameter to calculate the cost of TrueView videos, and it is also utilized in campaigns aimed at brand awareness, not conversion.
Conclusion
So till now if you were relying only on Organic Marketing to promote your business, try your hands on Paid ads too and get faster results and maximum reach for your business.
Paid advertising is a non-negotiable piece of your marketing and sales funnel. There are many possibilities, channels, types of paid ads, and campaign types to choose from. But make a call and concentrate on one or two.
With paid ads, can customize your brand and message in any way you see fit and consistently test to see what works and what doesn’t.
With hard work and consistent optimization, you will strike gold and find yourself with more quality leads and conversions as a result of leveraging paid ads.
Hope this article would take you to that goldmine you seek in your marketing campaigns.
