Paid advertising is one of the best ways to bring in new customers and increase brand awareness, especially if you’re new to the business world. With paid ads, you’re practically guaranteed to reach the audience you’re aiming for and get qualified leads. However, your organic strategy still has to be consistent and creative – just focusing on the paid and ignoring the organic content won’t really get you that far. Let’s cover the basics of paid advertising, shall we?
It is the practice of paying a search engine or a website owner whenever someone clicks or views their ads on a search result, on a website, on social media, or any digital platform.
Basically, the advertisers bid to be a part of a real-time auction that will show their ads within slots. When the bids are in, the auctioneer (a website, platform or a search engine) ‘rewards’ the highest bidder and the best ads with the best spots. Their users then see the most relevant and most up-voted content. So, the ads with the highest performance get the best visibility.
There are two major ways a platform will charge you for your ads – one is based on visibility (impressions) and the other one is action. Impressions means you pay for visibility and the charging doesn’t depend on if someone actually did something with your ad, only probably saw it. With action, you pay per click. That means you will get charged only if someone clicked on your ad. That’s where the term ‘cost per click’ comes from.
However, even if impressions don’t really sound that good for you, they still have their benefits. For example – if you have an ad on YouTube that runs before a particular video and maybe add a promo code, someone who saw it could come to your page and use the promo code. This is only one of the examples where this type of ad could work.
There are six main types of digital ads: display, social media, native, search, and video. Quite a few of the different types of digital advertising share similar characteristics or can even be used together.
Display ads are the most basic ones and are usually in a form of an image or text. They show up as banners, landing pages, popups, or flash ads. They don’t show up on search results.
Social media ads are currently the most popular ones, mostly because of the data available and the possibility to target the audience in a better and easier way.
Native advertising requires some strategic thinking since they are usually placed somewhere to make it seem like organic content.
Search engine marketing is based on keywords users are already looking for. It consists of two main sub-types: pay-per-click (PPC), and search engine optimization (SEO). Google and Bing are the most popular SEM platforms. It is estimated that 90% of users will stop their search on the first page even though search engines may return thousands of results. Therefore, it’s essential to use SEM and strategize to ensure your listing appears on the first couple of pages.
Video ads are exactly what you think they are. They can show up as a commercial before a video on Youtube, or they can be integrated as native or display ads.
When it comes to small businesses, in particular, they usually refrain from investing in paid ads due to the low revenue they deal with, especially in the beginning. But, even a small amount invested in paid ads can make a big difference and increase brand awareness while also bringing new leads. Here are some of the ways you can benefit from investing in paid ads.
More than 80% of customers do their online research before they decide to purchase something with Google being their go-to place to do so. With a PPC ad, you can place your company in Google’s search network and let potential clients know you exist. With social media and the data available you can also target a specific demographic and make sure they see your ad.
This one is quite simple actually. When a person sees an ad (a good ad!) of a company, they assume that the company has enough money not only to invest in marketing but in quality too. It means the business is doing great, which also means they have a bunch of customers. And that has to be a good thing, right?
With paid ads, you can be absolutely sure your ad will reach the person you want it to reach. Both search engines and social media platforms have ways of showing your ad to the right prospect. Not only are they able to properly place your ad, but they want to do it as well – they want people to click on it so they can charge you money. It’s a win-win. Actually, it’s a win-win-win, because your client will benefit from your product too.
Another great thing about them is the ability to track everything in real-time, so you can adjust your campaign accordingly and not have to wait for the campaign to stop to do some analytics.
Using paid advertising to advertise your business is typically more cost-effective than using conventional offline channels. Unlike newspaper ads, with paid ads, the format, who sees your ads, and how much you pay for them are all under your control.
You will build stronger relationships with your audience by advertising on digital channels. How? By offering them what they need when they need it. That can be done by targeting the right audience, and as we now know, paid ads do just that, whether by demographics, location, keywords, etc.
These are just a few of the benefits Paid Ads can bring. With paid ads and strategic thinking, not only can you connect with your audience and maintain the relationship, but you can also increase brand awareness, bring new leads and let your business flourish.
If you’re not that sure how to get started with paid ads, you can always get in touch with us! We’re happy to help.