This week's top tip post is all about paid advertising, an aspect of digital marketing that can target your chosen customers and get them to engage with your business - and, ultimately - purchase your product.
What is Paid Advertising?
Paid advertising, known also as digital advertising, is where companies or brands target potential customers based on a variety of interactions, intent, location, or other relevant information.
You can advertise on several platforms from search engines to social media, though the popular places to advertise are Google and Facebook.
Benefits of Paid Marketing
You may have seen them pop up yourself on your social channels, or on a Google search. These days, it’s more likely you’ll encounter a brand online first before making a purchase either online or in-store.
Paid Advertising can help you build awareness for your brand, create more engagement, and target specific audiences so you get the most out of your product or services.
Types of Paid Marketing
- Paid Search Marketing
This is a type of paid marketing whereby you can show off your offer/product/service to the top of search engines, and potential customers will be able to find you when searching.
- Paid Social Media Marketing
This is a type of paid marketing whereby you can create a post/ad and it will appear in the feed of people’s social media accounts, targeting specific audiences based on chosen factors (from location, age range, gender, and more).
- Display Marketing
These are banners and text boxes that appear across the internet on web pages frequently visited by your chosen audience.
Paid Search Marketing Tips
The most popular platform for paid search marketing is Google Ads. Here’s some tips to increase the effectiveness of your campaign:
- Create a Paid Advertising checklist. Plan your strategy, your goals, spending budget, and the tracking software you want to use.
- Create an effective keyword list that describes your business, as this will be very valuable to your paid campaigns. As you run your campaigns, however, it’s a good idea to monitor the list so you can make effective changes by adding more keywords and negative keywords.
- Create a custom landing page with your ad in mind. This will provide all the information needed for the customer to sign-up/purchase or complete the goal of the ad.
- Improve your quality score by lowering your average bid cost and improving your ad rankings through A/B testing on your ad copy. Then stick with whichever gets the highest click-through rates after you’ve run your campaign for at least 4 weeks.
- Generally, test and evaluate your ads. All pay-per-click ads are measurable, so it’s a good idea to regularly measure the results, evaluate, and change your campaign where needed and try again. Create a calendar reminder to review your campaign performance a few times a week.
We have regular events around paid advertising, from Google Ads to social media. Find out more about this marketing avenue, how it can work for your business, and how to create campaigns that really work.
Blog Post written by Kate Anderson, Marketing & Design Executive