How To Manage Paid Advertising With An Effective Strategy

Paid advertising is an effective internet marketing strategy that can be used to generate new customers. Whether you’re just starting out or looking for a way to grow your business, harnessing the power of marketing channels can transform your business.

There are several paid advertising platforms that businesses can consider; each has its own unique features that might work better than others for your marketing strategy.

It’s important to understand what this type of marketing entails before diving in headfirst and spending money on ads that don’t work. If you need help understanding how it all works, then keep reading!

What is paid advertising?

Paid advertising is an internet marketing strategy that uses the power of search engines to bring more visitors to your website. It’s also known as Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or paid search, which involves companies investing their marketing dollars in gaining impressions and clicks from third-party platforms that market their content to prospective clients.

While there are several benefits to paid marketing, it’s important to understand that this isn’t the type of strategy you can pick up in an hour and start seeing results overnight. It takes patience and time to build a successful campaign; however, if done correctly, you can generate new leads and customers.

When you’re ready to begin using paid advertising, start by looking at the platforms that are right for your business and consider which will deliver results with the best ROI (return on investment).

The right paid advertising platform can help your business grow by getting more customers interested in your products and services. Paid marketing channels should be part of any comprehensive internet marketing strategy that seeks to attract the ideal audience for a business, increase brand awareness, or boost conversions.

How does paid advertising work?

This internet marketing strategy is based on the targeting of users through advertising space. It allows you to focus your message directly on those who are most likely to be interested in it, increasing conversion rates and reducing costs at the same time.

It’s much more accurate than organic marketing because its audience isn’t as large. As a result, you’ll see higher conversions and less waste.

Let’s break it down:

Picture an e-auction room where corporations of all sizes compete for the right to have their ad appear in a specific space or location.

If the space is in high demand, the bidding may get expensive before it is sold. Or, if the companies involved determine the space isn’t high on their priority list, the bids will remain relatively low.

When all the bids are in, the auctioneer gives the best prizes to the websites, ads, or pages with the highest online visibility.

Rather than marketing the least desirable content, the auctioneer instead pushes top-rated or the most relevant content to their users or searchers.

Even now, several advertising platforms still sell ad space in this manner to make money by providing the very best content to their users. Ads or pages with the best performance are given the greatest exposure.

Most platforms don’t conduct a blind auction; instead, they provide easily accessible details about the highest bidders, giving you the information you need to decide whether or not you want to compete for particular ad placement.

If you decide to place a bid and deliver an ad that performs very well, these ad platforms will reward your efforts with more visibility.
Paid marketing can have a significant impact on positive cash flow for many businesses.

Clicks and Impression

When it comes to paid advertisement, there are two primary methods that platforms or digital ad publishers use to charge marketers: Cost Per Impression (CPM) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC).

What is Cost Per Impression (CPM)?

Cost Per Impression is a type of digital advertising where an advertiser pays a certain amount for every 1,000 views that its ad receives.

The cost structure is unaffected by whether or not someone takes action when they see your ad. When it comes to determining the price of ad placement, the most important factor is the size of the audience.

What is Pay-Per-Click (PPC)?

PPC stands for “Pay-Per-Click,” as can be seen above. It is an advertising method in which advertisers pay publishers each time a user clicks on their ad.

This type of system has made it easier for small and medium-sized businesses to compete with larger companies that typically have bigger marketing budgets, as smaller advertisers can buy enough impressions and clicks at a lower cost than they could achieve through other forms of advertising, such as print or radio.

PPC helps a website make money without relying on physical product sales, which means the site doesn’t have to pay advertising platforms for doing nothing but showing ads on their sites. In fact, PPC is often used by sites trying to avoid using pop-ups and other advertising tactics that annoy visitors and hurt website revenue. Advertisers choose the keywords they want to use and pay only when someone clicks on their ad.

A PPC campaign is made up of two components: a keyword or keyphrase used by potential customers in search engines and an ad created by the marketer. If a user searches using the same keywords as those included in the PPC ad, the ad will appear with the search results. This is how businesses get their ads to show up when potential customers search for a given topic.

They choose which keywords (key phrases) will trigger their advertisement and pay each time someone clicks on it.

When using PPC, it is essential to know the difference between CTR (click-through rate) and conversion rate. CTR is the percentage of clicks your ad receives; it doesn’t indicate whether or not users are interested in what you’re advertising because they could click on your ads without engaging with your content. Conversion rate measures how many people who clicked on your ad actually went to your site, viewed specific pages, downloaded a file, or performed the “right action.”

Every click on a PPC ad brings traffic to your website and allows you to measure the success of an ad campaign in terms of revenue generated per click. Many types of websites use PPC marketing as a form of monetization, including Google Adwords, Bing Ads, and social media like Facebook, etc.

Paid ads are often confused with organic search results. Paid ads are placed above or alongside organic results on a search engine results page (SERP); however, they can also appear below the list of organic search results. The paid search results appear in sponsored listings that include company logos, pictures, and sometimes, ratings.

Cost Per Impression (CPM) vs Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Paid marketing works best when you know your target audience and create campaigns that resonate with them. Both CPM and PPC should be considered as options when you’re starting out.

CPM campaigns are set up with a maximum budget and deliver impressions to your website or app users. They tend to bring the most brand awareness at the lowest cost, but businesses need to keep an eye on their conversion rates as they may not be as targeted as PPC.

PPC campaigns are set up with a maximum budget and deliver clicks to your website or app users. They allow businesses more targeting options, but these can affect costs per click as well as the campaign’s overall success.

Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of both:

Advantages and disadvantages of impression-based pricing

CPM is undoubtedly a great low-cost option for brand building and brand awareness. If the platform you’re using is one that your audience enjoys, you can expect a high click-through rate, which can translate to a good amount of sales.

The tricky thing here is that if you’re making use of a low traffic platform, then the results will likely be poor, and if you decide to make use of a high traffic platform, the competition from other bidders may spike ad prices. Keep in mind that you could pay high fees even when people ignore your ad.

Using an analogy:

Let’s say you decide to invest $5,000 on a video ad campaign on a streaming platform that charges you based on impressions. This investment can positively impact your revenue, and you can even record sales from some of the people who saw your video ad. When your product is put in the faces of the right audience, then there’s always a high potential of converting.

On the other hand, you could invest $5,000 in your campaign without getting any leads. After all, you got the impressions (visibility) you paid for. In this scenario, you’ll feel hard done because there’s no point investing in exposure when it can’t translate to sales.

Advantages and disadvantages of Pay-Per-Click & Action-Based Pricing

This type of advertising deals with search terms or keywords that you want to have a presence for. This is great for driving organic traffic to your site, where you have the opportunity to deliver your brand message and connect with prospective clients.

With PPC, you only pay when prospective clients take the right action (clicking). Interestingly, this can give you an opportunity to pass your message to searchers without paying a dime (views). In addition, your campaign is customizable, measurable and you can target specific demographics.

The downside is that PPC can get expensive, as highly competitive terms attract higher costs per click, which still won’t guarantee sales. You also need to invest a lot of time when considering PPC because it is necessary to optimize your campaign from time to time to get a reasonable return on investment.

It also requires some time to master, as some level of skill is needed to set up an effective campaign. This is why a lot of companies prefer to use the services of experts.

Most importantly, getting prospective clients to your website after paying high ad rates does not in any way guarantee sales. You must further convince the client to make a purchase with a powerful copy. If your product is too complex, the visitor might leave your site and find you through your ad later on, which will attract another charge (high cost per sale).

Using an analogy:

Let’s say you decide to invest $5,000 on Google Ads (PPC) because you want to drive traffic to your website. You only pay when someone clicks on the ad and gets directed to your site. With PPC, every visitor who becomes a lead is a potential sale.

Unfortunately, you can’t spend from your $5,000 budget unless your ad gets clicked—meaning that if your search term doesn’t perform well, you will attract a very low amount of leads at the end of your campaign while paying a high cost for each click. This can be very frustrating, especially when you have high lead generation expectations.

These leads are still not guaranteed sales, and considering that they are few, your chances of converting will be on the low side as well.

At the end of the day, both are tools that can be utilized to drive traffic to your website. It’s just a matter of making use of an effective paid advertising strategy and honing in on your target market!

Overall, paid marketing allows you to engage with your customers in more ways than organic rankings alone ever could. It gives you access to a market that you might not be able to get to organically and allows you to control the conversation with your target audience.

Paid advertising strategies you should consider for your business

Google Adwords

Google Adwords has a distinct hold on the top position for PPC advertising in the digital ad market because of its ease of use and targeting ability. In fact, it is estimated that Google has a grip on 92% of the search engine traffic market share worldwide.

There are very few reasons for you not to tap into this paid advertising strategy. If you already have a website for your business, it should be relatively easy to set up an account and start running ads within minutes.

The pricing is based on the search volume of keywords. The more people search for a specific term, the higher the cost per click. However, there are some things that you can do to manage your costs, like bidding smartly, setting a daily budget, and only running your ads when you have time to monitor them.

Google Adwords allows marketers to access very detailed reports on their campaign performance, allowing you to know which keywords perform best for you and the cost per click of each keyword. This allows you to cut out the underperforming ones and invest in more profitable options.

This paid advertising strategy also allows you to target specific demographics, which is very useful in finding customers who are most likely to be interested in what you have to offer.

YouTube advertising

The beauty of this paid advertising strategy is that YouTube has one of the largest search engines in the world and is second only to Google by volume. This is a platform that receives more than 2 billion logged-in users monthly while feeding over 1 billion hours of videos to people every day.

If you’re not using this platform to promote your business, you’re missing out on a very important audience. Since YouTube is owned by Google, it makes it easier for people to find whatever content they are searching for.

Unlike Google Adwords, which you can use to promote your business anywhere on the internet, YouTube ads only appear on videos within YouTube itself. This is an excellent way to target customers who are on YouTube and looking at videos related to what your company does.

YouTube has a very comprehensive analytics system that allows you to track how many people have been exposed to your ads and whether they have been clicked, allowing you to judge its effectiveness for yourself.

Since YouTube is a video-sharing website, it’s easy to skip ads if they do not appeal to the viewer, so getting creative with your adverts is important. You can create different ads for different demographics and run multiple campaigns simultaneously while keeping an eye on each one’s performance.

Facebook advertising campaign

If you’re looking for a paid advertising campaign that has a low barrier to entry, Facebook advertising is the way to go.

Facebook is undoubtedly one of the largest internet marketplaces. It can serve ads to people who have already ‘liked’ business pages or said that they are interested in a particular topic.

The good thing about Facebook advertising is that you can market to a very specific group of people in a very short amount of time since you know they have already expressed some interest in your service.

Since Facebook is so widespread, it can be difficult to know where to start when building your campaign. The first thing you need to do is decide how much money you are willing to spend on each campaign. This will give you an upper limit of what you can afford, and you won’t risk blowing the budget.

You then need to figure out what your target audience looks like. The more specific you can be, the better results you’ll get from your ads. Before creating a Facebook ad, you should have a good idea of who is most likely to be interested in what it is that you’re offering and whether or not they will be able to buy it.

Once this information has been collected, you can then start building your campaign by choosing the design of your ad and where it will be displayed. You then enter in all your contact information so that visitors to the ad page can easily get in touch with you.

Retargeting

Retargeting is a very effective type of paid advertising strategy which allows you to re-engage prospective clients who have already been to your site and send them personalized ads until they are ready to purchase your product or service.

If you have already spent time marketing your business, then it’s likely that you’ve already collected a list of potential customers. This can be used to your advantage by setting up retargeting campaigns on social media platforms (list-based retargeting).

You can also apply pixel-based retargeting, which uses cookies to track people’s behavior. For example, if someone landed on your site and browsed through the product section but didn’t buy anything, then you can send them an ad with promotional discounts. The pixel will automatically detect that they were previously at your site and display a relevant ad for maximum effect.

Retargeting is a very powerful tool that can increase conversions by almost 150%. It basically allows you to stay in front of the right people who are most likely going to become customers and advertise relevant products until they are ready to buy.

Since people’s behavior online is often influenced by their mood, it pays to be creative with your ads. For example, if someone has just visited your site and left during checkout, they are most likely doing so because of some problem related to the purchasing process (which you should try to solve). You can use this information to your advantage by sending them ads that offer discounts on their next purchase or some other incentive.

Why is paid marketing important for your business?

• Targeted advertisements can be a powerful customer acquisition tool. They allow you to reach out to the right audience, which would otherwise be difficult, if not impossible, with other forms of marketing.
• Paid marketing is much more scalable since you only have to spend money if a customer takes a particular action. You can also easily track the effectiveness of each campaign through various analytics tools.
• You can efficiently boost rankings on search engines. A well-planned campaign can help bring your website closer to page one of Google results, which is a sign of quality and authority.
• Paid marketing is very aggressive and allows marketers to get as creative as they like. They can create different campaigns based on the brand, product, target audience, etc.
• It’s an excellent way to get more people involved with your brand and build a buzz for it. Social media posts or ads can often go viral and generate hundreds if not thousands of free impressions.
• Paid advertising is constantly evolving, and new strategies are constantly being introduced, making it an attractive option for businesses looking to grow their customer base.

What do you need to make paid marketing work for you?

• You will need a well-written ad that is catchy, relevant, and conveys the main benefits of your product or service. It should also grab attention and result in click-throughs (CTR).
• Quality content (which you can provide yourself or outsource) is important for driving conversions with paid advertising. You can also hire an experienced SEO team to help you choose the most appropriate keywords and create the best ads that will generate traffic for your business.
• It’s important to keep an eye on local search results since this form of paid media is location-based by nature. This enables you to target customers who are more likely to be interested in your products or services, as long as they’re located close to your business.
  For example, if you run a flower shop that makes deliveries, it’s important to bid on keywords relevant to people who live nearby.
  What else can you do?

• Choose an appropriate time frame
• Decide on a budget
• Choose an appropriate bidding strategy
• Don’t go overboard with advertising and promotion. It can turn people off and make them suspicious of your business.

Conclusion

As we’ve already seen, there’s no shortage of strategies you can use to boost your paid marketing campaigns. Effective use of social media and search engine ads is a great way to make your business more visible online and reach a wider audience.

However, this isn’t an excuse to throw money at your campaign—if you want your efforts to pay off, you need to dedicate time to research and choose the right strategies for your business. There’s no such thing as a quick win when it comes to paid advertising, but if you can be patient and plan, then this form of internet marketing is worth considering.