What Is Paid Advertising And How It Is Helping You Succeed?

Paid advertising is simply a kind of advertisement; digital or print that you pay for as opposed to earned advertising which is generally what the customer has to say about you. With paid advertising, you use some real estate to display your products/services and pay the owner of that real estate for the use. In the online space, this real estate belongs to the owner of the website that you are advertising on and that is who you pay to advertise.

Why Paid Advertising?

Paid advertising is an essential part of marketing and good campaigns capitalize on the various popular channels for advertising. Even though this is a costlier method of advertising, it is effective because it helps you reach a larger, more targeted audience this way.

Online marketing involves ads displayed to consumers on websites they frequent in sidebars, or different spaces allocated in the website for them. The larger the display the more expensive it is to advertise in that space and most marketers utilize the spaces which will immediately catch the eye of the user.

There are three categories of paid ads which helps the campaign to further customize the reach to the audience. Which are:

1. PPC (Pay Per Click)

This is a model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked.

This is a model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked online on web pages.

This model helps increase the number of visits to the website inorganically and has a payment model where every click by users is tracked and billed to the marketer. One of the most popular forms of PPC is Search engine advertising. These are the results that you get as soon as you search for a product or a service and see the first few links which have “ads” or “sponsored” mentioned before them. For products, there is a display banner which shows you an image and a link to directly buy the product you have searched from the websites that sell it. Every time a user clicks on these sponsored ads, the advertisers pay the search engine a fee.

2. PPI (Pay Per Impression)

This is another form of paid ads which helps increase traffic. This method is different from PPC because in this scenario an advertiser pays the owner of the real estate to simply display the ad. This category is when a fee is incurred every time a potential customer simply views the advertisement.

3. Display Ads

Display advertising is an image based type of advertising which includes banners, images, etc. “Unlike text-based ads, display advertising relies on elements such as images, audio and video to communicate an advertising message.”

What is the difference between PPC & PPI – Which one should I go for?

To understand the benefits of each, one must first identify the goal of the campaigns. If you want to increase awareness about your brand, a PPI model is the beneficiary. But to get a customer complete a consumer cycle on your website, a PPC model is more beneficiary. Of course, a PPI model is much more cost effective than a PPC model and therefore used by marketers with financial constraints.

These days, “Online Advertising” is also referred to as search engine marketing (SEM), paid channel marketing and often directly as Pay-Per-Click marketing. One of the most upcoming and popular forums is social media networks like Facebook and LinkedIn. People have discovered Facebook to be an extremely effective channel to advertise their products and even services.

“The average click-through-rate for Facebook Ads has jumped 275% since 2012.” (Source for statistics: Wishpond)

What Are The Important Factors That I Need To Know?

Image source: http://360imteam.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/retargeting.png

The most important factor that you need to keep in mind is that paid marketing is buying the digital real estate for a short period. So, once your money or time is over you need to invest in it again; it is rented space. Also, your campaigns need to be fresh and updated, for e.g., you have a product to sell, and you have an image based display ad that receives top billing every time somebody searches that product on Google. But you have simply one image based banner which you keep repeating every time you renew your campaign. Considering the span of user attention, watching the same image over and over again will negate any attraction the customer might have towards clicking on your ad.

Therefore, it is imperative that you have serious marketing campaigns set in place to maintain relevance and a good knowledge of not only search engine optimisation (SEO) but your target audience and customer identification as well, so that you can target the right kind of customers and make your campaigns a success.

Another important factor that you need to be aware of is the various parameters via which you can track the revenue that your online campaigns have generated. Google offers Google Adwords and analytics to get a deeper understanding of how your campaigns have fared among your target audience. Facebook has a Business Advert section for marketers to keep track of their past, ongoing and scheduled ad campaigns and a vast variety of features to assess the patterns of user behaviour for every campaign and marketing as a whole.

Lastly, you must understand that paid advertising is a double edged sword. On the one hand, it is a good method to increase traffic, customer retention and thereby sales, but in case you are not well versed with its various nuances, you may end up burning a lot of your budget with no ROI.

One of the most important factors to remember is to understand targeting and therefore target a very relevant audience. For example, you are a mid-sized company which assembles computers and delivers it to the clients. Your target audience is other mid-sized companies with minimum orders of 20 computers per contract. You begin to advertise yourself online, and lots of leads are generated, but when you comb through those leads, you realise that they are irrelevant because they are single users looking to buy single units only.

This is a classic case of mis-targeting and can be avoided by creating extensive user personas before advertising your campaigns, thereby making your paid advertising management more effective.

How will paid advertising pay off?

Two of the most popular channels for advertising are Google and Facebook. To understand how to use Google to your advantage, we need to understand how keywords work. Google keyword planner in Adwords is a tool offered by Google, to understand, research and discover relevant keywords for your industry. They help you rank your websites better and make for a brilliant digital marketing service if utilised correctly.

Another great resource is Facebook, where you can create campaigns here. The sponsored ads can be set for the particular time period, shown to specific users which can be narrowed down by an excellent list of keywords that helps you specify your audience and improve your impressions.

Retargeting – is done when a user is shown similar ads on different ad spaces of his browsing patterns. For example, if you search for Apple iPhone on Amazon and then log out without buying, you will find ads displaying that phone on every website that you visit. This marketing strategy is called Retargeting and is very effective if you understand the consumer cycle and the phases of user’s purchasing and search patterns.

Paid advertising is a very useful aspect of the digital world today. If understood well, it can help you increase business and visits to your websites. But there are these few factors that we listed above that will help you gain the edge. There are various digital marketing agencies who offer campaign management services to other companies. This option is viable and advisable when you cannot afford resources for your online marketing and are looking for outsourcing to someone with expertise in digital advertising services.

We hope that our tips help you find the right niche where you fit in the paid marketing arena. For more information on service providers for your needs, you can drop us a line about your requirements, and we will get back immediately. You can also join the network and become a part of our clients and receive news and updates to keep abreast of what’s happening in your field!