The fastest way to get valuable traffic that’s ready to buy is using paid advertising (ppc ads) on the internet. With a minimum budget of $500, you can have buyers purchasing your products or services within mere hours. You only pay when a prospect clicks on your paid ad that can appear at the top of organic search results on Google, on websites, or on social media feeds. The vast display network of PPC ads ensures that no matter where your customers are on the web, your ads will find them at the right time. This article will help you find which paid advertising type is best for your business.
How Paid Advertising Campaigns Work
If you’re wondering how paid advertising works, here’s a quick outline:
- You create an ad on the platform of your choice
- Prospective buyers click on your ad
- The buyers land on your website (or landing page), where you sell to them
- Buyer either completes purchase (conversion) or exits without desired action
- People who landed on your site but didn’t convert will start seeing retargeting ads on other sites they visit
There is an ongoing debate about which works better — paid advertising or content marketing. The latter makes heavy use of relevant blog posts with keywords and search terms to dominate organic search results on Google. Here are three thought-provoking statistics from TechJury:
- About 65% of buyers click on ads
- Double the number of visitors come from paid ads compared to ads that are based on search engine optimization (SEO)
- Paid ads return 200% on investment
Content marketing also takes about 3–6 months to start bringing significant results while expertly designed paid ad campaigns can get you traffic in as little as just a few hours. However, long-term content marketing delivers consistent results and will build your brand reputation and awareness. Especially if you are creating quality content that is relevant to your target demographic.
Other bloggers and writers will likely reference your content creating valuable backlinks. Not sure what those are? Read about backlinks in our other popular blog post How to Improve Your Manufacturing Website SEO with Backlinks. Both forms of marketing provide valuable features that will help your business. Our opinion? Why not both?
Your business should use both forms of digital marketing, paid advertising and content marketing, to drive sales even higher. Digital marketing experts can create a strategy where your content marketing works hand in hand with paid advertising to drive even more conversion.
Which Paid Advertising Type Is Best For Your Business?
In the 27 years since the first paid ad appeared, internet marketers have developed powerful strategies and techniques that work well to drive buyers from awareness to conversion. There are four main types of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns you can profit from in 2022.
Paid Search Marketing
One of the most common types of PPC advertising is search engine marketing (SEM). Your PPC ads appear above the top of search results on Google or one of the other search engines. These ads are effective and drive users to your website or landing page when they are ready to buy.
Certified Google Ads Search and Display specialists can identify your ideal target audience and keywords, set up targeted ad groups, write compelling ad content, A/B test multiple ad versions, analyze results, and optimize campaigns for conversions and ROI. Leveraging the knowledge of certified experts guarantees greater results.
Social Media Advertising
You buy ads on the social media platform your customers hang out on. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Youtube are the big four, with TikTok growing fast. These ads can be best for building awareness of your brand and products.
Unfortunately, organic (unpaid) posts on Facebook are no longer enough to drive the business results companies need. Social media is “pay to play” which is why digital advertising specialists take a strategic approach to reach your goals, carefully crafted social media ad campaigns aimed at your target demographic.
Retargeting Ads
Retargeting ads enjoy ten times the click-through rate (CTR) of regular display ads. You can set retargeting ads to appear automatically to shoppers who clicked on an ad, expressed interest in your business, or visited your sales page without buying, even cart abandoners.
These ads are ideal for raising awareness about your product or services in your target market AND moving these users to action. They are often the ads that appear on the side of websites, looking like the image to the right.
Now that you understand the main types of ads let’s look at the major ad platforms — the best places to run ads.
Where To Place Paid Advertising
The biggest ad platforms make it easy for businesses to run ads directly to the prospective customers who are most likely to buy. They have excellent tools that help you find the people interested in your offer.
Google Ads
With 92.47% of global search traffic, Google is the platform to do SEM on. Google uses the same SEO keyword strategy it utilizes for organic search to get your ads in front of the right users. You don’t need a huge budget to start seeing results. $200–$300 is enough to start. Google Ads even allows you to set a target ROI so you can be sure to see a return on your investment.
Social Media Ads
If you want to build awareness about your brand and get people involved with it, social media is your place. There has been a significant shift away from free organic posting to paid or promoted posting because social media started controlling content reach. If you want to get your posts seen, it’s become a pay-to-play game.
Facebook Ads
The Facebook Ad Manager has superb targeting tools. You can segment or group your audience using location, demographics, behavior, or interests. Once you have a group of buyers, Facebook can create a high converting look-a-like audience with matching characteristics.
Instagram Ads
Using the same ad creator as Facebook, Instagram works well for visual ads like images, infographics, and videos. The great thing about running static ads (pictured left) on Facebook or Instagram is that the same ad can be leveraged across both platforms. This helps reduce the time and cost of creating these ads.
LinkedIn Ads
Excellent for selling to professionals, LinkedIn ads are slightly more expensive than ads on other social media platforms, but they also have a higher return on investment (ROI).
Tik Tok Ads
Video ads promoting products, services, use, manufacturing, and just about anything else related to your products can be found here. It’s a great way to think outside the box and connect to your audience.
Video Ads
Video advertising was worth $41.132 billion in 2019, but analysts project it will be worth $155.18 billion by 2026. Video continues to grow in popularity because people love watching it on their smartphones. The 5G revolution is only going to improve on video through 360-degree experiences and virtual reality.
A whopping 81% of marketers say video has directly increased sales. You can use video ads successfully on nearly all major platforms. Google owns YouTube and gives YouTube videos priority in search results. Ads created with Google have access to a vast display network that reaches target demographics wherever they consume content.
Facebook and Instagram users prefer bite-sized videos formatted vertically to fit mobile screens. Viewers usually watch without the sound making captions valuable. Video ads of less than 60 seconds work well on social media, while YouTube ads can run up to three minutes. Creating an engaging ad in video format can pay off in dividends. But you don’t have to overthink it, your ad can be something as simple as a customer testimonial or case study. Check out an example of a client case study below.
Ad Retargeting
Have you ever felt like someone was following you around the internet because you kept seeing ads for the same product everywhere? You were experiencing ad retargeting.
Let’s say you did a Google search for a luxury cruise to Alaska. The first paid ad at the top of the search engine results page (SERP) looked precisely like what you wanted. You clicked on the ad and liked the website but got interrupted and didn’t get back to it. The next day you start seeing banner ads about Alaskan cruises retargeting you everywhere you go on the internet. Clicking on one of them takes you back to the luxury cruise you were viewing. You buy the cruise.
Retargeting ads work so well because they target people who have already shown interest in your offer. The CTR for retargeting ads is ten times higher than regular display ads. You can start using retargeting ads by installing an easy-to-use pixel from Facebook Ads or Google Ads on your website.
Match the Paid Advertising Type to Your Goal
Your goal will determine the ad type and platform that will bring you the best results. Videos are great for building engagement and educating your audience. Social media is the place to grow awareness. Google works well for conversions, and ad retargeting will boost those conversions.
However, even if you decide what platforms or ad campaign styles may be best, it still takes a lot of knowledge and experience to set the ads up successfully. You don’t want to be paying for ads that aren’t optimized or are targeting the wrong demographic or location.
Contact the Experts in Paid Advertising
The ad experts at Idea Marketing Group will help you determine the best course of action for your paid advertising. We are a top Chicago web design and marketing agency, and we’ll sit down with you to identify your goals, your target audience, and which mediums will produce maximum results. Let our team of certified paid advertising experts develop the digital marketing plan that will bring you the highest ROI.
With Idea Marketing Group you have access to an entire team of in-house experts without paying all those high salaries. Our team isn’t just limited to digital marketing experts either. We have in-house graphic designers and web development wizards that can help build a successful campaign. Need ad graphics no problem? Missing a key landing page for your paid advertising campaign? We’ve built dozens that drive real results.
Our team has set up numerous paid advertising campaigns to deliver our clients the results they need. Contact our full-service digital marketing agency today to discover what paid advertising type is right for your business!
