What Advantages Do Paid Advertising Offer?

One of the most crucial tools in your digital toolbox is paid advertising. But because the effects are so quick, they are frequently misused.

We talk about when to use paid ads in this blog. We'll also point out the warning indicators that indicate when you're using sponsored advertisements too often and when you should turn to alternative channels.

Some interesting paid ad stats:

• By the end of 2021, the total digital paid ad spending reached US$705bn, up from US$634bn in 2019 (Zenithmedia)
• It will rise to US$873bn by 2024.
• The most popular social network worldwide as of July 2021 was Facebook with 2.8 Billion users. (Statista).
• Facebook’s paid revenue in the US alone was $114.93bn in 2021. (Webfx)
• Facebook reaches 59% of the world’s social networking population. (eMarketer)
• LinkedIn has 722 million members. (LinkedIn)
• Google Ads is currently the biggest provider of search engine paid advertising, with 92% marketshare. (TechJury)
• In 2022, the average internet user has clicks/views US$286.60 worth of paid search ads per year. (Statistia)  

With such high usage of paid advertising by marketers/businesses across the globe, can you afford not to be playing in the online paid advertising space.

What is paid advertising?

Paid advertising as the wording implies, is online advertising that one pays for. Examples of paid advertising include Pay-Per-Click (PPC), Programmatic advertising, Google Ads, Google Display, Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Google and Facebook remarketing, and more.

Paid ads are then presented to an audience that a marketer defines in the ad platform. And as the name suggests, you pay when someone clicks your ad. In addition to paying for each click, some advertisers set up their ads to pay per 1000 views (CPM), otherwise called impressions.  

The 7 benefits of paid advertising

1. Organic reach on social media is down. Paid is the only way to deliver results.

"On social media, organic reach is the number of people who have seen your content through unpaid distribution, i.e. without you putting a budget towards reaching a specific audience."
hootsuite.com

Organic content on social media has been on the decline for a few years now. Social media is now a pay-to-play model for brands/companies.

According to Wearesocial.com, the average reach of an organic post on a Facebook Page is a super low 5.20%!

So only one in every 19 fans sees your non-promoted content.

The answer is to boost your distribution by increasing your paid social ad budget.

With paid advertising, you're guaranteed to reach a defined audience and can utilise your content to elevate your brand with specific targeting and get more qualified leads. But don't underestimate the importance of organic marketing. Behind any great paid ad campaign is a consistent and creative organic strategy.  

2. Ads are very affordable and measurable

When you're running paid advertising campaigns, you're able to reach a very targeted audience. Costs related to paid advertising are dependent on the objective or type of ad you are running.

For example, if your objective is website traffic or leads then you will opt for a cost-per-click (CPC), or if your aim is brand awareness you will opt for a CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions).

Ads can be created in mere minutes and there are many tools that help you to create the necessary images at very little or no cost at all.

For example, Google Responsive Ads automatically adjust in size appearance and format to fit any available ad space on the Google Display Network. Google then applies machine learning to serve only the ads that perform the best for you.  

You can also keep track of the money you have spent and set daily and total budgets for campaigns on all paid ad platforms from Google, to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn advertising so that you never overspend.

3. Specific and granular targeting is available

Paid ad targeting can be very specific and allows you to reach relevant visitors who are interested in your brand, fit the demographics of your sales personas and reside in the exact geographic location you want to target.

Let's say you own a hair salon. You can advertise to potential clients within a 2-3 km radius of your store. You can't do this with organic SEO or social.

Take a look at your analytics across all your digital platforms and analyse your audience to identify common factors such as keywords, geographic location, demographics, job titles, interests and common topics.

You can use all of this information to refine your paid ad targeting and pull in more qualified leads and customers.

4. Test and gain valuable audience insights

Across all the paid advertising platforms you can set up multiple versions of an advertisement and optimise based on audience interaction.

This data collected will help you refine your messaging and help you build a holistic understanding of your audience and their interests.

The iteration process for paid ads is far quicker than the process of organic social and organic search optimization.  

In addition, the data the paid ad platforms give you is as deep as you want to go. You'll have current and historical data on hand. Don't miss the opportunity to improve your reach and conversion rate by interrogating the data.  

5. Broadcast your message across multiple, but select channels

There are a plethora of channels to broadcast your brand and unique messaging across. You can make use of display banners on the Google Display Network or simply have text ads (search ads) appear above people’s searches on Google.

Today, all social media platforms have paid advertising channels available. They include:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Snapchat
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Reddit
• TikTok

There are so many options for you to choose from and a variety of different platforms to suit your paid advertising requirements.  However, don't spread yourself too thin across the channels.  

When conducting audience research, find out what digital platforms your primary target audience is using. Choose one or two channels to focus on.  

6. Retargeting and retention

Once a visitor has viewed your website, clicked through an ad or engaged with your business, you can run a retargeting campaign.  

Retargeted ads will show them highly relevant ads to continuously engage your prospects who have shown an interest in your product or service that otherwise could have slipped away. By doing so, you are constantly in the back of the mind of your potential customers and therefore increasing your ROI.

You are also top of mind with existing clients that are due for a visit to your business, be it a haircut, fast food meal, or even a new motor vehicle!  

Remember, you can get a visitor to your website with a Google Ad, and then you can retarget them on Facebook with Facebook Ads. This is something a lot of people don't know.  

7. Rank now while you build your organic rankings

Do you have a new business? Or a new website? Or even an old website that just doesn't rank organically on Google?

If your website isn't ranking on the first page of Google results, then paid advertising enables you to place ads for keywords and bring in high-quality traffic to your website. Organic search rankings take time and investment, but they do bring in high-quality traffic.

While you are building your bank of content and working on your Google reviews for your Google My Business profile - use paid ads to fill that gap.

Just make sure you don't rely on paid ads only. Organic search rankings take time to build. You need to be building that capability while you run your paid ads. Don't leave your website addicted to a permanent spend on paid ads.

Final thoughts on paid ads

Paid advertising is a non-negotiable piece of your sales and marketing funnel. There are many possibilities, platforms, types of paid ads and campaign types to choose from. But make a call and focus on one or two. Don't dilute your message too much.  

With paid ads, can tailor your brand and message in any way you see fit and consistently test to see what works and what does not.

With hard work and consistent optimization, you will strike gold and find yourself with more quality leads and conversions as a result.

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