Rather than rely on organic content to drive visitors to your landing page or website, paid marketing channels to allow you to target your advertising based on audience demographics, keywords, search intent, and more.
Paid online advertising helps you get in front of customers who are already searching for what you have to offer. Your paid marketing strategy will depend on:
- What are your current business goals are
- How much profit you are looking to drive
- What is your current advertising budget is
You don’t need MYR10,000 or more to get started with paid advertising. You don’t even need MYR1,000! For as little as a few Ringgit each day, you can utilize select marketing channels with paid ads. Others may require more of an upfront investment, but many others can be easily adopted into any ad budget.
As you begin thinking about introducing paid marketing channels into your own business strategy, here are some other benefits to consider.
Paid online advertising will show the effectiveness of your messaging
Why spend a lot of time creating content that doesn’t resonate with your audience? You don’t want to spend time crafting something that doesn’t meet their needs, leading your audience to look elsewhere for information.
With paid advertising, you’re able to get quick feedback on how effective your messaging is by keeping an eye on your analytics.
The numbers don’t lie! These paid ads will help you understand what customers and clients want to hear. Everything is just noise.
Free marketing channels are never really free
Even if you aren’t traditionally paying for the organic content you are distributing through other marketing channels, you may be paying a freelancer to create it for you or reducing your own time to work on other things in your business.
With paid ads, you can put in a one-time investment in creating ad copy and imagery before you run split tests. Once you put each version of your ad into action and test them to see which performs the best, you can continue to use the same ad with different segments of your target audience.
Free channels can change at any time
If Google wanted to completely change the way it ranks websites on its platform, many of us who have been optimizing our websites for SEO would find our results taking a down turn. The same is true for social media marketing channels like Facebook and Instagram.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t utilize these channels, but rather focus on having a holistic marketing strategy that doesn’t make you susceptible to changes.
It’s another reason why we recommend investing in creating a website and starting your email list since those are channels you own. You’ll want to use both when diving into your paid marketing channel strategy.
Where to start with paid online advertising?
Once you have your paid advertising goals and base-level budget set, you can start brainstorming and researching what paid marketing channel may be your best fit. We’ll start by breaking down some of the most common types of paid advertising marketing channels that utilize paid acquisition while sharing insights into each.
Google Ads
Since Google is the most popular search engine and largest traffic driver on the internet, it probably isn’t surprising to see it at the top of our paid advertising list.
Google Ads, formerly known as Google AdWords, aims to connect their users with the very best search results so they keep coming back. They do this with organic search rankings but also by offering pay-per-click (PPC) advertising opportunities for advertisers of all sizes.
Offering a wealth of paid advertising options to advertisers of all sizes, Google Ads provides a well-populated marketplace to start testing your paid ads.
Social media paid advertising
While you continue to produce consistent social media content that’s available for free, you may also want to think about monetizing your brand through social media paid ads.
If you want to drive more traffic to your website or launch offer and have already been investing in building your social media presence, social media paid advertising could be a great place to start. Here are a few social media marketing channels we recommend looking into.
- Facebook Advertising: With 2 billion (yes, billion) active users, it’s no wonder that Facebook has become a paid advertising giant. It’s hard to scroll through your newsfeed without seeing a few sponsored ads pop up.
- Instagram Advertising: Now that Instagram has rolled out Instagram Live and Instagram Stories, video-based ads are sure to increase on this highly visual social media platform. With its unique features and highly dedicated audience, Instagram paid advertising is still in its youth with lots of room to grow. Start testing your paid acquisition strategy with Instagram today.
Other paid advertising platforms that may be worth researching are Twitter (for text-based messaging), Snapchat (Gen Z and Millennial favorite), Reddit (one of the top ten websites on the web), Pinterest, and even LinkedIn (for B2B and B2C professionals alike).
YouTube sponsorships
If your offer is best told through video, investing in YouTube paid ads could be a great way to advertise to your target audience. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, making it a no brainer for advertisers of all sizes.
You will use the Google Ads platform to create your YouTube ad campaign and decide what advertising type you want to test.
Podcast sponsorships
One of the major benefits of partnering with podcasters that they already have a loyal audience behind them. Instead of having to build trust from ground zero, you’re able to tap into an audience that’s already built and earn the podcaster’s recommendation.
You also get to be hands-off with the delivery of content since the podcaster will advertise your brand for you. Each podcaster will set a different price for their sponsorships based on their audience size, number of downloads, and a variety of other factors.
Best practices when creating your paid digital marketing strategy
Now that you have a paid marketing channel in mind (or even multiple), we want to leave you with a few best practices that can be used with any channel. These universal truths will help you wisely spend your advertising budgets and keep your goals top-of-mind.
Always be willing to experiment
You don’t need to put pressure on yourself to get your paid ad right the first time. Of course you want to go into your advertisement creation with strategy and intention, but there are some things you won’t know until you test and tweak your offer.
The best way to optimize your ad is by testing it with a hyper targeted audience. You can do this by choosing a paid marketing channel of your choice and tracking the analytics to see how each audience segment reacts to your offer.
Use retargeting methods
When you see the same pair of sunglasses you were browsing for last week reappear in your Facebook newsfeed, it’s not a “sign” that you should buy them. It’s a sign that the sunglasses company is doing a great job with retargeting their ads after capturing your attention on their website.
Smart companies, especially those in ecommerce, will use retargeting techniques to remind interested consumers of what they were previously searching for. If they already have interest, companies have an easier time converting that visitor than someone who has never heard of the company before.
Most paid advertising channels have a wide array of retargeting capabilities (like Facebook with its Facebook Pixel), so we recommend looking into all of these options before you publish your paid ad campaign.
Niche your audience
As you set up your first paid ad campaign, you might find that choosing your target audience is difficult. You aren’t alone! Many brands have multiple ideal customer profiles that fit their overall brand direction.
Review your offer and see if it aligns more with one segment of your audience than another. If you are teaching an online course on how to make money online from side hustling, you may find that your messaging might connect better with stay-at-home moms who want to provide extra income for their families than someone who just graduated college, even if both of these audience types are in your current community.
Try each niche and spend time targeting your ad copy for each subtype of your audience. Who were you creating the offer originally? Who seems to be resonating with it best? These questions will help you easily niche down your audience.
Conclusion
Rather than relying on organic content to drive visitors to your landing page or website, paid marketing channels allow you to target your advertising based on audience demographics, keywords, search intent, and more. Once you have your paid advertising goals and budget, you can start brainstorming and researching which paid marketing channel may fit you the best.
TRANSFORM YOUR BUSINESS TODAY!
Start your paid online advertising strategy
For more information, CKSY Management Specialist is ready to help you transform your business into GO DIGITAL and we shall walk you through the basics of utilizing paid online advertising methods for your business.
