Paid advertising is a digital marketing method used by advertisers who bid to participate in real-time auctions in order for their ads to be shown on a specific search engine, platform, or network. This online advertising model is used to bring traffic to a website and is often referred to as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising.
Types Of Paid Advertising
There are many platforms that can be used for paid advertising such as Google Ads, Bing, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. On each of these platforms, different types of paid advertising options are available and these platforms could include one or multiple of the following ad types:
1. Search Ads
This is one of the most common types of paid advertising. The ads will appear at the top and at the bottom in a search engine results page, such as Google. Search Ads don’t contain any visuals and contain only text. They appear on search engines according to the search terms used in the search bar. Advertisers will be charged each time the ad is seen/clicked on, depending on the bidding strategy used.
2. Display Ads
Display ads are another popular ad type used by many advertisers to promote brand awareness or a specific product. These ads contain an image/video and text. They are placed on search engine partner websites and are used to reach people that may be interested in your product or service.
3. Remarketing Ads
Remarketing ads are targeted at people who have visited your website previously but have not converted. This type of advertising presents you with the opportunity to get previous website visitors to re-engage with your products or services by sending them back to your website. The ads will focus on the product or service that the audience has previously viewed, reminding them to go back on to your website and make the purchase.
4. Shopping Ads
These ads are popular for advertisers who sell products and make it easier for people to find your products when they search for them on Google. The ads appear just under the search bar on search engines and show information such as a product image, name, price, and who the product is sold by.
5. Social Ads
This type of paid advertising is the most common due to the high number of users across social media networks. Social ads appear in social media feeds across different platforms. The ads are created on social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn and are targeted to a specific audience. Social ads are beneficial for advertisers who are looking to grow their brand or get users to engage with their products or services on their website. Take a look at our Social Media Marketing For Businesses blog.
The Benefits of Paid Advertising
Paid ads form part of the most important channels in your digital marketing strategy but they need to be used accurately in order to see results and convert leads into customers.
Here are some benefits of using paid advertising:
The ads are affordable
Paid advertising is an affordable way to advertise or remarket your products or services to the right audience. It’s also easy to keep track of how much money is being spent, and in order to avoid overspending on ads, you can set a budget limit on your ad spend.
The ads are measurable
All paid advertising platforms offer users enough data to analyze the performance of the ads for users to make decisions on whether or not the ads are working.
Helps promote brand awareness
Most types of paid advertising can be used to promote your brand. Creating brand awareness helps your audience become familiar with your products and services by placing them on popular channels such as Google and Facebook, helping you keep up with the competition.
Ads are targets to a more specific audience
When creating ads across the paid advertising platforms, you need to target the ads to an audience that will result in the ads being clicked on. These audiences are fine-tuned over time but in order for paid advertising to be effective, properly defining this target audience is crucial!
Prospects are more likely to re-engage with your products or services
Using remarketing or retargeting ads in your paid advertising strategy allows you to re-engage with prospects that have previously visited your website. The timing and relevance of these ads will be what turns prospects into customers.
Easier to rank when compared to organic search
Paid advertising is a must-have for small startup businesses as this form of advertising increases traffic to the website. Websites take some time to rank organically, whereas paid ads provide you with the opportunity to appear higher on search engines from the start.
Developing A Paid Advertising Strategy
Before starting your paid advertising, a lot of time and research should be invested into creating your campaigns. Having a strategy will help you do the following:
- Save time and money – spending some time on the strategy from the get-go will save you and your client a lot of money in the long run
- Identify goals – you need to know exactly what you want to achieve with your paid advertising
- Know your audience – you need to know who your paid ads will target and to understand your customer personas
- Have a budget – this needs to be established in the strategy phase once you have determined your goals and audience
- Decide which paid media channels to invest in – this will be the final step of your paid advertising strategy and will be based on the budget allocated to the paid advertising campaigns
Next Steps
Paid advertising is a broad form of advertising that offers numerous ways for you to reach your target audience. Having a strategy in place and knowing the benefits of paid advertising is important for any agency to adopt.
Read more about PPC advertising and digital marketing in some of the other blogs on our website.
