Put Paid Advertising to Work: Practical Tips for Beginners

1. The Basics of Paid Advertising

Types of Paid Advertising

You can do advertising on a wide range of platforms using many methods. Beginners can look up many types of advertising that suit their specific goals and target audience. Below are the popular paid advertising methods for beginners to consider:

• Search Engine Marketing (SEM): In this method, you place ads on search engines like Google and Bing. This method effectively reaches your products or services to search engine users.
• Social Media Advertising: If you want to reach a highly engaging audience, you can use social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for advertising. The ads can target your relevant demographics, interests, behaviors, and specific activities.
• Display Advertising: Display ads are banner ads you can run on many websites and apps. You can use them for brand awareness and driving traffic to your website.
• YouTube Advertising: If you want to effectively convey your brand messages, product demonstrations, and testimonials, YouTube ads are good.
• Native Advertising: A native ad is a type of advertising designed to blend in with the surrounding content on a website or app. It is more likely to be seen by visitors. Such ads can be used for your brand awareness and lead generation.
• Retargeting Advertising: Such campaigns can target those who have previously visited a website or app. They encourage them to return or complete a purchase.

They are some of the common methods of advertising beginners can do. Now let’s understand how paid advertising gives benefits to a business like yours.

Benefits of Paid Advertising

Paid advertising can provide several benefits for businesses of all sizes to achieve their marketing objectives and drive growth. It can expand reach to a wider audience and use targeting options and comprehensive data and analytics for tracking campaign performance.

It also offers complete control over ad spend, choosing suitable ad methods, direct linking to conversions and sales, and outrank competitors. Additionally, A/B testing can be used to compare your ad performance. Paid advertising can be integrated with marketing automation and CRM systems to enhance efficiency and customer engagement.

Your campaigns can also enhance brand awareness and reputation by showcasing your products, services, and values. However, it’s important to select the most suitable channel for your advertising success.

Choose the Right Channel for Paid Ads

Choosing the right channel for your ads is crucial and it should be aligned with your marketing objectives to maximize your return on investment (ROI) and profits. You should include the following steps in choosing your channel:

• Know your ideal customer’s demographics, interests, behaviors, and online activities. This will help you know the channels where they are most likely to interest in your ads.
• Set your marketing goals. Do you want to boost your brand awareness, generate leads, drive website traffic, or increase sales? Have your clear goals.
• Determine your budget.
• Research on different platforms and find out which ones offer the most precise targeting options for your audience segments.
• Analyze the average cost-per-click (CPC) and conversion rates for different advertising channels. This will help you find out the potential costs and ROI for each channel.
• Do you have the required creative assets, such as images, videos, or ad copy for the chosen channel(s)? Prepare for them.
• Check if the channels align with your overall marketing strategy. Can they integrate with your site, social media presence, and other marketing strategies?
• Don’t be afraid to experiment with a channel or more so that you can identify which one of them generates the best results.
• If you’re a newbie in paid advertising, you can also consult with a experienced marketing professional or agency. It can help you in implementing effective campaigns.

Now, you can start your experiments with the chosen channel(s) suited to your goals and budget.

Set Up Your Paid Advertising Campaign

For setting up an ad campaign, you need careful planning, strategic implementation of the planning, and regular optimization. In the above, we have discussed the importance of clearly defining your goals and target audience, choosing the right channels, and setting your budget.

If those things are ready, you can set up your advertising campaign. Start with a channel with a small budget. Don’t invest a big amount in the beginning. Remember, it is experiment time. Follow these steps:

• Your creatives (text or visual) should be visually appealing, informative, and resonate with your audience. Create it as per the channel’s format and character limits. Use high-quality images or videos that capture attention.
• Use the campaign parameters, including start and end dates, budget, bidding strategy, and targeting options.
• If the advertising channel needs some keywords, conduct a thorough keyword research with a keyword tool for relevant terms and phrases your target audience is searching for.
• You can test different ad variations if you want to know the most effective creatives.

Measure the Performance of Your Ads

Measuring the performance of your ads is crucial. It can help you to determine the effectiveness of your paid advertising campaigns and improve them. Consider the following metrics in the analytics tool:

• See how many impressions a particular campaign gets.
• See how many clicks you get. Click-through rate (CTR) is calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions. A higher CTR tells your ad is good.
• Check how many conversions it can generate. A higher conversion rate means your ad effectively generates more sales or leads.
• If the channel uses Cost-per-click (CPC) model, see the average cost you pay for each click. A lower CPC tells that your ad is efficient and attracts high-quality clicks.
• If your channel uses Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) model, check the average cost you pay to acquire a new customer or conversion. A lower CPA indicates that your ad campaign is generating conversions at a cost-effective rate.
• Return on ad spend (ROAS) tells how profitable your campaign is by comparing the revenue generated and your total ad spend.
• Engagement rate such as time spent on page, bounce rate, and social media interactions indicates how your audience interact with your ad. These metrics can help you improve your ad creatives and landing pages of the ads.
• By analyzing the above metrics, you can see the performance of your ad campaigns. Use this data to improve your advertising campaigns and maximize your return on investment.