Should I be paying for digital advertising?

Recent changes in marketing have made it more difficult to build effective campaigns. The variety of options from traditional to social to digital can be overwhelming for companies of all sizes.

Get it wrong and you can lose your entire marketing budget. We love advertising on Google but without a practical strategy it can become a money pit. Facebook has nearly 2-billion members but how many of them match your ideal customer profile? YouTube commercials are hot but do you know how to put an ad in front of your local market?

Getting It Right

You want to know the best digital marketing tactics? Building organic reach has become increasingly difficult on social because the platforms are publicly traded and profit driven. And it is working great — for them. Which leads us to paid traffic techniques.

We may be two years down the road before the so called gurus admit what is really working for marketing their business. By that time many businesses will have lost millions of dollars and their audience will have moved on to the next thing. As business owners you need to engage your audience and acquire new customers now.


Paid advertising campaigns are being used by every major marketer. This means PPC marketing, Facebook marketing, video marketing and Google Ads. By focusing on these platforms you can reach your audience at key points on their customer journey and move them to the next phase.


Do it right and you can bring leads from search and social platforms onto your own mailing list. Then you can then reach them directly as often as you want for free. It gets back to the saying “the money is in the list”. This is how you can maximise the return on investment for your advertising.

Getting started in PPC (pay per click) marketing

If you know the costs and profits margins for your products PPC is a great advertising model. This is primarily because you only pay for results — no clicks, no pay. PPC can be used on Google and various social media platforms.

You will need to determine your budget for PPC. Consider your audience, competition, the types of products/services you offer and the lifetime value of a customer. In addition research and confirm that people are searching for your product or service online. If these conditions do not apply then PPC is not for you.

Instead your strategy may focus on building organic reach. If you can generate demand then evolve to PPC. In terms of establishing a campaign budget you need to consider your audience, competition, the types of products/services you offer and what is the lifetime value of a customer.

Despite the advantages of PPC marketing, there are possible negatives that can cancel out its benefits. One of the most common problems I find with PPC marketing is the inexperience of many people attempting to apply this profitable advertisement method. The other problem is not allowing enough time for the results to take hold. Simply submitting PPC marketing adverts to a search engine such as Google should not make up your entire campaign.

At the heart of PPC is research to find the best longtail keywords. When we say best we mean the ones making money because of search intent. You will need to continuously test, measure the results and make adjustments. The prosperity of a PPC campaign can be summarised to just two things: increasing the click-through rate (CTR) and lowering the cost-per-click (CPC). Every bit of energy that you put into your PPC campaigns and creating adverts should be steered towards achieving those two goals.

Facebook Marketing

You may have heard people saying “Facebook advertising doesn’t work”. Well that certainly hasn’t been our experience! Sure there are some people who will take your money but have no idea how to run effective adverts on Facebook. So you have to do your due diligence. But the platform works for practically every industry. Smart business owners are getting leads, new customers and building relationships using paid Facebook advertising.

Your goal with Facebook is to reach people who have a relationship with your business. These targets could be existing customers or people who have interacted with your business on Facebook or other platforms.

This is where the Facebook Pixel is a powerful tool. The Pixel allows you to measure Facebook ad results, track conversion and remarket your website visitors. If you want more “Website Traffic” then make sure the Pixel is on your website. Then in your Facebook Ads manager choose “All website visitors” in the past “30” days.

If you want to drive traffic to an opt-in page then you also want to make sure the pixel is on the opt-in page. Now choose “People who visited specific web pages”. You create your Pixel free in your campaigns centre. Go to the Pixels tab in the Facebook Events Manager.

Don’t start from scratch, look for a model. For example if you have a yoga studio, then look for other yoga studios and see what they’re doing on Facebook that works. When it comes to audience engagement and conversion videos are the most effective type of creative you can run.

Video Marketing

Video ads can be inserted in YouTube, Vimeo and websites. Videos are the best tool to capture the attention of visitors. The key with your adverts is to keep them short and impactful. In as little as :06 — :30 seconds you can tell a story that compels the visitor with a Call To Action (CTA).

YouTube is the world’s leading video platform with nearly 5 billion videos watched every day. And the user base is reported at 1.3 billion and growing.

For business owners the platform is excellent because your ads are targeted and have better reporting and tracking than television spots. And they’re much less expensive.

Consider this. With traditional television advertising even if you shell out $5 million for a :30 on the Super Bowl you don’t know if viewers are watching your ad, going to the bathroom or stepping out to grab a cold beer.

YouTube is data driven and gives your richer audience insight. For business owners, the ads are run through Google Adwords and come in three formats:

The upside of the TrueView format is that “you’ll only pay when someone chooses to watch your video ad” says Google. Now try that with your television ad budget. For local businesses the traffic and clickthroughs can be phenomenal. The key is creating a working strategy to get your commercials running on YouTube.

Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords) is the advertising network that allows businesses to bid for keywords to show up in search results. The keywords are the phrases or words the users type in Google and then sees your ad. Over 1 million businesses use it and 95% of Google’s annual revenue comes from Ads.

With Google Ads the small businesses can compete with the industry giants. This is because it is a marketplace where the highest bidder with the best creative wins. If your maximum bid is $1 then Google will only show your ad if that turns out to be the highest amount. There are some additional factors including quality of the ad, user experience and engagement but bid effectively.

The magic happens when your convert enough visitors to pay for the advertising. Companies pay Google based on clicks to show up in the search results with aspirations of capturing those interested buyers and making fast sales.

Google Ads only make sense if you are selling something that matches the intent of the searchers. Find out what the average conversion rate is for your industry and your cost per click. From here determine how many clicks you need to drive a conversion. For example, if your industry is Consumer Services, your average CPC is $6.40, and your average conversion rate is 6.64%.

This means to get a single conversion, you need about 16 visits, and you’ll pay around $102.40 for a conversion. If the costs are greater than your profits than selling that service or product with Google Ads may not be a good choice.


Summary

Paid advertising is your friend. Connect it with marketing by using analytics to track the interests of your target audience and the best platforms.

Pay Per Click, Facebook Advertising (with video), YouTube Commercials and Google Ads are the hottest paid advertising tools for businesses across the board. Use the research to get your message in front of your audience.

Leverage your audience reach and competitive analysis with a focus on conversion. Maximise the percentage of your new audience that becomes leads, sales and profits. Keep testing.

Build your relationship with these new customers to maximise their lifetime value. Provide relevant content and excellent customer service. Also continually look for opportunities with cross-selling, up-selling and developing new products based on their needs and relationships.

If you need help be sure to reach out – we’re happy to help!

Let’s grow your business today!