It’s a typical day: You scroll through your Instagram/Facebook feed in the morning while drinking your coffee, you log into LinkedIn at work to catch-up on the latest industry news, and in the afternoon you Google a new restaurant to try for dinner. What do all of these activities have in common? Chances are when using all of these platforms you saw a piece of Sponsored Content, or in other words, a Paid Ad. At TargetMarket, we have the experience across different industries to increase your brand’s recognition, drive more website traffic, and ultimately drive more conversions through the power of Paid Ads.
So, what are Paid Ads and why are they important?
While your business may already be generating traffic organically, building an SEO presence and having your website rank on Google can take some time. By investing in Paid Ads, you can work alongside your SEO strategy to increase traffic to your website and get in front of potential new customers. Additionally, Paid Ads can help you capture new traffic that you may have missed organically or even traffic that may have ended up going to a competitor. Below, you’ll find some FAQs from our Paid Ads Specialist when helping clients with their Paid Ads Strategy.
Q: What platforms are available to advertise on?
A: When thinking about Paid Ads, there are three main platforms:
- Google: As the largest Search Engine in the world, Google is an extremely powerful platform. The benefit of advertising here is when a keyword you’re bidding on is searched, and if your ad wins the auction, your ad/brand will appear above all the Organic Search results in one of the top three spots on the first page.
- Social: When we talk about social ads, we are talking about Facebook & Instagram. By targeting people based on their location, interests, and profile information, we can reach a larger, yet relevant audience using eye-catching photography and video.
- LinkedIn: Advertising on LinkedIn is a powerful tool, especially when it comes to B2B marketing. LinkedIn provides unmatched targeting options to reach your desired audience such as company name, job title, industry, job seniority, and so much more.
Q: What platform makes the most sense for me to advertise on?
A: This really depends on your advertising goal, target audience, and product/offering.
Google is recommended for all because of its reach and versatility. By bidding on relevant keywords, your brand/product can appear while viewers are actively searching for the products/services you offer. Want to increase brand awareness on Google? Another ad type that is highly effective is a Display ad. The best way to describe a Display campaign is like a digital billboard. By uploading images and headline text, selecting target locations, and even audience segments such as Interests & In-Market Searches, your digital ad can appear on one of Google’s many partner websites or apps to increase the number of eyes on your brand.
We’ve found that Social ads are most effective for clients in the Restaurant, Fitness, Real Estate/Construction, Retail, & Experience industries. By targeting users based on their location, demographics, & interests, we can ensure ads get in front of a qualified audience who has shown interest in similar products/services. Additionally, we can showcase our clients offerings and differentiators using eye-catching video and imagery to make viewers pause when scrolling to increase brand awareness and ultimately drive consideration, traffic, and conversions.
LinkedIn ads are most effective for B2B marketing. Whether you’re trying to establish your brand as a thought leader by offering a piece of content or offering a free trial/consultation to get the conversation started, LinkedIn can help you reach this goal by allowing you to get in front of relevant industries, specific companies, and decision makers.
Q: What do you need from me to build an ad campaign?
A: There are a few pieces of information that are helpful when building an ad strategy on any platform:
- The Ultimate Advertising Goal → This can be brand awareness, website traffic, or conversions/leads.
- Target Location(s) → Depending on the platform, we can drill down by state, city, zip code, or even radius around a specific address.
- Target Audience(s) → The answer to this question can change depending on the platform we are using. For Google and Social, it’s helpful to know age range and relevant interests. For LinkedIn, it’s helpful to know the industries and/or company names you’re trying to get in front of as well as any specific job title or job function. A target audience breakdown can also help us determine if we need to create separate campaigns based on the message and ultimate end goal for each audience. While it’s important to know who you want to target, it’s also helpful to know anyone you don’t want to target so we can set the appropriate filters and make sure all ad spend is geared toward relevant traffic.
- Message → Depending on the audience we are targeting, the message can change. What are their pain points and how can you solve them? What differentiators do you have compared to competitors that will grab their attention? When building ad copy, we want to ensure we are succinct to grab a viewer’s attention in the first sentence or two.
- Landing Page/CTA → Where on the website should we drive your traffic and what is the next step you want them to take? In some cases, an action-oriented page already exists on the website but in others, it is important to create a campaign-specific landing page that addresses a viewers search query/needs and gives them an actionable next step such as downloading a piece of content, signing up for a demo/trial, getting a quote, making a purchase, etc.
- Budget → When diving into an ad strategy, it is helpful to know a starting budget range to build off from.
- The Google Ads Platform utilizes a cost-per-click model, meaning you don’t pay for impressions, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. The cost of your click is determined by the keyword. The higher the competition, the more expensive your click will be because there are more players in the auction competing for one of the top three spots. When putting together any Google ad strategy, we always start with keyword research based on your website copy to get an idea for 1) how competitive the keywords are and 2) what the low and high bid prices are. From here, we can use Google’s forecasting tool to estimate how many impressions, clicks, and conversions we can expect in a given month with X budget. We can also see how this forecast will change by adjusting the monthly spend. This data is then used to guide our recommendation for the monthly ad spend based on the client’s goal and what they are comfortable with spending.
- Facebook/Instagram and LinkedIn also have forecasting tools when building target audiences that estimates how many impressions, clicks, and conversions a monthly budget can generate. By having a starting point of what a client is comfortable with spending, we can show them using historical data what they can expect with their spend.
Q: How will success be measured?
A: The main Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) we measure for digital campaigns are Impressions, Clicks, Click-Through-Rate, Cost-Per-Click, Conversions, and Cost-Per-Conversion. For all of our Paid Ad clients, we create a monthly dashboard that compares data month-to-month so we can keep a pulse on performance and use metrics to guide our recommendations of what is working and what needs to be changed. We are always happy to walk through these dashboards with our clients so they can have eyes on the Digital side of things, ask any questions, and even provide their own insight into what they are seeing on their end that is working or not.
Consult the Experts
Ready to take the first steps to get your brand in front of new potential customers? TargetMarket’s Paid Ad Specialist is ready to learn about your products/services, target audience, and message to help create a Paid Ads strategy that will be most effective for your brand and marketing goals. Contact us today to learn about our Paid Ad services!
