What is Paid Marketing and When Should you Use it?
Put very simply, paid digital marketing is when a brand or business pays to advertise across digital marketing platforms, mainly social media and Google. There are three main types of paid digital marketing: Search Marketing, Display Marketing and Social Media Marketing. With paid advertising, marketers pay the owner of ad space in exchange for use of that space. The price paid for the ad space is often settled through a bidding process between marketers and the ad space owner. There are several categories, including Pay-Per-Click (PPC), Pay-Per-Impression (PPI), and display ads.
Why is Paid Advertising Important in Marketing?
Efficient marketing campaigns capitalize on all channels for advertising. Although paid advertising costs more than earned advertising, paid forms are an effective way to expose your company’s name to a large audience. Paid ads are usually displayed to users on the sides, tops, or bottoms of web pages. Marketers can pay more to have their ads featured on more popular websites to increase traffic.
Benefits of Paid Advertising
1. Ads are Affordable and Measurable
When you’re running paid advertising campaigns, you’re able to reach a very targeted audience. Costs related to paid advertising are dependent on the objective or type of ad you are running. For example, if your objective is website traffic or leads then you will opt for a cost-per-click (CPC). If your aim is brand awareness you will opt for a CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions). Ads can also be created in mere minutes and there are many tools that help you to create the necessary images at very little or no cost at all.
2. Specific Targeting
Paid ad targeting can be very specific and allows you to reach relevant visitors who are interested in your brand. They also fit the demographics of your sales personas and reside in the exact geographic location you want to target. Take a look at your analytics across all your digital platforms and analyze your audience to identify common factors such as keywords, geographic location, demographics, job titles, interests and common topics.
3. Audience Insights
Across all the paid advertising platforms, you can set up multiple versions of an advertisement and optimize based on audience interaction. This data collected will help you refine your messaging and help you build a holistic understanding of your audience and their interests. The iteration process for paid ads is far quicker than the process of organic social and organic search optimization.
