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One of the quickest and easiest ways to help potential customers discover your offerings is through paid media. It refers to external marketing efforts involving paid placement like pay-per-click advertising, display ads, and brand content.
For a new business, paid media is one of the best ways to get started, as it brings one of the highest returns on investment (ROI) for your marketing dollar. It can be an essential component of revenue growth and brand awareness for any organization, but even more so for an online business.
A recent Google Economic Impact Report revealed that businesses make an average of $2 in revenue for every $1 spent on Google Ads, with local companies seeing a particularly high ROI for location-intent queries. While dipping your toes into paid media can feel intimidating at first, an understanding of the basics can help you feel more comfortable and put you on the right path to success.
Build a Paid Media Strategy
Start by setting goals to build your paid media strategy. To do so, you’ll need to understand the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). These will indicate the progress you’re making as you move toward your overall goal. That includes website traffic, impressions, and conversions that provide insight into how well your content is performing.
Let your vision guide your objectives. For example, how are you hoping your business will benefit from paid media?
Targeting
The point of using paid media is to reach your target audience. You’ll want to use a wide range of targeting that includes behavior-based targeting like purchase history and search history, as well as granular characteristics like location and interest.
Select the best social media channel by considering your target audience. For example, when selling products for businesses, LinkedIn can be ideal. But if you’re looking to grow a primarily Gen Z base, a sponsored TikTok ad makes more sense.
Keywords
You’ll need to build a keyword list to get in front of your target audience. Paid media success depends on keywords as they allow you to reach as many of your potential customers as possible.
Conduct extensive research to ensure the keywords you’re using will be relevant to your business. As you continue your paid media campaigns, you’ll need to update the list with terms that are performing well. When a keyword isn’t successful in reaching your audience, eliminate it so that it won’t negatively affect your future ads.
Start Small to Learn More About Your Audience
When using paid media for the first time, start smaller. Use small campaigns to test the various types of ads and messages that resonate most with your potential customers. After your initial campaign, you can use retargeting for customers who leave your website without purchasing by displaying ads based on the services and products they visited.
Analytics can be used to monitor the results of your future paid media campaigns. As your ads run over time, you’ll continue to learn more about your audience and the best way to reach them. Make any necessary tweaks like editing the design or refining the message to make ads stand out even more.
