The Importance of Paid Online Advertising And Having A Paid Online Advertising Strategy
Contrary to what you might have believed before now, free online marketing strategies are hardly enough for any business. When it comes to Search engine optimization (SEO) it can take time so a great way to get the ball rolling while your organic traffic is growing is to consider a paid online advertising strategy.
Beyond understanding the importance of paid online advertising, you’ll discover some of the core differences you probably didn’t know.
Whether you have overgrown free online marketing strategies or you’ve tried and failed, you’ll discover why paid online advertising could be the next best option for your business.
Inside this post, you’ll also learn about some of the best online advertising channels and why you may not need a big budget to get started.
What Is Paid Online Advertising? And What To Include With Your Paid Online Advertising Strategy
Paid online advertising is a process of paying money directly to a digital platform where you can advertise your products, services, content, or lead magnet. Instead of waiting to build an audience through organic free marketing strategies, you’ll be spending money to tap into an existing audience on the chosen online advertising platform.
Interestingly, how much you spend, and how you are charged is usually different from one platform to the other.
Regarding the differences in business model, available resources, and stages of business growth, paid online advertising is rarely suitable for everyone. Unfortunately, some gurus who are after your money may tell you otherwise.
To determine whether it is suitable for you or not, you may want to consult an online advertising agency in Stamford Connecticut (for free) or conduct further research.
Paid Online Advertising Models For Starters
Pay Per Click
Just as the name suggests, you’ll be paying for every single click generated on your online advertisement that leads prospects to visit a dedicated landing page.
Pay per click model is among the oldest forms of online advertising. In some cases, the cost of pay-per-click advertising will be $.05 to $10 for bringing a single visitor to your website.
Pay-per-click online advertising can be a search, social, or video platform. The one you choose will depend on your goals, budget, and preferences.
Online Banner Advertising
I bet you have seen some colorful banner advertisements when you visit some traffic-generating websites. Through this online advertising model, you’ll be paying for every 1,000 views on your banner Ads. That’s what they call cost per thousand impressions (CPM).
Pay Per Lead
Through this one, you’ll be paying for every contact information submitted through your online advertisements. Contact information may include prospect name, email, phone, and other relevant identifier information. This form of online advertising can also be charged based on pay per call.
Why you need Paid Advertising For Your Small Business
#1: Round The Clock Advertisement
Without much explanation, you already know that the internet doesn’t sleep at all. Some of your prospects are constantly researching different products and services beyond traditional business hours.
Even when your physical office is closed, some online advertisements can be running to bring you some new leads, clients, or customers.
The best part is that you don’t have to be there to take in orders, answer questions or accept contact information.
Your website can be structured to do these things. For example, ecommerce businesses can accept online payments even when everyone else is sleeping.
#2: Performance-Based Advertisement
With paid online advertising, you won’t be paying for visibility just like people do on traditional TV, billboard, conference sponsorship, or newspapers. Instead, you’ll be charged for the platform’s performance towards bringing you quality leads and clients.
In this case, pay per click and pay per lead are all performance-based online advertisements. You’ll only pay for every single visitor brought through the online Ads into your sales funnel.
However, getting the best results may require hiring an online advertising agency or consultant. These people know how to make Ads profitable.
#3: Leverage Obvious Purchase Intent
Regardless of the online marketing strategies or channels you choose, purchase intent is rarely equal in terms of the differences between traffic sources.
You can also think about this in terms of the difference in buying motivation among different customer segments. Depending on what you are selling, some people may be ready to purchase within 1 – 30 days, others will take longer.
Below is a part of local search conversion statistics that proves this point
The interesting thing is that people actively searching for specific products or services are more likely to buy than people you engage with through outbound methods like cold calls.
#4: Easy A/B Testing
A/B testing is a process of testing two variations of an online advertising element to discover which one will convert more than the other. Instead of relying 100% on guesswork, A/B testing will help you to get maximum results from your limited resources.
Moreover, some of the best A/B testing software and strategies will make it easier to uncover the channels, creatives, sales copies, or audience segments that don’t get the results you want.
On a deeper level, there are so many benefits of A/B testing. Elimination of wasteful online advertising variables is just one of them. Here is something you can hardly do with free website traffic.
Here is why you may want to hire an online advertising agency in Connecticut to help you get the best outcomes from your limited budget.
Some of the core variables you may test include the following.
- Home page website design vs landing page
- Landing page headline
- Value propositions
- Entire sales page
- Lead magnet opt-in form type
- Contact forms
- Landing page video length
- Image vs video content
- Call to action
#5: Deep Audience Targeting
Whether you are aware of this fact or not, your target audience is very likely to exist in different segments. But how will you segment and target them when you are using free online marketing strategies? That’s where paid online advertising platforms come into play.
Deep targeting is about leveraging demographic data points to segment, engage and even target your prospective clients.
One benefit of audience segmentation in online advertising is that you can test different segments at the same time. And then discover which specific segments respond to your lead magnet, value proposition, or premium offers more than others.
Again, this is better than relying on mere guesswork. Inside paid online advertising platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, you can target your prospects based on demographic variables like the ones below.
- Industry
- Location
- Gender
- Job title
- Keywords
- Marital status
- Employment status
- Online behavior
- Past purchases
- Household income
- Educational status
- Device in use
When you hire one of the best online advertising agencies, you’ll gain access to experienced experts.
The experts will help you to make some intelligent combinations or testing of these variables.
Conclusion on the importance of paid online advertising
The importance of paid online advertising is not something that everybody understands at the same level. However, taking time to read posts like this is a good step in the right direction.
With a detailed look into some of the online advertising models and benefits discussed in this post, you can now compare what you have been doing.
Through that comparison, you’ll see some possibilities worth exploring on the best online advertising platforms. Though it is easy to start with a limited amount on these platforms, you may want to consult an online advertising expert to help you lay the foundation for a profit with your limited budget.
