DA Blog

Paid, really?

Sure, that’s your first reaction to the idea of advertising costing you money. But hear me out.

Advertising wouldn’t exist as an industry if there wasn’t a pretty solid success rate behind it, and the John Lewis’ Christmas advert wouldn’t be an annual thing if it didn’t increase their revenue.

When it comes to your online presence the idea of paying for advertising can be jarring, something you may turn your nose up to. It shouldn’t be.

Below I have outlined 5 reasons that using paid advertising is something that can really help your business. Here goes…

1) Being on the first page of search results

Type your industry into Google. What do you see? Type in something you are wearing, trainer, t-shirt, skirt, what do you see? Whichever of these options the first thing you would have seen is the same as when you searched for your industry: paid adverts.

Google, Bing, Yahoo, and their peers want you to buy adverts from them (it’s their modus operandi) and they will all reward you for doing so by putting the page you are advertising for on the first page of their search. Being on the first page of a search result is hugely important, 91% of Google’s visitors never go further than the first page and if you aren’t on there you are significantly reducing your chances of driving traffic to your site.

PPC is a quick and efficient way to build up traffic to your site, and can be a great way to announce a product launch or other commercial development to the world. Just make sure that you are bidding on the right keywords, excluding any negatives ones, and constantly checking in on campaigns from a conversions and ROI-perspective.

A freelance PPC consultant or agency can help you improve and gain PPC traction in the right way — PPC can be quite a complex, mathematical undertaking. Charities get free Adwords credit from Google, so don’t forget to take advantage of this.

Credit: Flickr

2) You can track their effectiveness

One of the most persuasive arguments for having paid advertising is that you are able to track and measure their effectiveness – paid advertising comes with a raft of analytics that allows you to do this.

This has a far-reaching impact on your company, as it means you can review the what, where, who, and why of your campaigns, letting you track the success rate of your marketing strategy in an integrated way.

Doing this allows you to increase the traffic to your site by ensuring that you promote your site, business, and products to your audience and customers in the way that they want to receive them. You will be able to keep a close eye on engagement and sales figures, and will probably learn a thing or two about your industry and niche as you go along.

Credit: Pexels

3) You can tailor your audience

Success, success; it’s a wonderful thing, and your success rate will increase exponentially if you target the right audience. This is something that paid advertising allows you to do in spades. Whether it’s on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or Twitter — audience targeting and segmentation comes as part of the parcel for paid social advertising.

Here are the benefits of segmenting your Twitter ads:

Twitter’s tailored audiences are not a segment of customers designed by Walt Disney in a 1938 animated film (see below for further details). A tailored audience is a way to target your existing Twitter followers and you can source them from the web, mobile apps, and your own lists.

The benefit of them to your business is that you can:

• Gain new customers in a controlled, targeted way from a pool of people who match your ideal customer avatar
• Turn your loyal followers into paying customers and vice versa — a great way to create a sense of community around your brand
• Make the most of your customer lifetime value

4) You can access an enormous social audience

About that John Lewis advert: 9,798,602 have seen the 2017 version on YouTube, while 26,763,740 saw the 2016 incarnation which also inspired an Obama/Clinton/Trump parody. People see adverts.

Facebook, for instance, counts its monthly active visitors in the billions. It’s not for nothing that Facebook advertising is one of the biggest marketing spends across the world. Facebook wants to actively entice new advertisers, so they give their content priority and keep making it easier and easier to run ads and get in front of their users.

Facebook is not the only social media platform to offer paid advertising: Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc…, they’re all at it and they all offer it for the same reason as Mark Zuckerberg’s Goliath.

You not might secure social media viewings in the millions by paying for advertising, but it will open your brand up to the potential to be seen by a vast audience. It’s also a great way for brands to go global for the first time — why not use this as an opportunity to test out your offering with an international audience?

5) People aren’t seeing your organic social posts

I bet your social media accounts are brilliant, the best even. They’re wry, informed, and cut in a way that resonates instantly with your audience. In fact, I bet they are as good as this gem…

Credit: VancityReynolds

But do you know what, I bet people aren’t seeing your Tweets or posts. Why? Because organic reach on social media has slipped down the food chain. Here are some stats that will make you sit up:

In October 2013 the average organic reach of the content which companies posted on there brand Facebook pages was 12.05%, by February 2014 it was 6.15%. What is that figure at now? As low as 2%.

It is for this reason that 93% of marketers use Facebook ads.

I know your posts are great, you know your posts are great but do your audience? Sadly, this may depend on whether all your posts are organic, or whether you utilize paid adverts from time to time.

So there you are, 5 reasons that paid advertising can help your business.

While there is a clear benefit to them, they are not the be-all and end-all of a successful company. You still need to have great content, a brand that your audience wish to engage with, great products, and a billion other different things.

Just bear in mind, though, that as great as you doing, you might be even more successful if you used some well-placed and thought-out paid advertising – it’s what the experts do. 

If you’d like to explore how paid advertising could benefit your business, please click here for a free, no-obligation, 30-minute digital marketing strategy session. 

Victoria Greene is a branding consultant and freelance writer. On her blog, VictoriaEcommerce, she shares tips on, marketing, ecommerce and how writers can develop their skills. She is passionate about using her experience to brands and writers grow.