Have you ever gone to the bank, withdrawn a few thousand dollars, then went home and threw all of that money into a high-powered fan, letting all the bits of destroyed money fall upon you like sad, sad confetti?
No? You haven’t?
Then why would you ever be careless with how you use your money when marketing your business?
Paid media strategies are highly effective when you send the right message across media channels and target your audience. Whether you’re interested in PPC (pay-per-click) ads such as paid search, display ads, social media ads, or sponsored content. Paid ads have the advantage of being easy to scale and track, while also offering the potential of almost immediate results.
Sound too complicated or risky? Well, an awesome feature of online ads is that they are easy to adjust. That means, if you have a campaign or a channel that isn’t performing well, you can pause your efforts there and focus them on other campaigns or channels that are yielding better results. Unfortunately, many companies take a “set it and forget it” approach to their paid media. Paid ads can’t always be a Crock-Pot recipe.
Here are some tips to help ensure you’re making the most out of your paid ads.
Use Content Mapping
Targeting the wrong audience online is like buying a billboard for your adult nightclub right next to a local church: pointless and has the potential to make sweet little old ladies faint (okay, maybe not that last part). How do we solve this online? Content mapping is a process that helps you deliver the right message to the right people, in the right place, at the right time. You’ll need to determine who your customers are and what their customer journey is. Then, audit your current advertising efforts to ensure that you are creating paid ads that resonate with your target audience at each stage of their journey. This can be a time-intensive process but is necessary to ensure that your ads don’t fall flatter than that little old lady who just fainted.
Utilize Automation
Here we thought AI and advanced tech would have taken over the world with an army of robots storming the streets, but instead, we use them for paid ads. Programmatic ads and automation use artificial intelligence & machine learning to take over tedious tasks such as bid adjustment, keyword monitoring, and content optimization. Automation also helps ensure you don’t exceed ad spend budgets or overspend for poor results. Google recently reported that more than 80% of their advertisers are using automated bidding to help them achieve their desired goals. Now, we just need to make sure the AI doesn’t start an uprising…
Try Native Ads
If you’ve ever been scrolling through an article and seen relevant goods and services spliced between the copy, you’ve seen native advertising.
Native advertising, which blends seamlessly into the platform where it is hosted, has become one of the most popular forms of display advertising, and for good reason. These paid ads blend into the editorial content of the site they are on, and people often don’t even realize they are ads. In fact, according to Martech.org, native ads get 20-60% higher engagement rates than display banners.
Test Various Channels
There’s an old adage dating back to the 1600s, which comes from Don Quixote: “It is the part of a wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow, and not venture all his eggs in one basket.”
Likewise, don’t use all your media spend on one channel. You’ll increase the chances of success if you experiment with search, social media, affiliate and partner sites, and you’ll also be more nimble and harder to disrupt if you have a diverse marketing mix to rely on.
Hire the Experts
You know what else comes from Don Quixote? “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”
Okay, actually, it’s “Thou hast seen nothing yet,” but we totally know what he meant.
Good paid ad strategy is a science, and you need expert help to navigate the constantly shifting paid media landscape. The digital marketing team at Celsius Marketing | Interactive can help you create a custom digital marketing and advertising strategy using the perfect mix of channels, paid ads, marketing methods, and content types to broaden your reach, increase leads, and drive conversions. Let us take the burden off you and help you get real results. Let’s talk.
