Are you looking to maximise your return on investment (ROI) and achieve incredible results from your marketing campaigns? If so, paid media campaigns may be the solution you've been searching for.
In this article, we will explore the basics of paid media campaigns, setting clear goals, crafting a high-converting ad strategy, and allocating your paid media budget wisely.
Paid media refers to any form of paid advertising. Everything from Google ads to social media-promoted posts. The goal of paid media is to actively promote your products and services to your target audience faster rather than just waiting for the traction to pick up organically.
Usually, you pay a fee to display your ads or content to the platform you want to promote to, and like with almost everything, the more you pay the bigger your reach.
The great thing about paid media is that almost all platforms have metrics and personalization options to help you better segment and target your online audience. You can target your audience with considerable precision, everything from demographics, interests and behaviour, allowing you to tailor your campaign according to your needs.
Since everyone can be found online these days there are a lot of paid media channels available to choose from. Even so, there’s still a high demand for paid media opportunities.
That being said, each platform has unique audiences, benefits and disadvantages. Here are the most popular channels you can benefit from:
Advertising on social media is an almost guaranteed way to get eyeballs on your campaign and reach your desired audience. With an estimation of 3.6 billion people using the worldwide, it’s no wonder why marketers love it. These kinds of ads allow for a wider range of personalisation as they typically can be modified based on a range of factors, including age, location, interests, and behaviours.
PPC advertising is also a very good and effective way to reach your audience both in quantity and quality. The difference between this one and social media advertising is that with PPC you pay each time someone clicks on your ad, not when it just pops up in someone’s feed. Even though it sounds like a better deal, and depending on what you are looking for it might be, the clicks tend to be considerably pricier.
PPC is effective for businesses that are looking to drive traffic to their website, and with this method, you can target your ads based on keywords, location, and device type.
Display advertising is somewhat of a hybrid between the first two channels, but it is more of a method than an actual channel. It’s a form of advertising where you pay to have your content displayed on websites or social media platforms. This is especially useful for brands that are looking to build awareness and stay on their audience's top of mind.
This form of advertising is a little bit wider as depending on the definition it might include all the points mentioned above. However, it also covers all the other ones that weren’t. Things like sponsored articles, videos, podcasts and even influencer marketing can be categorised as sponsored content. These are very effective ways to quickly build awareness around your brand and establish your business as a thought leader in your respective field.
Paid media has become essential to the success of marketing campaigns as it enables them to reach the desired target audience at a much wider scale. If and when done correctly they help increase conversions resulting in a better overall ROI.
However, it’s important to remember that these kinds of tactics should be used in conjunction with other marketing strategies. Do not neglect your SEO and your content marketing as a combination of all of them is needed to create a full, well-rounded marketing strategy that will help you achieve your business goals.
Before you launch anything in general, it’s important to define your objectives and goals. The same stands true for Paid Media campaigns. Having a clear vision ensures that your efforts are going to be effective.
Try to answer questions like: “What do you want to achieve with my marketing efforts?” and be specific.
“Are we looking to increase sales, generate leads, or build brand awareness?”, most likely all of them seem tempting, but if you have a limited budget try to focus on what is important based on your situation.
Once you have decided to try out paid advertising and have established the goals and objectives, the next step is to identify your target audience. This step is a critical one because if not done correctly it will lead to a loss of resources and frustration down the line. It is good to want to sell to everyone but not everyone wants or can afford your product or service, so you need to be specific.
Start identifying your target audience by considering factors such as age, gender, location, interest and behaviour. Maybe creating a customer persona might help create an even better idea of whom you are targeting.
This information will help you create ads that resonate with your ideal customer inciting them to interact thus increasing the chances of conversion.
To make sure you get a return on your investment you need to set up goals and KPIs to keep track of the performance of your efforts. This way you can understand what is working and what isn’t and adjust along the way.
Set specific, measurable and achievable goals that align with your overall business objectives. Choose KPI metrics that are relevant to your paid media campaign. Depending on your goals you can track the number of impressions, awareness, conversions, sales, etc.
By making sure that the proper KPIs are in order you can track the progress of your campaign and make data-driven decisions.
How you create your ads is extremely crucial to the success of your campaign. We’ve all seen bad ads, and probably we’ve never clicked on them.
The ads you put out here must be compelling, engaging and designed with the sole purpose to convert.
Your ad copy should be clear, concise and descriptive. Never leave anything up to interpretation.
The copy should highlight the benefits of your product or service, or who it can help solve their problem. If you have any unique features that differentiate you from your competitors, make sure to include that as well.
When crafting your ad is important to remember your target audience and what motivates them. Only by understanding their needs and desires, you can create an ad copy that resonates with them and compels them to take action.
Eye-catching means to be immediately appealing or noticeable. To stand out from the crowd. Your visuals should be as eye-catching as possible without revering too far from your branding language or missing the purpose of what it is you are trying to sell.
Visuals can include all sorts of things, images, graphics, videos, demos, you name it. When choosing which visuals you want to use it’s important to consider what emotions you are trying to evoke and which medium can help you best. Do you want to create a sense of urgency? Or do you want to make them feel happy and inspired?
A/B testing involves running two versions of your ad to determine which one performs better. It allows you to test different elements and copy to optimise your ads for maximum performance.
When conducting an A/B test it's important to test them one at a time to accurately determine which element is affecting performance. If you are testing the ad copy you could run two versions of your ad with different headlines. You then should measure their click-through rate to determine which copy is more effective. The same can be done for every element of your ad. To ultimately improve your campaign performance and achieve the desired results, continuous testing and refining are needed.
First, you should determine how much you are willing to spend on your paid media campaigns. These types of campaigns should align with your overall marketing budget and should be realistically set based on your unique objectives.
To determine your overall budget you should consider the size of the audience you are trying to reach, the cost of ads in your industry and for how long you want your campaign to run. If you are going for a small niche segment the budget will be significantly smaller than the alternative.
To create an effective campaign you should determine which channels serve your business best and allocate specific budgets to each of them separately. This will help you spend more on channels that have proven to have a decent ROI or conversion rate. If you do not know which channels are the best for you, we suggest you try them out while monitoring your spending and adjusting your budget as needed.
Consider the advantages and disadvantages of each channel when choosing where to focus. For example, social media advertising may be more effective for reaching a younger audience, while search engine advertising may be more effective for reaching a specific demographic.
This is where the “magic” happens. After carefully crafting your ads and strategy now it is time to monitor and adjust accordingly. Be prepared to adjust your budget as needed depending on the performance of your campaign. Keep a close eye on your cost per click (CPC) and cost per acquisition (CPA). If your CPC or CPA is higher than expected, you may need to adjust your budget or make changes to your campaign to improve its performance.
If your campaign still is not generating a positive ROI, you may need to adjust your budget or shift your focus to a different channel.
Paid media campaigns are a powerful tool for maximising your ROI and achieving incredible results from your marketing efforts.
By understanding the basics of paid media campaigns, setting clear goals, crafting a high-converting ad strategy, and allocating your paid media budget wisely, you can achieve success and take your marketing to the next level.
