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A Lowdown on the Main Methods of Paid Advertising

By Jamieson Lee Hill, Head of Copywriting

There are a multitude of ways to promote your business through paid advertising. It is knowing where to start and which methods to use. In this article we explore some of the main forms of paid ads available for your start up! Enjoy.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

What is Search Engine Marketing?

Search engine marketing is a strategy to improve the visibility of your website in search engine results pages also known as SERPS. SEM is sometimes described as the opposite of SEO because it refers mainly to paid advertising. However, a successful SEM strategy involves SEO research to find the keywords for your paid adverts that customers are searching for online. Therefore, SEM and SEO go hand in hand together.

How important is Search Engine Marketing?

Search Engine Marketing is very important due to the large numbers of consumers performing searches online for products and services. Therefore, most businesses need to have an SEM Strategy to get noticed.

Most visitors to a website find it via typing in keywords into a search engine such as Google. In SEM, companies that are running paid ads only pay for people that visit their website i.e. click on the advertisement. Hence, the name Pay Per Click or PPC.

PPC Advertising

Pay Per Click Advertising is synonymous with paid search because the majority of advertising is PPC and therefore a major element of Search Engine Marketing.

Prospects who enter search queries with the intention to purchase something are more useful to a business compared to social media users who are not looking explicitly for something. Search marketing is targeted to find consumers at the right time when they are looking for information.

SEM and PPC are one of the fastest and most immediate ways to drive traffic to your business website.

How SEM Works

Search engines deliver the relevant information based on algorithms and factors such as location and keyword phrases. With Paid Ads, these sponsored ads appear at the top of the search engine results before the organic search.

The paid listings at the top of the page will match or be similar to the keywords the searcher uses. Therefore, it is likely that the prospect will click through to the landing page of your website. Each time a prospect clicks on a PPC ad, the company pays a certain amount of money.

SEM is regarded as one of the most efficient ways to invest money into promoting your business.

Running an SEM Campaign

The basic steps of running an SEM campaign are:

Research the keywords for your products, services and your website.
Choose a geographical location for your adverts
Design a text-based ad for the search engine listings. Include a headline, main body of text, CTA - call to action and a link to your website.
Bid on a price for PPC on your ads. For very popular keywords, the companies who pay the most will win the bids.

Search Networks: Google and Bing

The two main search networks SEMs professionals use are Google Ads and Bing Ads. Google AdWords is actually two networks:

Google Search Network: e.g. websites owned by Google: Adsense, Android, Doubleclick, Google Chrome, Google Drive, Google Maps, Google Play etc.

Google Display Network: e.g. YouTube, Gmail, etc

With Bing: you can purchase adverts on the Yahoo network of websites and the Bing network.

Google Ads is twice the size of Bing Ads but Bing ads are often cheaper. Therefore, you may pay less to rank higher on Bing.

A/B Testing of Advertisements

A/B Testing aka split testing is a standard practice in advertising. It simply means testing out different adverts to see which performs better. For example, you are promoting a new product on your website, so you create two adverts - advert A and advert B. After a certain period of time, you analyse the stats to see which advert had the most clicks and brought the most traffic to your website. The best performing adverts can be used again in future.

A/B testing is about optimising your paid ads to have the most amount of traffic and conversions possible for your investment.

A Word of Warning

PPC done incorrectly can result in you ‘burning’ money for little in return. Essentially this means you should either hire an agency or advertising freelancer to run your ad campaigns or you will need to study how to run paid ads yourself. Be cautious not to throw money at advertising when you are unsure of how to run a PPC campaign.

Types of PPC

a. Paid Search Marketing or SEM

One of the most common types of PPC; we have already covered this in the previous sections. This type of advertising uses search ads that appear at the top of search results in Google and other search engines.

b. Display Advertising

This type of advert targets specific audiences and they come in the form of text, banner or image adverts. As usual the paid ad has a click through link to the landing pages of your business website. Display ads are effective for growing your brand awareness and visibility but on average the click through rate is less than Search Ads.

c. Paid Social Media Advertising

Paid Social Media Advertising is about paying to boost your most popular posts. It is important to study the analytics for your social media content and identify posts with the best performance metrics. These are the posts that you should pay to promote on social media to reach a wider audience.

Paid Social Media Advertising is a way of targeting specific audiences using demographic data and to access new audiences. The advertising lets you choose to focus on factors such as their location, age, interests, gender etc. It can be a very effective way of bringing traffic to your website and increasing your customer base.

Social Media Accounts are free to set up and it is important that you become familiar with the platform before you start spending money on promotion. Practise Social Listening on social media to see what audiences are saying about your sector, the products and services etc and identify customer problems that you can offer solutions to.

Study your competitors best performing content and then create similar content. Before you start setting a budget for promotion of your social media content, spend time learning the trends and patterns of the various platforms. Here is a list of Social Media Channels where you can advertise your business:

d. Retargeting PPC Advertising

Retargeting (aka remarketing) refers to when you go online and look for products and services and a small pixel of code known as a cookie is stored on your browser. This piece of code or cookie sends information about your location, time of day, products & services looked at and so on to a third party like Google. These cookies can then be used by companies and marketers to retarget adverts at you e.g. you will see adverts for men’s shoes when you go online today as you were looking for men’s shoes yesterday.

However, the controversial practice of retargeting using third party cookies is set to change in 2023. Google has announced that they will stop using third party cookies. So what does that mean in layman’s terms? When you visit a website Google would usually store information about your online actions and then share that information with companies through tools such as Google Analytics. Marketers can currently use that information to then retarget people with ads who have visited content before to bring them back into your sales funnel to convert them into a paying customer.

With the phasing out of third party cookies Google as a third party will no longer share the information about visitors to a site. However, you will still be able to harvest information about your own website visitors through what are called first party cookies i.e. cookies on your own website and not from a third party such as Google.

Retargeting can be used in display advertising campaigns, search advertising campaigns, social media advertising campaigns and email marketing.

Paid Influencer Advertising

Influencer advertising is when a business pays a person with over 50 to 100 thousand followers on a social media platform to endorse their products or services.

It can be an effective way to get your brand out there. Famous influencers with large numbers of followers will charge large amounts of money for influencer advertising, so you may want to focus on influencers with tens of thousands of followers to start with.

Influencer marketing is a form of ‘celebrity’ endorsement of your product. It is important to select the right influencers for your products and services. You need to check that their followers match the demographics and interests of your target audience. Some of the channels for influencer marketing include:

YouTube
Instagram
Twitter
Pinterest
Snapchat
LinkedIn

Facebook Advertising

Firstly, set up a Facebook page for your business. You must not use a personal profile for your business as they are only for individuals. Start populating your Facebook page with quality content relevant to your target audiences. Facebook is still the world’s largest social media network with 2.91 Billion active users (March 2022).

Facebook is an effective alternative to Google Ads and you can target your particular audiences with ad campaigns focusing on age, gender, location, job, interests, behaviours etc.

Types of Facebook Adverts

There is a range of Facebook ads to choose from; you can run text and image adverts, video ads, polls, promoted Facebook stories, carousel ads, slideshow ads and many more.

How to Write a Facebook Advert

The secret of a successful Facebook advert is to have the following factors:

A compelling hook or big idea that you are selling to the prospects. The hook comes at the start of the ad copy (written text) i.e. usually the first sentence.
You only have 125 characters for your standard Facebook Ad and 25 characters for the headline. Also, 30 characters for the description.

In the main body of the ad copy, you need to show empathy with your prospects and suggest a solution to a problem they have. If the ad copy is focused on the target audience, it is more likely to be successful and people will click through.
The ad needs social proof to help convince people that your brand is trustworthy and popular e.g. your social Proof could be the number of 5 star reviews you have on Trustpilot.
CTA - a Call To Action. A CTA is the action that you want the prospect to take e.g. Register for our free course. Click to download our free report etc. It is important you tell them what to do next.
An attractive image - the image is often called the Ad creative. Choose a photo or picture which is congruent with the copy and an image that compels people to click.
Congruence from Ad to landing page. It is important that your Facebook ad and your website landing page are congruent in terms of branding, copy, image etc. This builds trust with the prospect.

Advertising Training

If you have the time and the inclination to become advertising literate, there are a number of free training programs online for the main advertising platforms including Google, Facebook and Instagram.

Even if you don’t run your own ad campaigns, undertaking advertising training will help you choose the right advertising agency or freelancer to run your paid ads. You will then have a better insight and understanding. Here are a few:

Print Media

In this digital age, it is easy to forget the tried and tested methods that existed long before everything was online. Print media is hard copy advertising that people can hold in their hands and read. So what do we include in print media?

Brochures, flyers and posters are great ways to advertise to your customers about your products and services.
Business cards are still a popular way to exchange details with prospects and help to build your network.
Magazines and journals can be an effective way to focus on your prospective customers. You can produce your own publication or publish promoted content or advertisements within a local, national or international magazine or journal.
Paid advertising in your local or regional newspapers on a frequent basis keeps your brand visible in your local area. See section below - Advertising in the Press.

Sandwich Boards and Billboards

Sandwich boards are a classic form of advertising on the high street. They usually advertise local retail stores and are also used by roadside businesses. A sandwich board can be a sign on the pavement or roadside or alternatively it can be worn by an employee who walks around and gives out flyers to passers by. A sandwich board is a cost effective way to direct passersby into your highstreet store or office.

Billboards are also a traditional form of advertising but are far more costly than a sandwich board. These are large and small boards in towns and cities where you can pay to post an advertisement about your business.

Billboards can be found in a multitude of locations; on the side of bus shelters, telephone boxes, trains, trams, buses, underground, airports, stadiums, motorways, etc. Billboards can be made of paper or be digital. The cost of a billboard depends on the location and the size. Prices are highest in London and generally cheaper in smaller cities and towns.

Advertising in the Press

This is another traditional form of advertising which many businesses still use. You can pay to advertise in your local, regional or national newspapers or journals. You can go for a smaller ad in the backpages or a full page advert. Local newspapers will be much cheaper than national newspapers.

The trick is to write a simple advert which captures the attention of your target audience with a message that focuses on their needs, challenges and aspirations. You will need to choose a compelling headline, main body text, a Call to Action (telling the reader what action to take e.g. email or call us now). You may also include an image depending on the size of the advert; adverts in the backpages of newspapers don’t tend to have images.

People tend to buy based on emotions, so your ad should focus on the benefit your products or services will bring to their lives e.g. our new A.I. website will bring you peace-of-mind with its automatic security updates.

Promotional Merchandise

People love freebies, so you could give away merchandise with your company logo and colours e.g. pens, mugs, t-shirts, calendars, key rings, baseball caps, sweatshirts, coasters etc. By giving these away, you are promoting your business when other people see your company logo and creating love for your brand. This is particularly appropriate at networking events or trade shows.

Radio and Television

Radio advertising is the less expensive option of the two. Choose a local or regional radio station that has a target audience likely to purchase your products or services.

Television advertising is more expensive, but the reach is likely to be a lot wider than radio. Primetime television advertising is possibly beyond the budgets of most start ups.