Understanding the Two Popular Types of Paid Advertising for Small Business
PPC and social media advertising are two of the most popular paid advertising methods for small business. Let’s take a quick deep dive into each to see how they can work for your business:
PPC (Pay Per Click) Ads
PPC (Pay Per Click) is a popular search engine advertising model. In this, marketers leverage search platforms like Google to display ads that are chargeable only when someone clicks on them.
It is a paid marketing method in which you show relevant ads to searchers based on their search queries and convert them into customers. There are various PPC ad types, including text-based ads, local ads, shopping ads, and more, which offers advertisers an array of ways to land in front of their target audience.
Here are some examples of the various PPC ad types.
Benefits of Using PPC Ads in Your Small Business
With growing competition in organic search results, PPC is becoming increasingly popular among businesses across many industries.
Here are some of the benefits of PPC ads for small businesses:
1. Pay Only When Someone Clicks Your Ads
PPC ads are chargeable only when searchers click your ad. If they don’t click your advertisement, you’ll not pay a dime.
2. Measurable ROI
PPC ads make it easy for you to track ad performance, spending, and lets you evaluate ROI with analytics. This helps you make an informed decision for reaching your business goals, and forecast buyer behavior and sales performance.
3. Boost Traffic to Your Site
It’s no secret that organic search marketing takes time to show results. So if you want to drive visitors to your site in a short duration, PPC ads are highly recommended for you.
4. Remarket and Bring Back Lost Leads
With remarketing ads, you can target buyers who didn’t convert after browsing your site and bring them back.
Social Media Advertising
Social media advertising is the process of approaching your audience on social platforms and driving sales through paid campaigns. The advantage for small businesses is the ability to connect with niche audiences looking for your particular product or service.
In my previous blog, I’ve covered how to sell more with social media advertising using 9 hacks. Now let’s look at how you can take it a step further to boost sales during the holiday season with social media ads.
Most Popular Platforms for Social Media Advertising
Below are some of the most popular social media platforms with billions of active users where you can showcase your products using social ads and increase sales revenue.
Facebook offers a robust advertising platform that allows small businesses a number of targeting criteria for their ads, thus making it easier to land in front of your ideal customer. According to a Facebook-sponsored Ipsos study, almost half of US shoppers began shopping for the holidays in November or earlier in 2018.
Among brands and businesses that are active on Facebook, 96% are B2C, while 91% are B2B.
Benefits of Advertising on Facebook
Some of the benefits of advertising on Facebook include:
- Exact Audience Targeting
Facebook lets you target specific audiences based on their interests, age range, locations, demographic, income and language. This helps you stay focused when creating an ad and convert more customers.
- Access to Over 200 Million Users
The number of users on Facebook is growing at a rapid speed. By 2025, approximately 235.15 million people are going to be using Facebook, which means you have access to an unprecedented market.
- Ad Remarketing
Just like with Google, you can also create remarketing ads on Facebook and target your lost leads and convert them to a sale.
- Custom CTA (Call to Action)
Facebook allows businesses to create a custom call-to-action, which allows more control over conversion.
Instagram houses over 600 million monthly users and generates 4.2 billion likes per day. With already 82% of B2C marketers using Instagram, there’s a good reason for you to explore this photo-sharing social platform.
The Instagram ad platform is effective for both B2B and B2C industries actively looking to promote brands, generate sales, and create brand awareness.
Benefits of Advertising on Instagram
- Highly Engaged Community:
Users on Instagram are 58X more likely to engage with businesses and ads than on Facebook. They’re also 120X more likely to engage with brands on Instagram than on Twitter.
- Helps Develop Brand Affinity
The Instagram community not only engages with ads but they also remember the brands they‘ve engaged with. This increases your ability to create brand awareness.
- Facebook Ads Integration
As Instagram ads are integrated with the Facebook ad platform, you get access to the granular audience targeting and customized setting.
YouTube
YouTube is a unique advertising platform that unlocks access to various ad categories and gives the freedom to choose what suits your business and budget.
You can select from a range of ad types — skippable to non-skippable video ads, bumper ads to masthead ads, and others.
Benefits of Advertising on YouTube
Because YouTube is owned by Google, advertising on the platform provides many of the same reach benefits your find with the Google Display Network (GDN) including:
- Keyword Targeting
You can create your ad campaign using specific keywords and use them across YouTube and GDN. This makes it easy for your ad to show up when people search for similar content.
- In-Market Buyer Groups
Discover your niche audiences who are actively researching products or services you offer and target them for higher ad conversions. You can even target by gender, age-groups, and demographics.
- Gain Insight into Audience Behavior
Direct integration with Google Analytics makes it easier for you to monitor audience behavior and understand what works best.
- Video Remarketing
Connect with viewers based on their past interaction with your videos and increase sales revenue by converting them.
5 Things You Need Before You Start Paying for PPC and Social Media Ads
Whether you choose to go with PPC or social media ads, there are five things you need to prepare for advertising.
1. Determine Your Budget
Setting an ad spend budget in advance puts you in better control of the advertising process and helps you determine how much you’d spend and at which stage. Here’s a great article that helps you better understand ad budgeting and how much you can expect to spend.
2. Research
Carry out pre-advertising research before you launch ad campaigns. This includes granular details about the market you are targeting, developing a keyword strategy, and evaluating competitors’ positions in the market.
Keywords Research for PPC Ads: If you fail to create a list of quality Adwords, your PPC campaigns will risk losing customers and revenue. Use Google’s free Ads Keyword Planner tool to create a list of effective keywords that you’ll be using in your ads.
Audience Research for Social Media Ads: Creating ads without defining the target audience is a recipe for disaster. That’s why your ads need to be created for a specific audience for better conversions. Social platforms like Facebook, Instagram allow businesses to get granular in ads targeting with the help of detailed audience research.
3. Create a High-Converting Landing page
If your ad is successful and the prospect clicks a link to come to your sales page, you want to make sure it’s designed to convert! A high-converting landing page has fast load speed, unique and engaging content supported by great visuals.
If you’re unsure of messaging or graphics on your landing page, run A/B testing to see what elements speak to your audience and convert.
4. Capture Visitors
When new prospects land on your website or sales page, you want to be able to capture their information so that you can connect with them and grow sales. Not every visitor will purchase on the first visit. Utilize lead generation forms on your site and use them creatively to seek your visitor’s details so that you can send them offers, promotional emails and convert them in the future.
5. Decide How You’ll Measure Ad Effectiveness
Goal setting and understanding the KPIs are important for the overall success and effectiveness of your ad campaigns. Understand what you want to achieve with your campaigns and how you want to reach your marketing goals. This should guide you better when setting performance metrics which will be helpful when evaluating performance and make an informed business decision.
Are you ready to join the many small businesses that are already boosting holiday sales with PPC and Social Media Ads? With this information in hand, you are one step closer to making sure it’s a happy holiday sales season!