PAID ADVERTISING

PAID ADVERTISEMENTS

Paid advertising is any kind of advertising that you have to pay for, versus owned or earned advertising.

With paid advertising, marketers pay the owner of ad space in exchange for use of that space. The price paid for the ad space is often settled through a bidding process between marketers and the ad space owner.

The two simplest ways to categorise Paid Ads are to split them into Search Ads and Display Ads.

Search Ads:

These are designed to appear when the consumer is already looking for an answer or product. The most common form is a Google Ad, these are the paid-for results that show above organic results when you use Google to search for something.

Display Ads:

These are the ads that appear at other times. For instance the kind of ads that play before watching a Youtube video or the banners that appear alongside the original content on a website.

There are some more types of Paid Advertisements:

} Social Media Ads:

It’s a marketing arena that is not only efficient but effective. Very similar to Display Ads, Social Media ads can be anything from a simple banner or image to an auto-play video.

Social Media advertising is great because you can target your audience perfectly. For example, Facebook’s targeting options include age, region, interests, educational background and more.

Here are two types of Social Media advertisements:

Organic - creates loyalty and gives you feedback from your target audience; new form of Word-of-Mouth.

Paid - leverage promoted posts and reach specific people.

The best platforms to target are:

LinkedIn for B2B sales

Facebook for display and top of funnel marketing

StumbleUpon for amazing, attention-grabbing content

Other platforms to hit up if you have the budget for it:

>Twitter

>Google+

>Pinterest

>Instagram

>Tumblr

>Reddit

You can prepare your Social Media campaigns yourself or you can work with a marketing agency to prepare your campaign.

}Search Engine Marketing(SEM):

The most dependable form of online paid advertising (and also the most common). SEM works based on keywords - you and other businesses like yours bid on keywords through search engines in an effort to get your website up higher on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

All SEM ads that appear in Google, Bing and other search engines are text ads. They’re listed at the top or sides of the SERP.

Paid ads can either be Pay Per Click (PPC) or Cost Per Thousand (CPM).

PPC

You bid on keywords and your results appear at the top of the SERP based on bid value.

This is the best value package because you’re only charged when people click on the ad.

Also, it’s the easiest to track during the campaign.

CPM

You’re billed a flat rate for 1,000 impressions.

}Native Advertising:

Native advertising is those sponsored listings at the end of blog posts, appearing on your Facebook feeds and posted to other Social Media.

>In-feed

>Search ads

>Recommendation widgets

>Promoted listings

}Remarketing/ Retargeting:

The best way to market to people who already know about your product and service is to remarket to them. Or retarget. Depends on who you’re talking to.

When people visit your site, you drop a cookie on them so that, as they travel around the web, your ads will appear over and over to remind them about your product or service.

This form of advertising is inexpensive and, if done right, can be more effective than PPC. It increases conversions because it reminds people of you who already know who you are.

}Video Advertising:

While YouTube ads are the most popular and well known of video ads, there are actually several different formats, types and content options.

You can go the route of educational/informative. Or maybe you want to post a how-to. Try to pull on the emotional strings of your viewers by creating a visual story. Ideal for branding, especially if you have a product or service that is best demonstrated visually.

Whatever you choose, Video Ads are gaining in popularity because they avoid blatant advertising while also attracting the limited attention span of many YouTubers.

Once you’ve created your video, you can post to:

>YouTube/Google

>Facebook

>Twitter

>Vimeo

>Brightroll

>YuMe

>Hulu

>Live Rail

>Adap.tv

>Specific Media

>Tube Mogul

>Tremor Video

>AOL

>Auditude

}Email Marketing:

Hanging out with Display Ads back near the start of online advertising, Email Marketing is a cheaper, faster and effective form of advertising.

It’s a great way to build customer loyalty and boost sales; when you use an email campaign manager (see the list below) to prepare and send your emails, you can easily track how well they do and monitor your ROI.

E-mail Campaign Managers:

>MailChimp

>Constant Contact

>AWeber

>ConvertKit

>GetResponse

>Campaign Monitor

>Active Campaign

In order to succeed at email marketing, you first need to build a list of email addresses. You can do so by using quizzes, or you can put a simple Newsletter sign-up on your site.

Then, you can send email campaigns that focus on promotions, discounts, features or content you’ve posted to your blog. Most emails are short, sweet and to the point. A concise message makes it easy to get your point across and increase conversions.

Just don’t forget to check your region/country’s spam rules.