7 Tips for Paid Advertising for Your Business

paid advertising

According to the numbers, paid advertising has an ROI of 200%. In addition, if you want to grow your business quickly, paid advertisements can generate lightning-fast results.

Even though PPC packs an undeniable punch, however, business owners still have to be careful. One mistake or misconception can destroy your annual marketing budget.

Want to get more results for every dollar you spend on PPC ad campaigns? We’ve put together a list of seven essential tips for running successful paid ad campaigns. Keep reading to find out more.

1. Have Targets and Metrics

A paid campaign that expands your core client base from 100 to 1,000 is a win at first glance. But unless you’re making $100,000 per client, a $10,000 acquisition cost would be impossible to maintain.

Before you execute your big launch, you’ll need an answer to the question, “What does a successful campaign look like?”. From your expected targets to your conversion costs, you’ll want your data to be so precise that you can analyze campaigns down to the ad. This will not only allow you to make informed decisions while your campaign is running — it’ll also give you a list of dos and don’ts for future advertising efforts.

2. Test Your Ads First

Have you ever seen a movie that failed to meet your expectations? Maybe the film even had an interesting plot and an all-star cast. But somewhere between the script and the execution, the movie wasn’t as good as everyone thought it would be.

Believe it or not, the same thing can happen in business advertising. You might think your ad will be a multi-platform success. But your target demographic might disagree.

How do you save your budget from a losing ad? You run a series of low-budget tests before making a huge push. With just $10 or $20, you can often tell if your ad is a winner or a dud.

3. Start With One or Two Platforms

When you’re getting good results with business advertising, it’s easy to find yourself doing too much. Perhaps you started eyeing LinkedIn after your Facebook campaign performed well. And then before you knew it, you were drowning in analytics.

Even if the end game is to be on every digital platform, Rome wasn’t built in a day. You’ll get better and more consistent marketing returns if you start by mastering one or two key platforms.

4. Optimize Your Landing Pages

Imagine you’re a future lead. You see an ad while scrolling through Facebook that promises you big results and a first-time customer discount. But when you click over to the website, you’re greeted with the homepage or worse, a landing page that feels like it was written for someone else.

All things being equal, would you buy a product or service in this circumstance? Maybe. But not without some mental gymnastics.

As a business owner, you don’t want your landing pages to be turning away potential customers. By matching your landing page to your ad, your leads will enjoy a seamless digital experience. And this is an important part of getting them to feel comfortable booking calls or purchasing your latest product.

5. Write for an Audience of One

If you asked 10 small business owners to name everyone who might benefit from their product, you’d get at least 50 different answers. Even if you’re in the business of selling running shoes, for instance, professional runners, power walkers, and people in casual workplaces may all have an interest in your product.

However, an ad that makes sense to professional marathoners likely won’t have the same appeal for someone who wants to be comfortable at work. And even if you can manage that feat, making a campaign that appeals to marathoners, sprinters, and fitness beginners is a tall order.

Whether you’ve got a dozen advertising ideas or a couple, there’s a fundamental truth you don’t want to lose sight of:

You’ll almost always be better off tailoring each campaign to a single demographic.

6. Remember Your Branding

When you’re a small business, the idea of creating a brand might sound like overkill. But in reality, your business likely already has a brand even if you haven’t formalized it. And an ad campaign that derails your image can harm your company’s online reputation.

Many legal firms, with their expensive offices and impressive bookshelves, strive to put forward an image that says, “We’re professionals who take ourselves and you seriously.”. Lots of e-commerce companies build clean websites that say, “We understand your needs. And this is why our products are a great fit.”.

As it turns out, consistent brand presentation can boost revenue by as much as 23%. To that end, you’ll want to create ads that enhance, or at the very least don’t hurt, the image you’re creating for your business.

7. Create a Marketing Budget

In 2019, the Small Business Administration claimed that companies were spending an average of 7.9% of total revenue on marketing. However, those numbers were affected by industry and business demographics. If you’re a B2C company that offers a service, for example, those percentages climbed as high as 11.8%.

Unless you’re planning to be a flash in the pan, business advertising has to be done continuously. Not building this expense into your budget could have an extremely negative effect on your cash flow.

When entrepreneurs put together business plans, details like the service area, the product, and the branding strategy are often closely analyzed. You’ll want to factor marketing and advertising costs into the “financial forecasting” part of your high-level business strategy.

Grow Your Business With Paid Advertising

Done right, paid advertising can transform a small business. So much so that it’s not unheard of for ad campaigns to deliver more purchases, more calls, and more leads within days.

Even so, however, running an advertising campaign isn’t easy. For many business, the cost of paid ads can quickly spiral out of control.

We help busy small business owners with their marketing needs. Check out our paid advertising services today.

Pam

I love organizing. I like to be in control of my surroundings and everything in them. It makes me feel secure and happy. That's why I'm so good at my job--I love making things run smoothly!

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My favorite color is purple. It's such a unique color, and it always stands out to me. Plus, it reminds me of royalty which is fitting for someone with as much ambition as me! My all-time favorite movie is Life of Brian, because it never fails to make me laugh no matter how many times I see it. My favorite type of music is classical music; there's something about the melodies that just speaks to me on a deep level. And finally, my favorite book is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson. The writing is absolutely incredible and the story is just so bizarre that you can't help but be drawn in.
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