Digital Marketing

What is Paid Digital Marketing and How It is Important for Business

By Muhammad Hanzla Ijaz

 

Paid digital marketing is basically when an advertiser pays a publisher like a search engine or website to promote their business, brand, product or service. It can help to generate more traffic to your site, increase the number of clicks and boost brand reach. 

Benefits

1. Instant results 

With the help of paid advertisement we can easily promote our business or services by using different digital channels. For instance if i post any sort of advertisement on Facebook it will be displayed within 24 hours after its approval. We can track its engagement by the number of likes, comments and shares we get on that advertisement. 

2. Brand awareness

If you’re unknown to the people how can you even think of connecting with them? Through digital marketing you can create your online presence and can convert your potential customers into buyers. 

3. Customer engagement

Well this question must have crossed your mind that the toughest part for a business is how to get a customer? But that’s where you’re wrong, making someone a loyal customer is the end game! What can we possibly do to make someone come back to us & stay? The answer is by engaging with customers and interacting with them knowing what their likes and dislikes are. Creating a customer and consumer relationship by mediums like social media, websites. Example, when a customer visits your website he can tell us his thoughts related to the product by writing a review or filling a form.

4. Audience segments 

We can’t target a vast audience without knowing their particular interest. Therefore, we split the audience into specific groups or segments according to their area of interest, age, gender and demographics. Audience segmentation not just saves our time but also saves our investment by targeting the right audience. Example, if we want to promote a cosmetic product with audience segmentation we will be able to target our desired audience which are specifically women.

5. Location Targeting

Location targeting is a method in which we can choose a specific area/location where we want to advertise our product. Like let’s suppose I want to run an ad for a students hostel I’ll specifically target an area where universities or colleges are nearby. 

6. Measurement and Tracking 

When we are designing a marketing strategy we sometimes get a vast amount of information which is easily accessible but most of it is irrelevant to our work. Hence, we need to assess and know what to measure for our marketing strategy. 

What sort of channels should we use? How can we increase our sales and customers?

For instance, if I’m running a certain advertising campaign on a website I can measure that it’s working up to the mark. By easily tracking the number of visitors on my site or how much time they are spending on it. 

7. Control over the budget 

Before running an advertisement or any sort of campaign we need to be well aware of the fact that how much budget are we allocating for it? For that we need to know our marketing objectives, assess our past results. Like we should know what sort of channel we should use. Which one’s are working out better for us which aren’t. The advertiser can increase or decrease the budget of a campaign according to its performance. 

Types

Search Engine Advertising

Search engine advertising is basically a part of marketing in which it includes ads like pay per click. These ads are often displayed on the search engine when you search for a certain product. The number of similar advertisements related to your product which you see on search engines are because of the keywords being used like on Google and Bing.

Example, when you’re trying to find a hotel on your browser and you see an advertisement of any cafe in the form of a banner below or above the search bar, that’s because of the unique keywords.

The good thing about investing in this investment is that not only it grabs the attention of the people, but it’s easy to perform and easily measurable. It also works as a vital tool for brand awareness. 

Social Media Advertising

Paid advertising done on social media platforms like facebook, instagram, linkedIn to promote any product, brand or service is known as social media advertising. 

Display Ads

First step of starting a business or promoting a service is to first of all develop a marketing presence & how’s that possible? By designing a brand image that can be pulled off with display advertisements. Display are typically graphical presentations which can be in sort of banner ads, videos, search engine ads. 

Display ads encourage it’s user to come and click on certain ads. The more the compelling display ad is the more it will attract traffic and visitors to your websites, while turning those  potential customers into buyers.  

Native Advertising

So you go on your browser and search for a particular topic of your interest. Let’s suppose an essay. We open a page and we are fully focused and “out of the blues” there comes an annoying and irrelevant advertisement or segment which is totally unwanted. Which automatically makes the user either exit that site or avoid going back to that page.  

Now that’s where native advertising comes into play. These ads are displayed according to the user search topic and use of keywords. While giving them that same feel and functionality, appearance of the media format they are displayed in. Rather than pop up and banner ads native ads consist of recommendation posts or appear in social media feeds. 

Video Ads

Video ads are a form of display advertisement which can be used to promote a campaign, product service or brand. It’s a proven fact that it’s one of the most successful forms of advertising. Why? The reason is that it’s human nature if we see any graphical representation which can be in the form of moving images and telling a story. It will leave a mark in our minds which will cause us to recall those events. 

Example

If we hear the sound of an ice cream commercial brand which has the same jingle sound or graphics from the past it will definitely send that adult into a state of nostalgia. 

OTT Ads

Before getting started with what OTT ads are, it’s important to know what it is! Since the audience is moving forward from time to time from traditional mediums like television to digital mediums smartphones. People aren’t interested in paying cable bills and they can easily access anything on the internet. Therefore, online streaming apps come into play which are easy to access and available. Connected tv and OTT over the top are one of the new methods of broadcasting toll. Example:

Twitch, Amazon Streaming 

OTT is online streaming which also includes subscription based services in which the user does not need a cable access or tv. It can be easily accessed with just a smartphone and internet access. 

While speaking of OTT advertisements they are often un skippable ads which sometimes overlay the video while you’re watching. But at the same time helps brands to make a brand image and recognition in front of newer audiences and viewers who might end up watching the whole advertisement if it’s up to their interest. It’s a very interactive way of advertisement which even engages the viewer to take action. Like tapping or swiping to get more details related to advertised products or services.  

Podcast Ads

Podcast advertising refers to audio related advertising, a sort of new advertising medium compared to display advertising. In such advertising audio ads are available on online radio, music streamed apps or podcast channels. Usually in podcast advertising the host or influencer will shout out your brand or product while in between or the beginning of the live session.

These ads can be related to using our coupon or promo code to avail discounts or offers.  

Paid Digital Marketing Payment Models

The ads which we see on search engines, websites or  while scrolling through social media posts mentioning paid promotion or sponsored ads are an example of such advertising. 

Cost per click 

Also known as (CPC) cost-per-click is an advertising model used in digital marketing to pull traffic to a page or website. In CPC an advertiser pays to the publisher every time that an ad  is clicked. A popular form of such a model is Search engine advertisement. 

Example: 

Google Ads, Microsoft ads 

Impression Based

Well you must have heard that “First impression is your last impression” but here in the digital marketing world it’s a little opposite. In this advertisement model each and every impression is vital for us. It’s a great opportunity to convert potential customers into your buyers. The number of impressions are typically the number of times an individual visits our website or page. The cost per impression (CPI)  can be calculated on the basis of total cost impression based ads & the number of ad impressions. While (CPM) that is also known as cost per mille means that an ad is shown 1000 times. 

Conclusion

At the end we can say that for someone who’s planning on starting a startup of their business and doesn’t know where and which platform to start with? For such people or brands, paid digital marketing is the best place and medium to start with. Not only will it create your brand image and recognition among the people. So It’s suggested that you go for a paid advertising expert who has full knowledge related to paid marketing or go for a digital marketing agency. It is a very cost effective medium compared to investing in traditional mediums like television commercials or billboards. You can easily track the viewers visiting your site or check out the campaign being run. With accordance to their performance you can judge how it’s going and manage your budget as well.