PAID ADVERTISING

Paid advertising allows you to directly target your potential audience.  This possibility does cost money but provides a direct way to get your messaging out.  Before creating a campaign, it is important to set a goal for your advertising campaign.  The next step is to set a budget and way to track your conversion rate.  Finally, you can select a type of ad and a platform to run your ads.

For this video, I’ll be going over paid advertising for small business. The agenda for this video is first to discuss what is paid advertising. Next we’ll go over Google search. Then we’ll go over Google Display. Well then have a discussion about Facebook ads, or then discuss a few other platforms you can use for paid advertising. We’ll talk about that. And finally, we’ll finish up with two aspects of paid advertising their unique one is remarketing ads. The second is video ads.

What is Paid Advertising?

So let’s first go over what is paid advertising. Paid advertising allows you to pay for your placement of your marketing message in the form of an advertisement typically on a website, but it could also include things like video. It is a way you can do direct marketing to your customers. And this is predominantly one of the benefits of paid advertising. You can actually target these customers to do the direct marketing. Mini ad platforms have a number of different targeting methods you can actually use to try to get your marketing message to your intended audience. The last benefit of paid advertising is the ability to have a flexible budget. Unlike some traditional advertising methods where you have to pay up front before the advertising even occurs, you can increase and decrease turn on and turn off your paid advertising using multiple budgeting options.

One of the biggest benefits of paid advertising is you can actually be the first in a search results. So as you see on the sample over on the left side, a Google search for the word plumber brings up a number of different things. All those little green indicators of an ad those are actually the paid ads for this result. And they are ahead of the organic results which actually don’t even show up here because they’re so far down the page.

There are many different types of paid advertising, you may actually heard paid advertising called PPC or pay per click. That’s method by which you actually don’t have to pay unless somebody actually clicks on your ad. Another form is display ads. And those are represented by the sample on the screen there of the Disney plus ESPN who added the top then there’s another ad over on the right. These, again are called display ads because they typically are shown as displaying. The final one is actually sponsored posts, sponsored post predominantly happen inside of social media networks like Facebook and Twitter, where a post much like any part that might show up in the feeds are actually sponsored for placement.

Google Search

Search Intent

So let’s look at one of the first ad platforms which is Google search. First thing to be aware of within the Google search is actually more about the intent The search engine itself. So Google is actually really trying to intend to bring results that are the intent of what the person is querying or searching for. So they try to re present relevant answers to match that intent. They then rank those answers, as opposed to what they think will be most interested in the person doing it. And so the search intent actually applies both to the organic results, but also the paid results.

Auction

The Google Search system actually works on an auction based system. So the position of paid ads is based upon how an auction works. And again, these auctions happen in real time. So that the results can actually vary based on what each advertisers campaign settings are. So for, again, for an example we did before, which was for plumbers, when somebody actually does that search query in a real time auction is kicked off, and based on the settings of each of the people bidding for those keywords, the ads can come up in different orders and things like that, but it is important to know that you can’t just bid for the first position at the top there for Google search. Google is actually trying to also put relevancy and matching the searchers intent and interaction with your ad. So the idea of just paying the most to get the first position is actually not a correct statement.

Quality Score

I know the additional part of the Google search platform that comes up is what’s called quality score. Quality Score is actually based upon a number of factors, the ad quality itself, the keywords that the ad is targeting, and the landing page that after you click on the ad actually goes to this quality score is actually based upon from one to 10 additional factors that go in through our what is the actual click rate of that click through rate of that ad? Is the ad relevant to what’s being searched for, and finally, the actual experienced searcher has on the landing page.

Campaigns

Google search is actually made up of many different aspects at the top is the search campaign itself. then below that, they’ll be a series of ad groups, which are actually now where the actual ads keywords and bidding processes there, a campaign will have a budget. We’re also have location targeting, again, this is geographical, the language that you’re targeting and which ad networks you may or may not want your search ad to be on.

Keywords

One aspect of each Google Search campaign is the keywords these are the actual words or phrases that you want to show for your ad and or what the words or phrases that someone is typing into the Google search engine to get the results. There are a number of match types that you can use to do this. Basically, this just means the relative ness of how the search query that person is typing in actually matches the keywords that you are interested in placing your ads. So they go from most broad or shall we say Most wide to the most exact, well broad to exact Yes. So the first one is a broad match. This will give Google the opportunity to try to match your ad too many words that are similar to that one broad match modifier allows you to have a little more control. A phrase match is when you want to actually match a number of different words, but still have some flexibility and having similar ones. And finally, the exact match is the most precise where it’s exactly the keywords you want that have to be typed in the search thing. On a related note, there’s actually a another keyword match type, which is negative keywords. These are actually words you don’t want your ad to show for. And these are very helpful if you want to eliminate some things that may be similar, but actually don’t have anything to do with the ads you’re trying to target.

Ad text

The next part of Google Search campaign is the actual ad tasks, add text itself. Again, these are text based ads. So the first one is the funnel. URL when they click on the ad that you want them to go to, again, in the same case, typically it’s going to be a landing page, then you have the option for one or two headlines, a couple descriptions and what’s actually called a display path. Keep in mind, though, as you type all this information, and the ad must actually go through a Google approval process to make sure everything’s here. So certain ads may be rejected due to violations of the Google search guidelines.

Landing Page

The next component that’s part of a Google search campaign is landing page. Now, in this case, this is actually something that’s going to be on your own website. So but it’s the place that they go to after they click. Google is actually looking at these landing pages to determine a few different things related to the experience is the content on there useful is irrelevant of the information that they’re searching for, how’s the navigation on the website, and how many links are on that page? So again, it’s not just the ad and the keywords. It’s actually the landing page as part The entire campaign.

Google Display Network

Ad Formats

Next, let’s talk about the paid advertising platform. That’s the Google Display Network. This actually allows for ads to be placed on other websites by Google. So website, creators will actually add some code to their website that will actually allow Google to place an ad on there. There are a number of different types of ads. One is a responsive display ad. This you actually put in specific ad text, some images and a logo, and Google will automatically change the size to fit the different websites, views or pages that may be occurred. This is a new style. The traditional style is actually an image ad which has a specific dimension and can only be displayed on that. One of the downsides if you use one of the larger dimensions they may not actually be able to show on the more mobile friendly, responsive websites that are exist now that actually dynamically change based upon the resolution of the web browser.

Targeting

Google explain ads actually have some different targeting. So they’re not really based upon search intent because the Google search engine results are not present. So you actually target based on these four criteria, audiences demographics topic, and then sort of a separate one, which is you have the ability to expand out your targeting based upon Google’s machine learning and algorithms, looking for other places where your ad may be relevant.

Placement

You do have many options though. on placement. First option you actually has, you can pick the exact devices that you want to additionally This is going to be desktop or mobile. You can actually exclude based on content if you notice on the right you can determine based on if the website actually has a rating system, but you can also eliminate potentially things you may not want your brand to be shown on. There are Other types, which is again, you can just choose not to be around sensitive content or other content types. And ultimately, you can actually just exclude your ad from specific websites, apps or YouTube channels themselves.

Facebook Ads

Let’s now look at the Facebook ads platform.

Objectives

Facebook ads actually start off with the idea of objectives. Facebook breaks these down into three areas awareness, consideration and conversion. And then under there have multiple different types. These objectives actually control a lot about the options that are available for each ad. And they can break it down. As you see from the slides, the awareness one has a couple brand awareness reach consideration has it set. And then finally, conversion has some different ones that are actually available to.

Campaigns

So first start out of Google Ad camp Google Ad platform by creating a campaign. This allows you to pick the objectives what you just learned about your out two sets of spending limits. And a more recent new feature, which is the campaign budget optimization, which actually allows you to spread this budget over some of the next things will come up with your ad sets.

Ad Sets

The next thing you can actually set within your campaign now is ad set. So a campaign is the top, you can have multiple ad sets underneath it. Each ad set has the ability to set the budget schedule of time that you want to run the ad, the audience you’re targeting. Actual other targeting criteria is the placement on the different aspects within the Facebook network. Additionally, placement could be Instagram Facebook ads are really also Instagram ads. And finally the delivery options for each ad. So all of these are the things that Jackie set within what’s called an ad set. And you can again have multiple ad sets per campaign.

Ad Types

Finally, we get to the actual ad types and Facebook allows Multiple ad types from video images, collections, carousel slideshows, lead generation ads offers, there are multiple types here. Some of these types do relate to specific placement options that you can do within the ad set. So not all types are available for all placements. But again, you have multiple options for how you control your actual ad.

Other Platforms

Okay, let’s talk about a few different other ad platforms that can help with paid advertising. There are specific websites for example, Yelp, which is a review site that actually allows you to put ads there you’ll notice here on the sample, if you do it a plumber search there, you actually get a sponsor result. So again, those are basically ads that allow for higher placement within the search results from Yelp. Social media, even though Facebook is one of the major one, you can actually put ads on other social networks like Twitter, and tick tock and other LinkedIn other ones like that. If you’re in a specific home services industry websites like Angie’s List actually again also allow for ads to be placed there too.

Remarketing Ads

Now we’re going to talk about a specific type of paid advertising. It’s a little different and it’s called remarketing ads. remarketing ads are available in the Google Display platform and the Facebook ad platform. Basically remarketing ad does is will show an ad if certain conditions occur. In this case, if someone visits your website, special tracking cookies actually activated that note that ad platform where their Google or Facebook knows the person was on your website, and that will follow them as they go through other websites that are part of those networks and their Ad will actually be displayed there. So you may be on a completely unrelated website, but yet see an ad for a website you just went to. The benefit of this is the ability to know that they actually showed interest in your website. And by following up with additional marketing, this might actually help convert them to customer.

Video Ads

Another type of ad is actually a video ad. Just going to discuss options for YouTube and Facebook, because those are video platforms. So you actually have the ability to do a video ad this an ad that is a video. There are many different types of this you can have what’s called a pre roll, which means they’ll actually occur before the video starts. There’s something called an in stream video ad that’s where a video may show somewhere during the playback of the source video. Someone can be skippable but you can actually do non skippable too if you want to pay for that. When you’re on, say, for example, YouTube and watching some videos, there’ll be some recommended other videos that pop up. There’s an option there to purchase ads so that they’re part of that discovery process. And ultimately, you can just have standalone video ads to that might just show so if you look over here at the sample on YouTube, where we search for plumbers, you’ll actually see that at the top there are two ads. So let’s wrap up this paid advertising video with some conclusions. So there are a number of benefits of using paid advertising within your digital marketing plan. The first is placement, you can actually have your marketing message placed at specific places whether in a search result on other websites within video, but again, you’re paying for that placement.

Conclusions about Paid Advertising

One of the biggest benefits is to be first in the search engine results. Many people look up different items through search engines and that placement at the top does cause for more interaction with your marketing message. So this is one of the benefits of paid advertising. Another benefit is the ability to target many of the ad platforms have a number of different targeting mechanisms from interest to demographics to location and paid advertising allows for this targeting. The final benefit, unlike traditional advertising is you have the option of Flexible Budget both in the cost you want to pay the time you want to pay it and whether you want to start or stop that.