How to Build the Best Paid Advertising Strategy For Your Business

As a business owner, it is your responsibility to figure out the best weapons for driving traffic to your website and increasing conversions. There are many tools and strategies to help you do just that, and a lot of them do not cost a penny. Organic digital marketing strategies, such as creating a blog post, posting on social networks, leveraging email marketing and optimizing your website for conversion, are all cost-effective strategies.So, why are so many marketers turning to paid advertising? This is because, when implemented well and appropriately paired with content marketing strategy, paid advertising can generate substantial ROI and help you reach your marketing goals.

Where should you start? Between search, social networks, display ads and content discovery, there is a slew of paid marketing options to choose from. For instance, what social platforms should you use? What is the recommended way to execute paid advertising so that it gets the most bang for your buck?

While you may have some idea of which advertising channels or strategies are best for your goals and target audience, you will not know for sure until you have the data to prove it. This is why experts recommend testing different channels to see which ones yield the best results for your business.

Let us walk through some of the options you can choose from when it comes to paid advertising for your brand.

Google AdWords

Google AdWords, in addition to search networks like Bing and Yahoo!, allows you to run pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns by bidding on relevant keywords for which you would like your ads to appear. These ads will appear either at the top or along the right side of the search results page.

Positive: This is an excellent way to target specific search keywords. If you have a strong keyword strategy and a flexible budget, you may be able to drive good traffic.

Negative: PPC ads tend to run up a high cost very quickly. They also present an essential trade-off: You may pay heavily to bid on competitive keywords, or you can bid a small amount on less competitive keywords that will result in a very little traffic.

Choose this option if: You have a decent-sized budget and you have done your research on the most relevant keyword opportunities for your medical practice. In addition, make sure you have the resources to take care of constant campaign optimization.

Social Media Advertising

Popular social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have fantastic advertising options. Across all of these networks, you have the opportunity to run promoted posts, boost organic posts or run campaigns that will attract more likes and followers.

Positive: Relevant and targeted ads will give you a good shot at attracting an engaged audience. You will also have plenty of options for audience targeting and content testing.

Negative: Depending on the nature of your business, your target audience may not lean heavily on specific social networks. You may need to spend some money on testing.

Choose this option if: Your target audience is highly engaged in social networks. Choose campaigns that align closely with your business goals and test a few campaigns on each social network to see which yields the best results at the lowest cost.

Display Advertising

Display ads are an efficient way to showcase your product or services across various websites. Affiliate websites will allow you to upload banner ads in multiple sizes, and these ads will become available to other website owners who can display them for a share of the profit. You have the option of either paying per impression or per click.

Positive: Display ads are a good fit for visual products. They can also prove to be useful for e-commerce businesses.

Negative: Because of low CTR, banner ads may not generate the desired results. This can make them expensive and an intrusive form of advertising.

Choose this option if: You have the budget to test a few options to create well-designed banner ads.

Content Discovery Platforms

If you are looking to improve traffic to your blog or website, content discovery platforms, such as Outbrain and Taboola, are the best options. These platforms can amplify your reach by placing links to your blog posts in the “Recommended Posts” section at the bottom of other websites’ blog posts.

Positive: Sharing content through content discovery platforms can get your brand great exposure on top websites, such as CNN and Inc.com. They can boost your traffic and lead generation goals.

Negative: You may need to test different pieces of content in order to find the ones that attract the most clicks.

Choose this option if: You are looking to expand your subscriber base and attract more traffic with an army of useful content pieces at your disposal.

While these are the best-paid advertising channels, there are more options within each one. “Testing” is the golden word, and we encourage you to keep testing new channels, ways, tools and platforms. Above all, do not forget to track key metrics closely throughout your campaign. By the end, you will be on your way to collecting informative data about your target audience.