The Importance of Paid Advertising for Small Business

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Many small businesses are wary of investing in paid advertising, either because it feels too expensive or they don’t know where to begin. But paid advertising can be a powerful tool for small businesses, especially when you have a limited marketing budget. Paid advertising is an effective way to reach the people who are most likely to become your customers, and it’s an affordable way to do so. If you are on a tight budget, there are many affordable ways to advertise your business at little cost. However, for most small businesses that aren’t connected to other businesses or individuals in the industry on a personal level, word of mouth isn’t going to be enough—you need something more measurable (and quicker) than that. Here we’ll explore different types of advertising and why you should consider investing in them if you want your business to grow fast.

What is Paid Advertising?

Paid advertising is any advertising that you pay for—that is, it’s an investment in your business that isn’t free. In this article, we’re going to discuss the different types of paid advertising you can use to promote your business. You may have heard the terms “paid social” (also called “social media advertising”) and “paid search” (also called “search engine marketing”), which are two common types of paid advertising. Paid social includes the paid promotion of posts on your social media platforms. With paid search, your ads show up at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs) when someone searches for terms related to your business. Paid search is also often referred to as “pay-per-click” (PPC) marketing, because you pay every time someone clicks on your ad.

Why Small Businesses Should Be Investing in Paid Ads

Like we mentioned, paid advertising is an effective way to reach the people who are most likely to become your customers—and there are a lot of them. For example, Facebook has 2 billion monthly active users. Google has 2 billion monthly active users. If you exclude people who are too young (or too old) and those who live outside your service area, you have a massive potential customer base at your fingertips. And because these paid ads are shown to people who are actively looking for what you offer, they are much more likely to click on your ad than people who see your organic posts on social media.

How to Measure Success With Paid Advertising

One of the most common arguments against investing in paid advertising is that it’s hard to measure how effective it is. While it’s true that there is no silver bullet for measuring the success of paid advertising, there are ways to keep track of how your ads are performing. When choosing what analytics and measurement tools to use, keep in mind that paid ads are separate from your organic social posts. You can track and analyze the performance of your ads in a different place than your organic posts. If you’re using a social media platform’s advertising option, you’ll be able to see how many people see your ad, how many click on it, and how many of those people end up visiting your website. For example, if 100,000 people see your ad and 6,000 click on it, you know that your click-through rate (CTR) is 6%. The other way to measure the success of your paid ads is to track how much revenue they are bringing in. You can do this by setting up conversion tracking on your website so that you can track how many people visit your site from each ad and what they do when they get there.

Facebook Ads

We’re starting with Facebook ads because they are one of the best-known forms of paid social advertising. If you’ve ever used Facebook, you’ve probably seen ads in your feed. Facebook allows you to target your ads based on a number of factors, including age, gender, location, and interests. You can also use custom audiences to retarget people who have already visited your website or engaged with your brand. One of the advantages of Facebook ads is that they are cheaper than Google AdWords ads. However, you can only choose from a few types of ads, and the design is more limited. Keep in mind that you’ll want to create a visually appealing ad that will capture your audience’s attention in the few seconds it has to work with. And, since you only have a few seconds to get your message across, you need to be direct with your language. Most businesses see a return on investment (ROI) from Facebook ads within one month.

Google AdWords and Google AdSense

We’ve talked a lot in this article about the benefits of Facebook ads, but Google AdWords is another form of paid search advertising that many businesses use. If you’ve ever seen an ad at the top of your Google search results, you’ve seen Google AdWords in action. You can choose to show your ads across Google’s network or only on certain websites that have signed on to host your ads (which is called “Google AdSense”). You can also choose to show your ads based on a user’s search terms. Like Facebook ads, Google AdWords can be expensive if you don’t know what you’re doing. However, it’s one of the most popular types of paid advertising, so if you can learn how to use it effectively, you can reach a lot of people with your ads.

Instagram Ads

If you’re in a creative industry, you might want to use Instagram ads to get your business in front of more people. With Instagram ads, you can choose to target people who follow specific Instagram accounts. You can also target people based on their demographic information, interests, and what they’ve searched for on Instagram. Instagram ads are similar to Facebook ads in that they are very visual. They are short, and they appear at the top of your followers’ feeds. You can choose between single-image or video ads. If you have a lot of followers on Instagram (which, again, you can use Instagram ads to get more followers), Instagram ads can be an effective way to get your brand in front of other people. And, like Facebook ads, they are cheaper than Google AdWords ads.

Twitter Ads

If you’re running a B2B business, you may want to use Twitter ads to get in front of more potential customers. Twitter ads work similarly to Facebook ads. You can target people based on their location, interests, device, and more, and you can show your ads based on specific search terms. Twitter ads are easy to set up and track, and they are relatively inexpensive compared to other types of paid advertising. Twitter also has a high rate of engagement, so you can expect to get more clicks on your ads. You can also use Twitter to promote your organic posts, which can help you expand your audience while saving on ad costs. Twitter has a large audience, and many of those people use it to keep up with the latest news in their industry.

Snapchat Ads

If you’re in a creative industry, you might want to try Snapchat ads. Snapchat ads are similar to Instagram ads in that you can target people who follow specific Snapchat accounts or people who use certain keywords. You can also target people based on their age, gender, and location. Snapchat is a visual platform, so you can create ads that relate to your brand’s visuals and tone. Snapchat ads are significantly cheaper than most other types of paid advertising. However, they are also less likely to convert visitors into customers, so you may want to focus on getting more brand awareness with Snapchat ads rather than converting clicks into sales.

Summing Up

Paid advertising is an important part of any small business’s marketing strategy, but many small businesses don’t realize how important it is and don’t take advantage of it. If you have a limited marketing budget, you need to make sure you’re investing enough in paid advertising to reach your target audience.

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