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Today, Pay-per-click advertising and its other various forms are increasingly becoming popular and efficient marketing tools for various enterprises all across the globe. But, if you are a new bee to paid advertising, it is necessary to understand certain disciplines that fall under the category of paid advertising. It is a challenging task to understand the differences and figure out which strategy will work for your enterprise.
Below is an entire blog dedicated to understanding the basics and various categories of PPC as well as paid advertising.
What is Paid Advertising?
Although “advertising” and “marketing” are used interchangeably, advertising is one of the components of marketing. They both have a similar objective to showcase a product or service to their customers. But advertising is a part of marketing and is closely related to social media and public relations.
PPC is generally an enterprise’s advertisements in the search results or ads displayed on other websites to gain more traffic to the advertiser’s website. Paid advertising targets online customers with different formats such as search ads or social ads based upon the interest of the consumers. You have a greater chance of getting more qualified leads and conversions as it enables you to target a specific audience group. These ads mostly revolve around a few keywords in a search engine or are displayed on similar service /product offering websites.
How Does PPC Work?
Instead of paying a standard fee for the ad, the enterprise pays per click. Hence, the enterprise pays each time someone clicks on the ad and visits their website. Pay-per-click advertising can be an effective strategy because it can rapidly and easily find potential new customers who may be interested in the products/services of your company. As PPC ads help buyers directly visit your website, they simply help you connect with new customers without trying to generate traffic organically.
Hence, PPC management, execution, and optimization can largely differ depending upon the type of ads you are choosing.
What Are Search Ads?
Due to the popularity of Google, Yahoo, and Bing, search ads have become one of the most common forms of paid advertising. Search ads are displayed along with the search results and they are directly linked with certain keywords that are entered in the search engine. This is a smart form of advertising because it directly displays your ad to the audience who is already interested in your product, service, or even industry.
This approach enables you to get powerful, qualified leads for new customers. And as such customers are already searching for a related item, there are more chances that you can convert more leads into actual sales. Search ads are very simple and attractive with straightforward text to target and engage most of the audience.
However, too much simplicity can be a drawback due to the lack of images and visuals in the ad. If your ad doesn’t stand out from the others, it may not engage new customers. Along with this, search ads are most expensive due to a lot of competition.
Prices of search ads vary from ad to ad and clicks as well. Because you will be paying for each click, if you aren’t able to convert the majority of the click leads into sales, it can prove to be quite expensive for your enterprise. Also, as the ads are linked with certain phrases or keywords, displaying your message to a huge audience is a complex task.
What are Display Ads?
Display ads are also a popular form of paid advertising used by enterprises. These ads are displayed at the top, in the middle, or even side of the web content on almost every website. Display ads are greatly known for their effectiveness – as they reach more than 90% of the people surfing the internet.
High visibility gives display ads a wide reach to the audience to gain new traffic to the targetted website. As these ads are very common, they are less expensive and face less competition as compared to search ads. Display ads are even more dynamic than search ads – enabling you to blend images and text while creating a highly engaging ad for the audience.
Though the wide presence of display ads allows a lot of exposure, their prevalence can prove to be a disadvantage. As they overburden people’s screens for a long time, people may not notice them or simply ignore them. This may result in lesser clicks on the ad
What are Social Ads?
One of the fastest-growing forms of paid advertising is social ads. This is due to the popularity of various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn. These social media sites are programmed to target a large set of audiences based upon their interests, hobbies, professions, likings, network, as well as, other factors. Hence, social ads efficiently display your message to your potential audience rapidly.
Social ads are easy-to-use enabling any size enterprise or business to scale in the market. They have a high click rate and reach the target audience while allowing any enterprise to showcase their brand through an engaging ad.
As social media is a very popular platform, it is an effective marketing tool to drive more customers and ultimately more sales. Many hesitate to use social media marketing because of different platforms and approaches towards content. Also, social media advertising can be more time-consuming to create. It is vital to stay up-to-date with the latest content being posted as social media is bombarded with different keywords and trending topics.
The Comparison
Display Vs. Search Ads
Display ads Vs. Search ads – the better can be simply decided based upon your business objectives. The main difference between search ads and display ads is their intent. The display ad creates demand. On the other hand, search ads are simply an answer to the demand.
Search network ads prove to be the best for intent-based searches i.e. the user has searched something and needs a solution or an answer for the problem as soon as possible. Intent-based search queries are more likely to get clicks. Hence, as an advertiser, you need to simply identify what your buyers and potential audience are searching for. If your want to drive great sales and accelerate your ROI, go for search ads.
On the other hand, if your want to build awareness, display ads work the best and they can be easily bought on various models like PPC and CPM. This type of ad usually appears when a user is browsing the internet. Here, the users may not be actively searching for the product or services, but they might be interested in them. Hence, as an advertiser, it’s your job to show them the need for that product/service. Thus, you aren’t generating immediate sales, but at the same time, you are offering valuable content to build awareness.
Search VS Social Advertising
Search as well as social advertising are both forms of paid advertising but they render different advantages. Hence, it is vital to understand which one is better for your niche industry. As mentioned above, traditional search ads are the best for targeting the audience who know what they want and are already searching for it.
On the other hand, social media advertising is increasingly becoming popular in paid marketing. Social media marketing enables you to connect with your existing customers as well as your potential audience which ultimately drives more leads, sales, and eventually more revenue.
Just like display ads, social media advertisements are most suited for passive buyers. But this is worth a paid effort because it enables you to interact with the users and enhance your click-rates through content. This high interaction from the potential audience and existing customers on the actual social media platform like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram makes paid marketing strategy even more powerful. For instance, Facebook has 2+ million active users which makes it very clear that it is a growing platform to scale up your business.
Begin Your Paid Advertising Campaign Today
A well-planned, targeted, and strategic paid advertising campaign is an effective part of your marketing strategy. But, it can also be a complex task due to the lack of proper knowledge and experience. In addition, you also need to make sure that the money you spend helps you attract actual audience i.e. customers and not bots.
When implemented properly, all of the above-paid marketing can help you drive more leads but it’s not necessary that everything works for your business. It depends from business to business. Hence, you cannot use a cookie-cutter method in paid marketing. What works for one company may or may not work for another one.
What you need is a perfect partner like Webential which has an entire team of marketing specialists who can guide you throughout the process and help you boost your business revenue. It’s time to get started with your paid advertising campaign today.
