The article covers lots of information around the paid marketing and would act as the guide to one who is looking for complete information around the paid marketing,

Here goes the content list:

• Definition of paid marketing
• Types of paid marketing channels
• Why paid marketing
• When to do the paid marketing
• Benefits of paid marketing tools
• Paid marketing strategy example

Definition of Paid Marketing

The inorganic activities performed on the paid marketing channels in order to see a quick progress happening on leads, sales, traffic to the website or to achieve any other objective as intended by the business owner for the targeted regions, targeted demographics, targeted content, targeted placements or on websites and more.

Or 

Buying the slots on the popular paid marketing platforms by being part of the auction or by just signing up and paying the minimal fee as decided by the paid marketing platform in order to achieve the objectives of creating awareness, driving traffic, leads and sales to the business in quick span of time or on a immediate basis is known as paid marketing.

Types of Paid Marketing channels

There are a numerous number of paid marketing platforms and in this article, only the popular one will be discussed, as those are the one commonly/most used by digital marketers.

Paid Marketing platforms and Activities:

• Google Ad’s/Search engine marketing
• Social Media Marketing
  • Facebook & Instagram paid marketing
  • LinkedIn Marketing
  • Twitter Marketing
  • Quora Marketing
• Display Marketing
• Remarketing

Google Ad’s/Bings Ad’s/ Search engine marketing

To Bring the website on top of Google/Bing SERP for the terms or keywords business owners prefer to show up the website on Google/Bing ads or search engine marketing is done, it is also called as PPC (Pay per Click). For every click by the user, the business owner or the marketing campaign managers have to pay certain CPC (Cost per click) as set by Google based on the auction.

Social Media Facebook & Instagram paid marketing

Social media paid marketing allows a business owner to serve their content to their target audiences using the setting or options available on the marketing platform. Social media platforms allow the business owner to pick their target audience by their location, education, demographic, designation, interests, job designations, browsing history, their status, and many more.

Facebook paid marketing is very less expensive compared to LinkedIn ads, google and bing search marketing, and Twitter ads and hence many business owners who cannot afford to search marketing prefer Facebook marketing.

Meanwhile, Facebook marketing may not be the best channel for all the businesses for some industries it works and for some it doesn’t, E.g: For e-commerce especially related to household or daily use products Facebook works really well.

Quora, Pinterest and many other social media platforms allow you to do a paid marketing using their tools.

Display Marketing

Displaying the banner or text with the information of your products/business across portals/websites those are part of ad network either by participating the auction or purchasing the slot on the fixed price model is known as display marketing.

Some of the ad networks are as follows,

• Google ad network
• Adroll
• Crieteo
• And many more.

Display marketing allows serving text, image, Gif and video ads to their users and this channel is very much suitable for branding and intruding the products to the market. `

Note: Youtube channel is part of Google ad network and will be managed through Google AdWords.

Remarketing:

Remarketing allows you to retarget your website visitors based on the cookie information and this channel is the most suitable and preferred if the users have to follow up.

Google ad network, Crieteo, Adroll, FaceBook, and many more platforms allow you to do remarketing.

Remarketing is very expensive and will have good conversion rates at very low CPCs and low cost per conversions.

Note: paid marketing is not restricted only to these platforms, there are few tens and hundreds of paid marketing platforms. In this article we have just covered some most commonly used, popular and reliable paid marketing platforms.

Why Paid Marketing

Organic marketing takes lots of time to see results as content development, website optimization, building the audience base everything takes time and hence results cannot be seen immediately.

When To Do Paid Marketing

In case if the results have to be seen immediately one should start generating leads from day one, the paid campaigns have to be started and in parallel the organic implementations can be initiated and will be getting strong over organic channels & start contributing then the paid marketing can be stopped or continued based on the marketing competition, the aggressiveness in growth and more.

Benefits of Paid Marketing

• Paid marketing helps businesses to survive in the initial phases when businesses have no other source of leads
• Paid marketing channels are less expensive compared to the investment on the offline marketing
• Paid marketing drives lots of quality traffic especially in search marketing
• Paid marketing allows you to target any type of profile, country, interest and more as per the requirement, this feasibility or options allows quick expansions of the business
• Paid marketing gives a quick insight into the market especially when business is still in the learning stage and trying to understand the markets.

Paid Marketing Strategy Example:

• Note: This is just an example considering some random business type. Usually, the plan can be very detailed when there is lots of information provided by the business owners, historical data, some details about the mindsets of their target audiences by their demographics, location and more. Based on the location the marketing platforms outcome to change for E.G in Europe instead of linkedin people use Xing.When compared to other parts of the globe bing is more used In USA.China and Russia use Baidu and Yandex respectively and many more such cases to speak.

  The paid marketing strategies are very simple with the understanding of the following,

  • The average CPC’s
  • The average cost per million impressions
  • The competitors
  • The affordable cost per acquisition
  • The industry standard conversion rates
  • The minimum number of leads/sales expected, without which building a paid marketing strategy would be of no use and may put in the loss.

  The ROI, return on the investment measures are very crucial in paid marketing.

  Below is a small such understanding effort for paid search marketing,

  Here goes the strategy for the company ABC, which is into the training and placement.

• Let’s understand the potential,

  More than half a million searches on a monthly basis for the categories that “Company ABC” deals, the search potential is a Google search data it implies those many number of people are searching on Google on a monthly basis and hence being available on Google is very important.

Paid Marketing:

In order to see the progress happening from day 1 the paid marketing campaigns are very effective and they will be the actual source of lead generation until the organic channels pick up for every business.

The work plan for the paid marketing will be as follows:

Google Ads/ Search Marketing:

Bring the website on top of Google for the terms or keywords business owners prefer to show up the website. For every click by the user, the business owner or the marketing campaign managers have to pay certain CPC (Cost per click) as set by Google based on the auction.

The CPC (Cost per click) is between Rs. 8- 48 and the average of it are Rs. 28

So to get 100 visitors to the website it cost 2800, of these let’s say 10 respond positively so the cost incurred in generating one lead is Rs. 280.

If the number of leads needed is 100, the budget for the same will be 2800.

Note: These are estimates and actuals may vary and the actual number will be clear once the marketing campaigns are initiated and the same will be communicated.

FaceBook Marketing:

In Facebook marketing we can target the users as per the insights from the business owners and ads can be served only to them.

Ad’s will be promoted to users based on their education, age, gender, a region they stay, their interests and more.

The promoted ads to the targeted audiences will drive them to the websites, as educating these audiences is important so that they show interest and call our number or fill the lead forms.

This channel will be very effective and can attract a large group of audiences at very small budgets.

The cost per click to the website may cost between Rs. 1- 5.

For small businesses, this can be started at the 5K-10K budget and ideally this may be the lest expensive one.

YouTube Video Ad’s:

The ad’s can be decided to show only on the specific type of content lets say video about what’s after degree, our text ads or video ads can be served on this video an can drive the interested audiences to the website.

The CPC’s may cost between Rs 2- Rs 6 per click to the website, or can be paid only for impressions, lets say 1000 people sees an ad and the price to be paid for that is Rs.100.

Display Ads:

Banners of our business with appropriate message or information will be showed on the websites where most of our target audiences spend. E.G our target audience are spending time on Job portals, local news portals and these banners can be served there including many more websites.

The CPC’s cost between Rs. 1- Rs. 5 per visit or can be paid for impressions, that is if 1000 users have seen the ad we may have to pay Rs. 100 to Rs.150 , which again may vary and have to be estimated in real time.

Can be started at the 5k-10K budget and this would be as good as Facebook, as the ads can be promoted on portals and content as per the interest E.g.: on Quicker, Naukri, IRCTC or any portal that’s on Google ad network.

LinkedIn Ads:

LinkedIn Ads will not work for our category of business, where as the same would work in case If a company is looking for skilled workers from we can target the procurement guys, HR’s, Business owners, Or any individual who is our target audience and is on LinkedIn as well.

This channel will not be touched until we have the necessity to reach out the people who are looking to hire our skilled workers, but then the organic activities will keep happening on LinkedIn

Paid Marketing Tools

There are hundreds of paid marketing tools with tons and useful data and mean while there are a significant number of tools which just bluff and make money. You can read more details in my article about the paid marketing tools.

Manjunath Chowdary

Digital Marketing Consultant