Paid Ads: 3 Ways to grow your business with a small budget

What are Paid ads? Paid ads are digital advertising models in which advertisers bid to participate in real-time auctions to show their ads in the slots of a particular platform or network.

Benefits of paid ads to small businesses

It would interest you to know that a number of small business owners unconsciously double as digital marketers. Wild right? Let’s break it down a bit. 

Digital in its lowest form is pretty much the use of computerized technology. Marketing on the other hand is publicizing your product or services to a particular set of people with the objective of sales. 

With that said, have you ever posted your wares and services on your WhatsApp status and urged your contacts to patronize? Have you made videos of your craft and uploaded them on Instagram or Facebook? If the answer to both or one of those questions is yes, then congratulations you’re a digital marketer!

Hold up, don’t get too excited. What you’re doing is great already. However, if you want to step up and achieve the vision you have for your business, then you can do a lot more.  Currently, the picture and video uploads are riling in customers, but to be honest, it’s a safe space. Are the uploads bringing in enough customers to satisfy that incredible dream of yours? If not, and I bet not, then keep reading. We are about to change that!

I don’t need to tell you that to grow a business you have to water it with funds. You already have the green thumb; all I can do is show you some neat tricks. With the pocket change, you can unlock more profitable dimensions of digital marketing. It works so well that your business will seem like a beautiful flower (package) sent to the doorstep of your love (eager consumers).

There’s no time to waste, your upgrade awaits, here are a few paid means to help sail the digital marketing seas.   

Paid ads in Facebook and paid ads on Instagram

The exciting thing about running paid ads campaign on these platforms is the fact that you can customize them based on your objective. Unlike running ads or trying to market to a broad audience, you can set your campaign to be viewed by your desired target audience, amazing right? 

Look at it this way, you work hard creating the best content to market your business, only to attract a few hundred views and less than one percent of them convert. Hmm, that’s not fair, not after all your hard work. The reason behind this low conversion is simple, you are not providing a solution to the people that need it. It’s just like selling meat to a vegan. 

A simple problem needs a simple solution. All you have to do is take those amazing and engaging contents and run them as paid ads on Instagram and Facebook, select a goal, customize your audience (interest, age, location, gender, etc.), and choose a budget in line with your desired reach. It’s so easy and unbelievable. 

Do you want to know the best part? Once you have an ad running on either of the platforms, you can set it to run on the other at the same time! It’s important to point out that even though you can easily reach your audience with these platforms, the conversion is significantly reliant on how marketable your content is, and the overall quality of your product or service. Once all of that is covered, then you are good to go.                                   

Paid ads on Youtube

Digital marketing is all about ensuring that you are talking to the right people, which is why targeting is so essential. YouTube allows you to target your audience through the Google search engine. They are literally offering your business up as an available solution to the consumers’ urgent needs. 

It doesn’t get any better than that. Trends rule the digital space. A noteworthy trend right now is audio, people are going crazy over podcasts. Why not take advantage and use the audio approach to reach out to your target audience, especially since you know they will appreciate it.

I’m not done, you are going to (Would)want to know this. You have the opportunity to measure how many users engaged with your ad. This is key because you get to know the exact audience to target, and in terms of engagement rate, you can know what you are doing right or wrong. It would be smart to test out an array of content angles and analyze which one makes the most impact. 

Out of all these, the amazing thing is how little it costs. YouTube ads work on a cost-per-view system, i.e., they charge you between 0.10 – 0.30 dollars for each view a day. If you’re worried that they might take more than required, then you can set a daily budget based on your intended views. 

Paid Ads Google

Over the years Google has secured its seat as the top solution provider. As far as we know there’s no question the search engine cannot answer, and there’s nothing it can’t find. That surety and confidence in google are what has people running over when they have questions and searches that need answers.

With that in mind, you have to admit that there’s no larger online platform to advertise on than google, it’s a sure viewing. We decided that your business needs to be seen, yes, WE, it’s a team effort. As a dedicated team member, I have to drag your attention toward google ads.

Google paid ads- Search ads are ads that appear on the search engine result page in response to a specific search. Google will place your site at the top of all other results. Let’s take Google as the crazy but accurate monkey from Lion King, and your business as little Simba elevated for all in the kingdom to see. That’s exciting!

How does it all happen? There are these amazing things called keywords, they should be framed! Keywords are frequently searched words or phrases regarding a particular topic. Ever wondered how google seemed to know the right results to pull up? It’s all thanks to keywords. When the search engine notices a significant frequency in a phrase or word, it tries to provide sites or articles that possess those keywords. It’s like a ‘match the items’ game, it connects the search with results that have the most similarity.

This system is great for all parties involved. What this means is you can attach keywords to your ad, and when searches containing the keywords or synonyms of the keywords come up your ad pops up. You don’t even need to crack your brain on possible keywords. There are a variety of tools that provide these keywords complete with frequency and relevance indications.

Google search ads run on a cost-per-click system, and the lead rate is over the chart. All you need to do is set up your ad with the necessary keywords, set your targets, and watch google work its magic. 

  At PDMA we are really interested in seeing your business grow and want to offer as much help through training you on paid ads. If you need a guide on how to make use of the outlined aspects of digital marketing you can explore our available online courses here. Looking for a more hands-on approach? Then you can register for our in-class training here. The digital space is relatively new, but with a little help from each other, we can get the best out of it, subscribe to our mailing list, and let’s keep this conversation going! Join our next class