Paid Ads - A Brief Overview

How do I use paid ads?

The first step into using paid ads is to develop an online presence in some way. Effectively, as long as you have a viable product or service, quality way for customers to reach you, metric measurement, and a way to close the leads, paid ads can help you get business or add to current business volume.

Step 1 – Having a Viable Product or Service

A good product is one that effectively addresses a specific need or solves a problem for its target audience. It demonstrates quality through its design, functionality, and features.

Positive customer feedback, reviews, and testimonials are indicators of a good product (which can be gathered via paid ads if you don’t have any). It stands out in the market due to its unique value proposition, setting it apart from competitors.

You may already know that you have a good product, that’s market tested, with sufficient branding, and that makes paid ads a little bit easier.

With a viable product or service, it becomes easier to determine the direction of paid advertisements.

Step 2 – Funnel Setup and Metrics

How are you approaching your customer relationship in your business?

Who is your ideal customer?

Sometimes a new or existing business owner does not know the answer to these fundamental questions regarding customer base. Thankfully, with paid advertisements, you can get measurable, quantitative data to determine your ideal customer in a created customer relationship pathway that you.

Choose an advertising goal that is right for you. Do you want to increase traffic to your website or blog? Do you want more leads (usually this is the case)? Or are you raising awareness for a specific cause? This information will allow you to determine campaign objectives in the paid advertising space.

That being stated, you need a landing page. At least one, but preferable more to split-test against the market. Somewhere a customer feels comfortable, and is in a position to buy.

Landing Pages

Landing pages do not need to be in the form of an entire built-out website, as there are paid services to create hosted landing pages. If you have a website, and other forms of credibility, that is useful but not the most important factor in lead generation through paid ads.

Landing pages can be implemented to send the customer to a form, auto-appointment scheduler, web page, email, or phone number that you choose to track. In terms of metrics, online forms and appointment schedulers are the easiest to track and don’t require VOIP infrastructure.

After landing pages, you are going to need a series of what we like to call creatives. These are videos, images, and documents that potential customers see when they see your paid ads.

Creatives

Some paid ad types need only one type of creative, and without knowing the industry or having customer specified data, it is actually impossible to determine what people want to see. Sure you can use basic principles of design, but outside of that, you will not know until you have market tested data from running metric bound advertisements.

Now that you have a decent landing page and number of creatives, you can start running your paid ads. It is recommended to choose the platform most likely to have customers that buy in your industry. For example, running an ad on TikTok for funeral homes will most likely be a waste of money. Choose a platform for your ads.

We recommend Google or Meta ads. These are the most broad reaching with the least limitations to data interference like TikToks for funeral homes. Although it is possible to get leads, your target market will be a bit different.

Analytics Setups

Depending on the funnel you are creating, your analytics may be different. For example, Google Analytics is different than Facebook Analytics (Meta Analytics). Refer to the developer documentation on the respective site to understand how each work with implementation.

Step 3 – Convert and Optimize

Once you have run ads for a designated budget or time, review your analytics data and determine a path best suited for your campaign.

For example, if you are looking to generate leads, make sure you are optimizing your ads for the conversion rate. Generally, if a particular creative is performing well, you should duplicate it into different segmented markets. If a creative is working but no one is getting past the landing page to convert (high clicks and low conversion rate), you may want to test other landing pages or segments. Increasing spend on performing ads is useful in knowing if there will be consistency at scale.

Most times, you will need to have new creatives working simultaneously with converting ones. The ratio of which is industry dependent, as well as risk dependent. For example, in the roofing industry, the conversion rate can be high if the quality of the funnel is good, and testing new creatives is worthwhile at a ratio of 1:10 or so.

Usually, the longer you take data on the ads, the more likely you will understand exactly what that ratio should be for your industry or area.

Conclusion

In an age of ad saturation, standing out demands a strategic approach that navigates the evolving tastes of consumers. By embarking on these three steps — Having a Viable Product, Funnel Setup, and Optimization — you not only create converting paid ads but also forge a connection with your audience, driving conversions that echo long after the click.