Small businesses are the backbone of the US economy, contributing about 44% of the country’s economic activity.

The Small Business Guide to Paid Marketing

If you’re a small business owner, you most certainly don’t want your business to remain small forever. That’s why you need to develop effective strategies to grow your business and take it to the next level.

Proper marketing is imperative to the success of any business, large or small. Businesses that employ the right marketing strategies always have the edge over their competition.

However, for small businesses and startups, marketing, especially paid marketing, is a tough nut to crack.

If your business isn’t ranking organically, you might need to utilize Google or Facebook Ads.

These are paid advertising platforms where businesses display their ads on websites or SERPs and pay each time a user clicks on the ads. That way, you can reach your target audience and see actual returns from your marketing endeavors.

If you have no clue how to go about the entire affair, keep reading as we highlight everything you need to know about paid marketing.

What Is Paid Marketing?

Paid marketing or online advertising is any digital marketing strategy that clamps down potential customers by looking at their interests, intent, and previous interactions with the brand.

Paid marketing utilizes one to more digital channels to achieve its objective. The two major paid marketing channels are Google Ads and Facebook Ads.

Other forms of paid marketing include sponsored content, hiring social media influencers, and guest blogs, to name a few. Paid marketing has proved an immensely effective marketing strategy for small businesses across the country.

Google Ads is the most prominent paid marketing channel, making it ideal for your small business marketing strategy.

Types of Google Ad formats

There are several Google Ad formats you can opt for.  Ensure you pick one that resonates with your target audience for the greatest effect. Here are the types of Ad formats.

Text ads: they include the website’s title and a brief description. They also have extensions where users can click.

Video ads: Video ads can exist as standalone ads or as part of a video in a video streaming service. A great example is the video ads you see on YouTube.

Image ads: Show images instead of plain text to advertise your brand. Clicking on the image redirects the user to your website. They can appear on web pages or other areas in the display network.

Responsive display ads: Responsive display ads are ads that run based on the information you gave Google. Google creates these ads based on several factors to appeal to your target audience.

App promotional ads: These types of ads are solely aimed at boosting app downloads. Most businesses don’t need these types of ads unless they have their own apps.

Product shopping ads: These ads showcase a product and give details about the price and so on. You’ll need a Google Merchant Center account so you can submit information about your product.

These are a few of the many types of paid ads run by Google Ads. Next, we’ll look at how to create your Google ad.

How to Create Your Google Ad

Creating your Google ad is an elaborate process that requires some degree of thought and diligence for the best results. Here’s how you create your Google Ad.

Step 1: Define Your Goals

The first step to creating your Google ad is to clearly define your goals. Maybe you’re trying to increase awareness, generate web traffic, or increase conversions. Whatever your goal is, make sure you clearly define it before you proceed.

Step 2: Set up the Campaign

Once you have a clear goal, the next step is to set up the campaign. You’ll use an ad group that contains relevant keywords for your ad campaign. You should set up at least two separate ad campaigns, so Google goes with the one that performs better.

Step 3: Create Headlines and Descriptions

Google allows you to create up to three headlines and two descriptions for your ads. These headlines and descriptions will appear on the search engine results page link. If you include a display path, it can help improve your search performance because it gives users more context.

You can also add site extensions. These are additional links to your website that users can click on. With step 3 done and dusted, all you need to do now is wait for Google’s approval.

Important Google Ads Metrics to Keep Watch Off

Getting approval from Google is just part of the process.  Although Google will publish your ad, you still have a lot of work to do. For instance, you need to keep track of your ad campaign by looking at crucial metrics, which include:

Impressions: This is the number of times your ad appears on a search engine results page

Clicks: How many times users click on your ads over a given period

Conversions: How many times the clicks have led users to take action on your product or service

Cost: the amount of cash you spend on an advertising campaign

Click-through rate: This is the total number of clicks divided by impressions.

Quality score: This is the most important metric for your ad campaign. It gauges your keywords’ performances with respect to their landing pages and expected clickthrough rate.

There are many other metrics you should consider to gauge the effectiveness of your campaign, but for now, the above should suffice.  Don’t forget to optimize your Google ads to receive the conversions you desire.

Remember, you can always get professional help for your paid marketing or PPC campaigns. You can get more information about the same online.

Refine Your Paid Marketing Strategy

Creating an effective paid marketing strategy isn’t rocket science, and any business can do it. The information above should put you up to speed with the basics of paid search marketing.

The ball is now in your court to develop a concrete paid marketing strategy for maximum conversions.

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