PPC v. Paid Social Media Advertising
Paid digital advertising is an excellent way to increase your brand’s reach to potential customers. The two major forms of digital advertising are pay per click (PPC) advertising and paid social media advertising. Both allow you to have greater impressions on search pages and social media feeds. Utilizing these strategies will increase your brand awareness and ability to reach potential customers who may not find you otherwise.
PPC Advertising
In PPC advertising, you pay for the amount of clicks your advertisement receives. This is beneficial because you are only paying when customers click through to your landing page, essentially buying page visits. The way PPC ads are purchased and targeted is through bids on specific ad space. Google then displays the top ads based on the bid amount and best quality advertisement. Other major advertising platforms for PPC advertising are Microsoft and Amazon. PPC advertisements can take the form of either a text, display, or shopping advertisement.
Ad Forms
A text ad affects where your page shows up on a specific search engine. These are beneficial because they boost the placement of your website on Google, allowing potential customers to see your site as an initial option. The average user won’t go past the first five listings, so it is important to show up higher in order to get page visits. The bids for these ads are based off of relevant keywords in which potential advertisers bid.
When you create a display ad, it appears on a relevant website. This typically includes an image and text that attract viewers to click through to the landing page. Display ads can be targeted by importing to google specific topics and interests to target. They can also be targeted manually by displaying your advertisements on specific websites likely to reach your target audience. Either way, you are bidding on a specific placement through the platform.
If you’re looking to promote your product around the web, a shopping ad is the way to go. They are more visual than text ads and provide more information than display ads. Shopping ads show users a photo of your product, a title, price, and store name. These are perfect for merchants looking to promote sales of certain products.
Paid Social Media Advertisements
Paid social media allows you to show up on specific social media platforms and appear on the feed of potential customers. Paid ads are available on most social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and TikTok. The most common being Facebook and Instagram.
Advertising on Facebook takes the form of either a carousel advertisement or dynamic product advertisement (DPA). For both of these ads, you will set the amount you’re willing to pay for either impressions or page visits. Facebook then evenly displays your ad overtime until your budget is reached. A carousel ad allows you to show up to 10 images or videos within one ad. These are a good option for highlighting specific details of a product, or explaining a process. When creating a carousel ad you will select an audience and budget. DPA is used when you have a large amount of products, they allow you to promote a group of products without individually creating each advertisement.
DPA’s also do the re-marketing for you, meaning they will retarget users who have expressed interest in your brands from either a website, app, or facebook page visits. Facebook allows you to broadly retarget meaning they will show your ads to users who have never interacted with the brand. Facebook also automatically promotes the most relevant ads to the specific user.
Instagram is another common social media advertising platform because of its quantity of active viewers. Instagram allows you to promote a brand or product using a single image, video, carousal, story, explore, IGTV, or shopping ads. You can specify the type of ad or choose for Instagram to show your ad wherever they determine fit. Similar to Facebook, users will select an audience, budget, and objective. Instagram then displays ads to users within your audience who have shown similar interest.
Paid digital advertising is essential to any marketing strategy. Between PPC and paid social media advertising you can reach more potential customers and increase your brand recognition. Both allow you to appear in front of an audience that otherwise would not have been aware of your brand. Depending on your product and advertising goal, each can provide their own unique benefits.