Paid Advertising: How Small Businesses Can Benefit

Today’s market sees many businesses face the difficulties of overly saturated industries and large rates of competition – it is more important than ever for small businesses to have a strong online presence. Paid advertising can achieve an abundance of benefits including reaching new customers and growing your business.

Here is how paid advertising can help grow your small business and create successful campaigns that will help you expand your audience…

The Benefits of Paid Advertising for Small Businesses

Whether it’s Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing or any other paid search marketing technique, these strategies have been perfected by search engines to promote your services or products to a wider audience. Paid search marketing is one of the most measurable forms of online advertising, and can be a lot more cost-effective than ‘traditional’ styles of marketing such as leaflet drops, billboards and others.

Generally speaking, paid search being very measurable and mostly cost-effective means that ROI can be clearly seen, managed and adjusted – something that organic marketing may not be able to do. Paid search is a great way of getting in front of a wider audience when people are searching for products related to what your business offers, they can be targeted specifically and usually reflect great results for businesses, no matter the size.

Choosing the Right Type of Advertising for Your Business

When evaluating which paid ad strategy may be best for you and your business, there are multiple factors to think about. Many business owners rely too heavily on organic campaigns, and although organic marketing can be extremely effective on its own, it is best when combined with paid ads.

If you’re a retail or e-commerce business, take a look at Google Shopping Ads to showcase your products at the forefront of SERPs.

If you’re a business that benefits from increased social media traffic, invest in social campaigns and choose which channels (Facebook/Instagram/Twitter) best suit your target audience and its demographic.

Creating a Successful Paid Advertising Campaign

With ever-changing competition rates, Google Ads can get expensive – spending thousands on advertisement ever month may not be for all small businesses, so here are some key tips when it comes to working on a small business budget…

• Use various targeting methods – you can alter who your ads are available to constantly, meaning if you only want women in Yorkshire to see the ad, you can. Setting different targeting parameters including demographic differences, age groups, gender and more means that you can focus your budget more effectively.
• Bid on keywords with high intent – placing ads on keyword searches that have commercial intent will be more worthwhile and budget-friendly than using generic terms. For example, as a business for sale, you will find more value in people searching for ‘restaurant for sale in Yorkshire’ than ‘business for sale’.
• Improving quality scores – your quality score is assigned to all keywords in your account and is ranked from 1-10, assessing how relevant your ads are to those searching for the keyword. The more relevant your ads are, the higher your ads will rank at a lower cost per click - simple!