Paid Media or Digital Advertising is one of the most effective mediums for new age businesses to reach, engage and convert customers to mint revenue. Whether you are a small business such as a hotel, restaurant, doctor, lawyer or contractor; or a retail store/chain or an international B2B enterprise, digital advertising or paid media has to be an integral part of your growth strategy.

One of the major advantages of digital marketing is the ability to track users to precisely attribute & accurately measure the effectiveness of each digital channel thus, helping you maximize RoAS (Return on Ad Spend) for omni-channel paid campaigns.

There are different strategies you can follow based on your industry, budget or phase/goal of your business. Some easy examples to understand these differences are as below:

1. Social media and display ads help spread awareness at low cost while Google Search ads let you convert audience with highest intent
2. Lower budget strategies focus on local search and local social media (custom audiences) while higher budget campaigns tend to go broader on audience targeting to spread more awareness & then bring interested audiences into the funnel
3. Also, a restaurant needs to run local paid media strategy while a hotel needs to run campaigns on larger geographies and identify feeder cities. On the other hand, B2B enterprises need to go broad and target everyone searching for specific keywords or have specific intent under the blue sky.

Thus, there is NO one size fits all strategy but Mindless has created time-tested strategies for different consumer & B2B industries including local (restaurants, doctors, lawyers, contractors), hotels, & B2B enterprises.

Want to Maximize your Digital Marketing Performance?

Now let’s dive into how to create a Digital Ads strategy for your business and understand the various levers which need to move in sync to make your Paid Media strategy a ravishing success.

Pillars of Digital Ads or Paid Media

1. Budget – Your Budget is one of the major factors which defines your paid media strategy. The budget may also be impacted by the phase of your business (growing, stabilized or expanding) and the goals you define (Awareness, Engagement, Conversion or Retargeting)
2. Channels – Based on your budget, phase and goals of your business, you choose the channels. Refer to the FREE Paid Media Cheat Sheet available on Mindless.Digital on how to choose the best channels for your business.
3. Content (Keywords, Ads & Landing Pages) – Content strategy helps your align the intent of your audience with the reading material such as ads and landing pages, that help captivate the attention your audiences via ads (text, images and video), communicate the USPs of your products and services and help them navigate through the landing page to make a purchase or share their details as per your business requirement.
4. Audience – Define your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) or target audience based on their demographics, interests, intent or the content they like to read, the pages/topics they follow. Most modern platforms such as Google, Facebook & LinkedIn have the capability to create custom audiences using your current customer information (via cookie events or PI data upload). In case of display, you may need to define where you will find your audience (content they read on various publisher websites). Learn more about how to create various audiences on different paid media platforms using the FREE Paid Media Cheat Sheet on our website.
5. Analytics – Tracking your website traffic helps you understand audience behavior to improve CRO (conversion rate optimization). It allows you to attribute conversions to channels which helps you define your budget strategies and maximize returns. Finally, analytics also helps you understand your audience in detail (demographics, geographies, interests, devices, timings and more)

Do It Yourself Strategy for Each Paid Media Pillar

Use all that we have learnt today and you should be able to create an effective paid media program.

Paid Media is a science as well as an art. You have to use logic to understand the customers and use creativity to communicate your message. When everything comes together and these levers move in sync, Paid Media campaigns give the best results

The Upgrade to Your Digital Advertising

While DIY Paid Media Strategies are good to provide an initial boost to your business, our suggestion is to let the experts create a customized & implement paid media strategies for your business. There are multiple benefits of hiring experts or agencies as they have marketing technology capabilities in-house and have a larger view of multiple businesses across various industries which helps them analyze and benchmark the performance for your business and quickly change course as deemed best to maximize the returns of your paid media spend.

I have worked for 500+ businesses including 2 Global Billion Dollar B2B enterprises and helped them increase their returns by up to 30%. I implemented all aspects of Paid Media including Paid Search, Paid Social, Display, or Programmatic. Over time, I built specific strategy templates for restaurant, hotel, retail, medical and B2B industries which helps with easy implementation and better returns for your business.

Need help with your Paid Media or Digital Advertising? Contact me on connect@pragunjain.com or visit www.pragunjain.com and set up a free consulting session.