Paid Marketing Through a New Lens

By: Ashley N. Rosa

December 15, 2021

Every minute we are introduced to new brands and companies via magazines, advertisements, and commercials. Companies set aside a budget to pay for their products' positions within magazine pages, billboards, and the recently popular option of social media. Paid marketing, synonymous with digital advertising, is a strategy where brands promote their products to a specific market of potential customers based on behavioral data and granular characteristics.

Paid Marketing

Using specific marketing channels such as Google Ads, a company’s commodity can be displayed on search engines results pages (SERP) and other channels they wish to enter.

This helps the company target a specific market because they specify their audience based on a set criterion from either location, interest, past search history, demographics, and an infinite number of other options. This saves the company time and money because they filter their audience and market directly to them. Paid marketing through social media channels such as Instagram or using Google Ads is based on a “pay-per-click” basis. A pay-per-click basis entails a company paying the advertisement channel only when a customer clicks on the ad. A company will set a maximum amount of ad expense and the ad will run until that budget has been utilized.

According to a Forbes article, a Google Economic Impact Report discovered businesses are profiting from paid marketing more than ever. For every dollar spent on advertising through Google Ads, a business would make two dollars in revenue. Using this avenue to gain exposure helps a business obtain customers at a faster rate than waiting for the

customer to come across their other advertising tactics. In a way, the company is directly catering to its target market. For example, when you are scrolling through Instagram and come across an ad for LED nightlights on Amazon, or if you have been searching on Google for a specific product and then find an advertisement for it on TikTok. This is all part of paid advertising tactics using behavioral data to find their consumer niche. Major fashion brands such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Zara, and American Eagle, have been using the shopping tool on Instagram. This is to promote a specific product to the user based on the data attained from tracking the consumers’ behavior characteristics. Many companies use Instagram's new shopping tool as a form of paid advertisement.

Top Benefits

If you are looking to promote your new company, college organization, side hustle, or anything in between, paid advertising may be the perfect solution. A few of the benefits it provides are:

• It’s cost-effective

• Traffic to your website is consistent and fast

• Analytics is easy to measure

• Easy to keep track of your consumers’ website response which then makes it easy for you to realize what needs to get fixed on your website

• You can have a great deal of exposure to top search engines

• Flexibility to make changes to the ad while it is live if you notice something is not working

• Can use various platforms simultaneously while only paying to advertise on one marketing channel

Paid advertising has endless benefits for both consumers and suppliers. Companies tracking our behavioral data makes life easier for us because we become aware of the products we need without the endless search. A business can use paid marketing to increase sales and boost brand awareness, even if it has a small spending budget. Paid marketing is an effective tool to grow your business, but it requires an effective strategy. By selecting the appropriate marketing channel, messaging, and target audience, you can reap many benefits.

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