The rise of digital means of communication along with the world wide web has heralded a new era in the world of marketing. Now more and more businesses are shifting towards online marketing and are using online means for lead generation, and customer acquisition.
It’s almost impossible for a modern business to exist without having an online presence as almost all small, medium, or large business has an online presence of some sort that may range from having a simple one-page website or landing page to being present on a social media platform or having a full-fledged e-commerce site that allows the business to sell their goods or services. With the emergence of the internet and mobile phones, there has been a major shift towards online marketing.
Having an online presence is often the first step in a business’s journey as an online presence does not guarantee leads or sales as these need additional efforts by the business or company in question. A website or landing page is of no use if people can’t discover it easily or if it gets viewed by only a few visitors every day.
This issue of low traffic or untargeted or focused traffic is further compounded by the fact that there are millions of websites out there that are selling products or services similar to the ones sold by your business.
While it’s possible to generate sales or leads in an organic manner, this option remains out of reach for most businesses with the only alternative being to pay for getting targeted traffic or visitors that are interested in your offering. An online business often has to pay in order to generate sales and it’s also quite common to pay for getting qualified leads.
It’s quite common for companies to spend thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars on paid ads to generate business or sales. Companies often use pay per click ads (PPC ads), banner ads, and social media ads to promote their websites and all three of these mediums are known to deliver excellent results.
In this article, we will discuss all the aspects related to paid acquisition. We’ll explain how it works, which platforms to use and some of the limitations of this novel method of customer acquisition.
What is Paid Acquisition?
Paid acquisition refers to the practice of acquiring website traffic, visitors or customers through paid ads banners or other forms of paid media. Unlike organic traffic, such traffic is not free and the business acquiring website visitors, leads or customers through such methods may have to pay a good chunk of money for running such acquisition campaigns.
Pay per click ads or PPC ads are the most common form of paid acquisition methods and are used by all major search engines such as Google, and Bing. The amount of money that you will end up spending on such a PPC campaign depends on several factors including the niche, cost per click, competition for the targeted keywords etc.
Benefits of Paid User Acquisition
Many companies use paid user acquisition methods such as PPC to generate qualified leads and sales as such methods are highly effective and can deliver excellent ROI on the money spend on such campaigns. Paid acquisition methods can be used for driving targeted traffic to your website or landing page from search engines through PPC programs such as Google Adwords and Bing Ads.
Most pay per click platforms allow advertisers to choose how much they are willing to pay per click and based on the budget of advertisers their ads are ranked on SERPs (search engine results pages). Most PPC platforms use bidding when deciding which ads to show first to users and this ensures that the advertisers who are willing to pay higher prices per click often get most of the visitors. So essentially the higher your bid per click, the better are your chances of getting your ad placed higher above all other ads.
Paid acquisition is used by small and large businesses alike and individual marketers also use it for acquiring targeted traffic, qualified leads or paying customers. Unlike organic methods of traffic acquisition, paid acquisition is known for delivering almost instant results as one can start seeing the traffic from this method within a few hours of starting an advertising campaign.
Do you want to leverage paid acquisition and grow your business?
What Are The Types of Paid Acquisition?
There are many different methods of paid acquisition that allow businesses to acquire new customers. We will briefly discuss some of the most popular acquisition marketing methods below:
Social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok ads)
Billions of people today login daily into their social media platform accounts thus providing another avenue for marketers to scout for potential customers. Most social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn allow businesses to run ads related to their goods or services on these social media platform.
These platforms allow businesses to show highly targeted Facebook ad to specific age groups, demographics, or users based in particular countries, geographies, or regions.
Paid ads on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter can help you promote your company’s offerings in front of your target audience, leading to higher brand recognition, more qualified leads, and more sales. A Facebook ad is almost as effective as any other form of advertising and these ads have emerged as among the most widely used ads over the last few years.
Search engines (Search campaigns such as Google AdWords)
Search engines arguably offer one of the best venues for paid acquisition as billions of people use search engines such as Google, Bing, Baidu, Yandex, or Duck Duck Go daily for researching about various products and services that they want to buy. Indeed, sales process often starts with a simple search and searching for something is often the first step in a customer’s journey.
The best thing about search engine ads or PPC ads is that you are showing your ads to users who are already looking for solutions to their problems or want to fulfill a need by buying a product or service. Traffic generated through search engine PPC ads is among the most highly targeted traffic and often has much higher conversion rates as compared to other methods of paid acquisition.
Paid advertisements in Google Ads help advertisers promote their products or services by placing advertisements on the search engine results page. Advertisers pay for these advertisements through pay per click (PPC) advertising at a specified rate.
Display ads
Display ad formats can promote various products or services. For example, suppose a consumer is interested in purchasing a specific product. In that case, they can click on an advertisement and be directed to the company’s website or the mobile app that produces the product.
List building advertising (Cost per thousand impressions)
List building advertising will also generate new sales. You are paid based on how many people click on your ad and subsequently click on other related ads displayed on the website. The more clicks you get, the more money you make.
Geotagged ads (Geo-targeted)
Geo-targeted ads are among new type of ads that are increasingly used for advertising products and services. People can see where other people are located in physical locations through the IP address of the users.
Watch out! Geotargeting is not the same as geofencing. A lot of entrepreneurs, business owners, startup founders and even experienced marketers get confused between both.
A geo-targeted ad will be shown only to the person whose physical location is known. For example, a travel agency can advertise various destinations to users in specific cities and only users in those cities will see the advertisement campaign.
What’s Important to Know About Paid Acquisition?
Here are some important things to know about paid acquisition:
Optimization
The first is optimization – well-designed and carefully thought out strategies are necessary to get the most out of paid acquisition. Unlike organic search, paid search campaigns follow a cookie-based system. Google ads and Facebook ad use cookies to track the paths of visitors to your website and where they come from so that you can target your ads to visitors who are most likely to convert. This means that you have to be smart about setting up your bid and keyword selection.
Retargeting customers
Retargeting refers to ads that are shown to people who have already visited your website or product pages in the past. Ad networks such as Google ads and Facebook ads are able to collect information about users through cookies and you as an advertiser can set up a retargeting campaign that will show ads only to users who have enquired about a product in the past.
For example, suppose a customer visits an online store and chooses to buy a laptop. In that case, the store owner can keep track of the customers’ names, email addresses, and other information to target them with ads on other sites as they browse.
This is also known as remarketing because it allows you to target customers who have already visited your website or have spent some time on your site or landing pages enquiring about specific products. Google Ads has quite advanced retargeting capabilities and other ad networks such as Facebook ads also offer similar retargeting services.
Define your advertising budget accurately
Before deciding on how much you should spend on an advertising campaign, you need to have clarity about the goals of such a campaign. It’s also true that more successful advertising campaigns often require a good amount of budget as most ad platforms use bidding in one form or another which ensures that advertisers with higher budgets end up with most traffic from ad networks.
You will also need to optimize your ad for the best returns available without wasting too much money on bids that will never get any clicks. It’s a good idea to carefully do keyword research and identify the keywords that have the potential for providing the best ROI for each advertising dollar.
Tracking
You cannot build an effective paid advertising funnel without having proper data analytics in place. Tracking is a vital part of any advertising campaign as no ad campaign can be optimized without tracking the results. Tracking will also allow you to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your ad campaign and the insights gained through tracking your ad spend are often crucial for the success of any campaign.
You need to ensure you are using both Google Analytics and Webmaster tools (Google’s tool for SEO) to get constant tracking information about how your customers arrive at your website, how well they are engaging with the content on your website, and which keywords are getting them to interact with you.
You may also want to note what type of content is driving the most traffic and continue sending that type of content to your customers. Not every customer will stick with the same products and services all the time, so it’s important to trust what you know about your target audience and keep sending them information that they are likely to be interested in.
Now is the time to propel your business using paid acquisition.
When, Where, and How to Start with Paid Acquisition?
A great way to start with paid acquisition is by setting up a campaign on google ads to get your business off the ground. Keyword research is often the first step of an ad campaign and google ads allows you to choose keywords of your choice. Your ad will be displayed to a user only if he or she is searching using the keyword selected by you.
How to manage your paid acquisition efforts
You can create specific advertising campaigns and then select the keywords you want to rank for. This largely depends on what kind of product you are selling and your marketing goals, but you need to focus on keywords that already have a good amount of traffic or, at least, enough viewers to ensure that you will get some traffic referrals.
After getting your business started with google ads, the next step is making sure that the ads are able to appeal to your target audience. Most veteran marketers insist on testing various versions of the ads using A/B testing or multivariate testing that allows you to see which version of the ad converts best.
Your ad should be succinct, must clearly explain the features or benefits of the product or service being marketed and must use language that arouses the interest of the reader or viewer in what you are selling.
You will also want to add an image or link to your product to entice potential customers who may wish to see the product. You want to make sure that your website’s design is up to date and relevant.
Many competitors can introduce you to the right audience, so a good way to find them is by searching digital marketing forums or communities on the internet. There are numerous places where companies gather for discussion and advice about their advertising strategies, so you must use these resources for your benefit.
There are also many other ways of getting more visibility online; search engine optimization, social media marketing, content marketing, and PR also have their place in the marketing process as all these methods will help you get more customers in an efficient manner.
Final Words on Paid Acquisition
Paid ads are a great way to ensure that you are getting the kind of traffic that you need, and if done correctly, paid acquisition methods can significantly boost the number of visitors that visit your website along with your sales.
Paid acquisition efforts will give you a huge advantage over your competitors and help you put your best foot forward. You can choose to use paid ads for your PPC campaigns along with organic search marketing campaigns as both essentially complement each other.
However, you must have a solid strategy for getting the most out of PPC ads, as many advertisers don’t have the right tactics to garner as much revenue as they would like to have.
That’s why it’s important to spend some time learning about paid advertising as it can be a great addition to any marketing campaign and is worth considering if your website isn’t getting the number of visitors you would like.
Growth Hackers is an award-winning digital marketing and growth hacking agency helping businesses from all over the world grow. There is no fluff with Growth Hackers. We help entrepreneurs and business owners leverage paid acquisition, generate qualified leads, optimize their conversion rate, gather and analyze data analytics, acquire and retain users and increase sales. We go further than brand awareness and exposure. We make sure that the strategies we implement move the needle so your business grow, strive and succeed. If you too want your business to reach new heights, contact Growth Hackers today so we can discuss about your brand and create a custom growth plan for you. You’re just one click away to skyrocket your business.
