For companies who do not have extensive experience in digital marketing, the idea of making a large financial investment into paid advertisements can be scary. Paying for digital ads is obviously much more costly than just running social media accounts and focusing on organic digital marketing means. However, paid advertising is usually worth the investment, and can bring in impressive results for your brand. Below are just a few of the many reasons you should consider investing in paid ads for business if you aren’t already.
1. Wider reach than organic posts
One of the largest and clearest benefits of ads on sites like Facebook is that they can reach people beyond your usual audience. With organic posts, your content will only show up in the feeds of people who have already liked your page. It is great to keep creating content for these people, and definitely something your brand should be sure to do. However, many of the people who have liked your social media profile are probably already customers, or already intend to become customers. Ads are a much more effective way to reach new people, and bring in new potential customers for your business.
2. Reach the right people
With paid ads, not only can you expand your reach to more people, but you can be sure you’re reaching the right people as well. With organic posts, you have little control over who sees them. But with paid ads, you can select the audience your ads will be shown to. The budget for your paid content can be concentrated solely on reaching your ideal target audience, without spending extra on people that fall outside of your desired constraints. Whether you want to segment by geographic area, age, gender, or interests, paid ads can help you reach your goals.
3. Content for paid ads doesn’t have to be expensive
One big reason brands shy away from digital paid advertising is the cost it will take to even create the content for the ads. It can definitely be an expensive undertaking to get professional photos and videos for ad content. However, content for your ads does not always need to be professionally shot, and it doesn’t have to be created solely for the purpose of use in the ads. In fact, many companies reuse content they created for organic posts or other forms of marketing in their digital ads. Sites like Facebook even allow businesses to directly turn their best-performing posts into paid ads with a few easy clicks. Ad content creation can be costly, but there are plenty of budget-friendly options to consider as well.
4. Paid ads are integrated into consumers’ browsing experiences
Traditional forms of advertising are often seen as an unwelcome interruption of daily life for consumers. TV commercials interrupt the shows people want to watch, billboards distract drivers on the road, and mailers are a nuisance that are often tossed straight into the trash. Digital advertising on the other hand, when done well, can be a seamless continuation of users’ online behavior, instead of an interruption. With the various formats available for digital ads, there are numerous ways to integrate the ads into a typical user experience online. You can create digital ads that fit into the other content users are consuming on a given channel, and that follow the trends users are enjoying at the moment. Since digital ads can feel less like an interruption, users can be more receptive to viewing them than they are for other forms of marketing.
5. The stats don’t lie: Ads work
Finally, digital paid ads are worth investing in because there are plenty of statistics out there to back up the fact that they really work! Just a few facts and figures that should convince you digital advertising is worth trying:
- Small businesses earn an average of $3 in revenue for every $1.60 they spend on Google AdWords. (Source: PowerTraffick)
- 84% of people expect brands to create content. (Source: Havas)
- So your digital ads aren’t an unwelcome intrusion: People are in fact expecting that from your brand!)
- More than 40% of digital consumers use social networks to research new brands or products. (Source: GlobalWebIndex)
- Social ad impressions are up 20%, year over year (Source: Statista)
- 27% of internet users admit they find new products and brands directly through paid ads. (Source: GlobalWebIndex)
If you weren’t already convinced that your brand should invest in paid digital ads, you should be after reading the 5 points above. There are many reasons to commit budget to paid digital ads, and plenty of statistics to back up this decision. If you aren’t already making use of digital advertising, now is the time!