A guide to paid ads and how to make the most of your spend

Investing in paid ads can have many benefits, if used correctly. Not only can they boost your reach by advertising new content to existing customers, but you are able to expand far beyond your immediate audience.

Ads can also help in producing better content for your audience. Using tools such as Google Analytics can help you monitor the ads that are being engaged with the most, and inform future marketing efforts and spend.

Today, ads are part of most marketeers' content catalogue. Are you looking to digital advertising to increase sales? Perhaps you’re new to the world of advertising, and are eager to expand your digital reach by gaining new followers to convert into customers through social media. Either way, you need to be clued up on all things paid ads.

From PPC to social media ads, it’s hard to know what will bring you the best return on investment (ROI). That’s why we’ve created a guide to paid ads, so you can learn how to make the most of your spend, whatever your goals.

Target audience​

Before beginning your ad strategy, you need to define who your target audience is, what their interests are, and what they spend their time searching in the digital space. This way, you can create ads that are targeted to a specific market as opposed to capturing the attention of a group that may not ever buy your product or use your services.

Here are a few steps to find your target audience:

Define your demographics​

Why not break up your target audience into specific demographics, such as age, location or income? On the topic of being new to Facebook ads, some UKBF members explain that they began by targeting all ages and genders, before realising this was too broad, and narrowing down a certain age and gender to target in order to get the best cost per click.

For SMEs just starting out, it can be tempting to cast your net as far as possible to capture the interest of multiple groups. However, first try to define who your audience really is and what they want from you. By advertising to a specific group, you can cut costs whilst learning what your audience is interested in. Then, once you start gaining a positive ROI, create ads to attract similar audiences who you’re yet to interact with.

Research​

Once you have a list of your key demographics, research their interests. Investigate emerging trends for Gen Z or discover what social media 30-45 year olds use the most, for example.

Ad type​

Determine the type of ad that each audience will respond to best. If your younger audience uses TikTok the most, look into social media advertising. Or if you’re finding that a certain group uses specific keywords relating to your service, adjust your paid ads accordingly.

Initially, adjusting your ads to suit your audience can take a bit of trial and error. However, once you understand what customers respond to, you’ll find an advertising method that supports your other content marketing efforts, work alongside your SEO strategy and ultimately, generate lucrative results.

Ad strategy​

Every business needs an ad strategy that provides a good return on the amount of money they are putting in to begin with. However, to achieve this, you need to navigate the bidding system.

Here are some tips:

• Bid to achieve high ranking results: The bidding system works as it does in an auction. Ultimately, the highest bidder gets the best ranking in the various ad platforms
• Decide on your goals: What do you want to achieve by spending money on advertising? This will vary from business to business and where they are in their growth journey, from attracting new customers to increasing sales on one of your less popular products
• Calculate: Next, work out how much money you need to spend on ads in order to achieve this goal. Head to Google Ads help for useful advice on how to calculate your spend and gain a good return on investment

PPC​

PPC or Pay-per-click does exactly as the name suggests. You can identify a PPC ad by the small ‘Ad’ symbol displayed to the left of the web address on your ad. PPC works by paying to have your website on the Google results page; you then pay each time someone clicks through to your website.

There are many advantages of using PPC, including:

Autonomy​

Having complete control over how much you are spending, as well as which ads to play, pause or end helps you get to know your audience's interests, and generate more specific content to target them with. This can help inform your future SEO strategy.

Cost​

Of all the marketing options, advertising using PPC is a cost effective method. Whether you budget £10 or 10p per interaction, you get to control how much you spend when someone clicks through to your website

Audience​

Whilst other advertising has its merits in attracting a wider pool of customers that may be new to your business, PPC allows you to directly target your audience who know exactly what they are searching for.

You can also use retargeting tools to capture the interest of those who have clicked on your website before, but didn’t follow through with an enquiry, purchase or newsletter sign-up, for example

No matter what search engine or social media platform you use, there will be a tool to monitor your ads. You can use the tool to adapt and change your offering depending on how well your ads are doing. You can also choose to pause or end campaigns when you have achieved your desired outcome.

For more advice on how to monitor your campaigns and ad spend, read our article on how to get started on Google Ads.

Campaign categories​

Typically, a search engine tool like Google Analytics will break your campaigns down into these key categories:

• Budget: How much you are spending on each ad
• Campaign type: Where your ad is showing to certain customers
• Interactions: Relating to the amount of clicks or views your particular ad gets
• Cost: The total amount you have spent on each of your campaigns in a certain amount of time
• Impressions: How many times your ad is shown on the search engine
• Clicks: The amount of times your ad is clicked by a customer
• Conversions: Relating to the customer action that you chose to focus on, e.g clicking through to your landing page, scrolling on your social media or making a purchase
• Cost per conversion: Cost divided by conversions. The average cost of a conversion
• Average CPC: The amount you’ve paid for your ads divided by total clicks

Paid Search Advertising​

Paid Search Advertising works alongside search engines like Google to deliver targeted ads to customers based on what they type into the search bar (or what their search term is).

Once you’ve used analytics to work out what products are most popular with each of your audiences, you can use targeted paid ads to your advantage.

Paid ads help you get a head start. Putting money behind your campaign means your product or service will appear above organic ads.

For those who feel like they need some extra support when setting up paid ads, UKBF member myresellerhome advises outsourcing in this thread. “Outsourcing your Google Ads management can be a great way to save time and money, and get the most out of your advertising budget,” they explain.

Keywords​

Keywords work by attaching a specific word or phrase to an ad, so that when a customer types a term into Google, they will receive a tailored ad linked to their search.

Here’s how they work:

Branded keywords​

Using branded keywords means traffic is directed towards your website and your website alone, in turn increasing brand reach. These relate directly to your brand, for example, our branded keywords might be UKBF or UK Business Forums.

Non-branded keywords​

Using non-branded keywords enables you to cast your net wider and draw in customers that may not have shopped or engaged with your business before. Non-branded keywords are those relevant to your brand, but not specific to your brand – for example, business forums, discussion thread or business advice.

Match type​

Typically, when working with Google there are three key types of matches that it will use to generate a targeted result. This includes:

• Exact match: ad will only display if the search question includes the same order and exact wording
• Phrase match: ad will display if the search uses the same order, some exact words and some words outside of the exact words
• Broad match: ad will display if some keywords or related keywords in any order, are used in the search

Paid social media​

So, your organic marketing isn’t yielding enough results and you’re thinking of leveraging paid social media ads.

Social media can be a great way to target your audience. Recent data from Deloitte found that “ads on social media platforms have a higher net positive score among consumers. These ads are less disruptive to the user experience and are often precisely tailored and targeted to an individual’s preferences.”

As a nation, we’re in the scroll-hole for roughly two hours every day, and paid ads can cut through that pesky algorithm, so there are plenty of people to target!

It’s important to measure your ROI for socials, which generally will equate to the marketing efforts you put into your brand, as well as the money you spend getting your content out there.

Monitoring your ROI will ensure you are making smart moves when it comes to developing your social media strategy. Your ROI will shift based on your goals at any particular time – for example, if you spend Q1 aiming to increase your engagement and Q1 aiming to increase your followers.

But which social platform is right for you and your business? Where can you get the best return on investment?

Facebook​

As the leading social network comprising 52 million users in the UK, it’s no surprise that Facebook has some of the best advertising features out there.

Their millions of account holders across the globe makes Facebook a great audience targeting tool for marketeers. Its specialised audience targeting feature means you can hone your goals even more, and target specific groups to gain the required result.

From messenger advertising for certain demographics in your core audience, story advertising for former customers in your custom audience and using the lookalike tool to reach audiences you haven’t engaged with yet, there are options to expand your reach far and wide.

Learn how to find people most likely to respond to your ad on Facebook and use their tools to your advantage.

Instagram​

With 34 million users in the UK, Instagram also offers a great opportunity to increase your reach.

Featuring many of the same targeting tools as Facebook, Instagram and Facebook work in tandem to generate results efficiently. Users can create ads on Facebook, before promoting through Instagram stories, reusing your content to save on time and cost.

Alongside photo, video and even ads on the explore page, one of the most recent features on Instagram are shopping ads. These ads are great for those with online stores where ads link directly to the product page.

LinkedIn​

Known as social media for professionals, LinkedIn is key for harnessing B2B advertising opportunities. Like other social platforms, you can advertise by demographic, from job titles to industry.

Another fantastic feature is lead generation. Using forms that can be attached to ads, they’re used to store information about a customer once they have responded to a call to action.

Message ads are one of the most popular ads you may see when you initially create an account with LinkedIn. Here, you can direct message prospective customers or clients and get the ball rolling almost immediately.

Twitter​

Despite not being every advertiser’s go-to, Twitter does offer some useful ad opportunities.

Many ecommerce brands find success through Twitter advertising, hopping on trending topics to encourage each individual audience to click through to their website, whereas TikTok can be used mainly to boost brand reach, as opposed to direct click throughs.

Whilst Instagram and Facebook rank the highest for ROI in terms of their offering, it’s important to place your efforts and cash behind a platform that works for you. If you are someone who works mainly with other businesses, then a platform such as LinkedIn may generate better results than Facebook or Twitter.

Want to learn more from the UKBF community about paid ads? Start a new discussion thread and utilise exclusive benefits including premium forums, partner offers and member-only content by upgrading your account to a Business Membership today.