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What is paid marketing?
Paid marketing refers to pay-per-click advertising or paid ads. This comes in many shapes and forms, including the most common:
- Paid search marketing (e.g. Google Adwords, Bing Ads)
- Display advertising
- Social media advertising (Facebook, Instagram, Youtube)
Not all businesses need to invest in paid marketing. Normally, you should consider it when you operate in a highly competitive niche (“medical malpractice lawyer NYC”) or if you only just launched a website and aren’t ranking organically (yet!).
Paid marketing gets you to the top of the fold i.e. the most prominent position on Google search results, Google Maps, between Instagram stories and more.
Paid marketing is one of the quickest ways to get traffic, but that doesn’t necessarily make it the best. As a business owner, you want to also be attracting organic traffic through your website.
In most cases, paid marketing complements other marketing approaches but is not the ruling strategy.
Why invest in paid marketing?
- Paid marketing can help build brand awareness about your company
- Offers faster results than organic approaches, especially if you have a newly launched website
- Is excellent at targeting specific audience segments
- Allows you to optimize and measure ad campaigns in a way that isn’t possible through organic traffic marketing
How much do Google Ads and other types of paid marketing cost?
It’s up to you, but in the more competitive niches, you need to spend a minimum amount a month to appear above the competition.
In the “medical malpractice law NYC” niche, for instance, you might expect to spend thousands of dollars a month on paid advertising due to the competition. However, also specific to that niche, if a law firm gets even 1 good client after investing $10,000 on ads, it’s all worth it since settlements in the NY medical malpractice world often surpass the millions.
In Ecuador, where we are based, paid advertising is still a relatively new tool for businesses and you can get a lot of traction with as little as $25-$100 per month, depending on your niche.
Also, with most ads platforms, you only pay when your ad is clicked.
What is SEM?
SEM refers to Search Engine Marketing, not to be confused with SEO, Search Engine Optimization.
SEM is an advertising strategy to drive paid traffic to your site, versus SEO which refers to mainly on-site content optimization to draw organic search engine results, not paid.
That said, part of what makes SEM effective is having an optimized website (fast, engaging and all that jazz) and an established brand. There’s no point in investing in SEM if people only land on a clunky, boring, confusing site.
Ultimately, paid ads through Search Engine Marketing may get you more site visits, but what you really want is conversions and sales, which depends on the quality of your site, your service/product and client service.
Paid Marketing Steps
- Keyword planning
- Ad campaign creation and offer
- Determine spend limits
- Launch campaign/s
- A/B testing
- Measure
- Optimize starting from Step !
As with other digital marketing services like SEO, content creation and social media marketing, NONE of it is rocket science, but ALL of it takes time. If you don’t have the time to learn and apply these skills, the most efficient approach might be to work with a marketing agency that literally does this all day, everyday.