The 5 Paid Ad Channels You Need to Incorporate Right Now

If you want to use digital marketing seriously in 2022, you need to be embracing paid advertising. Organic social media marketing can be effective and budget-friendly. However, social media companies and digital marketing companies in NI (Northern Ireland) worth their salt will advise a paid strategy to complement organic activity. 

Without regular online advertising, you are wasting a huge opportunity to utilise the wealth of customer data on these marketing channels. All smart marketing is focused on defining the target and reaching them in the right place with the right message. Google and Facebook are no longer the only places to focus on when doing this for your own online advertising. Furthermore, with issues such as how Facebook audience targeting has been impacted by iOS 14.5 privacy updates, now is a good time to explore other options. 

Amazon Ads

This ecommerce giant needs no introduction. Thousands of people report that they start their online shopping searches and research on Amazon. Various studies put the figure between 49%, and a whopping 63% of online shoppers start their search here. According to Search Engine Journal, 225,000 small businesses made over £75,000 in sales on Amazon in 2019.

Advertising on a platform that is geared towards and frequented by people who are in the frame of mind to spend money, seems like a no-brainer for sales and brand awareness. It certainly is for SEO companies and digital marketing companies in NI. 

Many small businesses successfully used Amazon as a branding channel, to reach more of their target audience. To advertise on Amazon, however, you need to be set up as an Amazon seller, which should be taken into account when defining your ad budget, as Amazon charges seller fees. This can reduce your return on investment. So do the numbers carefully before diving in. 

Benefits:

  • Cheap ads – CPC averages at less than £1 for sponsored product ads on Amazon.
  • Huge audience, actively shopping – Amazon’s audience is not only large, making it useful for top of funnel brand awareness, it’s also widely used by people who are ready to buy.

Instagram Ads

The visual content-sharing platform is owned by Facebook, so if you are already using Facebook’s Business Manager and Ads Manager channels for social media marketing content and advertising, it’s easy enough to get started with Insta advertising. Instagram also uses Business Manager and Ads Manager for advertising. 

You can’t simply copy and paste your Facebook creative to Instagram, however. The size and type of images and videos you can use on Instagram varies hugely from Facebook’s. This can be the bane of existence for NI based digital marketing companies! Social media marketing experts with years of experience can often struggle, as Ad manager can be a bit unwieldy. 

Having said that, Ads manager usually catches any incompatible content at the creation stage and prompts you to change it.

Benefits:

  • Audience – Instagram has a highly engaged audience, who love to copy their favourite influencers, and impulse shopping is common.
  • Affordable – The average CPC for Instagram ads is less than £1.

LinkedIn Ads

If you are a B2B (business to business) seller, Linked In advertising is definitely worth exploring. It has tens of millions of senior level decision makers actively using the social platform every day. 

Studies have shown that 65% of advertisers have seen an increase in sales from advertising on the platform, with 75% of users reporting that ads influence their buying decisions.

Their paid option allows ads to be served to platform users in their news feed, within their private messaging area (called InMail) and within Spotlight which highlights key features of your product or service. 

Social media companies report it as one of the most expensive social platforms to advertise on; we’ve seen figures that put CPC on Linked In between £2 and £6. 

Benefits:

  • Unrivalled B2B/professional targeting – Unlike other social platforms, LinkedIn’s demographic data relates to career and business characteristics. 
  • B2B marketing – can allow for hyper targeted advertising. 
  • Goes straight to the decision makers – Unlike other forms of marketing which often involve convincing ‘gatekeepers’ to allow your message through, Linked In can target decision makers directly. 

Google Ads

As one of the leading SEO companies in NI, we are constantly researching search engines. Formerly known as Google Adwords, Google Ads are a crucial part of a solid digital marketing strategy. 

Google continues to dominate the online search space, used for most online searches across mobile and digital. With Google Ads, you can place highly targeted ads, allowing your business to be seen whenever someone searches for something relevant or related to what you offer. 

You can place ads across Google and its many partner sites and Google-owned apps. This means your business can reach people on YouTube, Gmail, Maps as well as other apps and sites. Your business can appear in search results, on websites, and in apps. 

You can choose a search campaign, display campaign (appearing on websites), shopping campaign (search results optimised for online buying), local campaigns (designed to bring people to your shop or premises) or video campaigns on Youtube, plus Smart campaigns where Google targets your ads to give the best return. 

Benefits

  • Reach – Google is the biggest search engine, so your ads have the best chance of reaching more people on Google Ads.  
  • Faster than organic search – Your online content should be optimised for search. However, it can take time and work to rank your page solely through SEO. Couple good search optimisation with a paid campaign, and you are likely to see faster results. 
  • Highly targeted – Google’s audience targeting options allow you to get really specific on the people you want to reach. You can use keywords, location, demographics such as age and gender, and devices to serve your ads to the people most likely to buy.

Tiktok

This growing social media platform has 1 billion active global users, so is well worth considering for paid social media marketing efforts. Tiktok is made entirely of short-form, portrait oriented videos, and gives users an enormous suite of easy to use editing tools. 

This has allowed for unprecedented levels of creativity from its most popular users. It’s unique in that its algorithm prioritises brand new content, as well as content that is already doing well on the platform. Its ‘for you’ page is its main feed, which shows you content regardless of whether or not you are following any other users or not. This is quite unique and allows new users to be discovered and good content to very quickly go viral.

It is hugely popular among the younger generation, or Gen Z, but more and more older people are getting in on the fun. Nearly half of 18 – 29 year olds use TikTok, but 20% of 30 – 49 year olds are on it too, and 14% of 50 – 64 year olds, so it shouldn’t be ignored if you have an older target market. 

Benefits

  • Ads incorporated into news feed – Tiktok quick-swiping ‘for you’ page is where your ads will appear, and they can initially look quite indistinguishable from non-paid content. 
  • Affordable – Despite its huge and growing audience, CPC is around £0.19.

So, there you have it, 5 paid ad channels that are worth your attention in 2022. If you’re looking for a Northern Ireland based ad agency to help you get started why not get in touch today.