Paid online advertising can help you reach more audiences that don't find you organically. Paying to promote your brand can help amplify your reach to specific groups at all stages of the funnel.
Before the rise of social media, there were two ways to reach
audiences through online advertising:
Since the early 2000s, the proliferation of channels has increased the number of opportunities for marketers to reach their audiences exponentially. While banner/display ad click-through-rates and reliability plummet (display ad CTRs are at less than 0.06% globally in 2015), personalized social and search ads can capture users where they spend time or where they express interest in your product or industry themselves.
Marketers now have the ability to pay to reach desired audiences on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, Foursquare, and a legion of other networks and services that have popped up over the past few years. While each has its own unique quirks for targeting and specifications, as well as relative performance against your preferred KPIs, a marketer has myriad different ways to get at their audiences and present their message.
For more information about advertising on each social channel, check out our State of Social Ads field guide .
Paid digital media can be targeted to highly specific interest, behavioral, and demographic groups. This way, you can find people who are more likely to find your brand relevant.
For example, someone who searches for "Dog Grooming" on Google is probably hoping to book an appointment for their beloved Labradoodle. This mindset means they are more likely to convert when they see your ad at the top of the search results page, especially if your business is geographically nearby their home or office.
On the social front, someone who actively follows Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, and Lady Gaga on Facebook may be more likely to respond to a top 40 radio station contest ad than someone who expresses an interest in Mozart and Bach.
But this explosion in options has also made it much more difficult for marketers to know where and how to spend their money effectively to make a difference in their business.
Again, each channel has its own best use cases, audiences, and strengths. Careful audience segmentation and message creation can help increase the effectiveness of your paid digital efforts
"Audiences use each channel differently , and targeting needs to account for these differences. Even if the same people engage with ads across multiple channels, they're often seeking different experiences or are in a different part of the conversion funnel on various channels." - Jordan Baines, VP of Strategy & Analytics, Accomplice
The key to targeting is to test your assumptions and continuously narrow down and refine your audience segments. Experiment with each campaign and ad group you run. The more often you can share relevant content to relevant groups, the more likely you'll curate brand affinity and increase conversions.