ABSTRACT:
With the ever-changing trends of the marketing industry, it is necessary for businesses to stay updated to have their resources invested smartly. The pandemic resulted in an increase in the use of digital marketing. Organic marketing has been in the market for a long time now. Although organic marketing is an effective marketing strategy, the rise in the competition and the time taken to show results make it difficult to rely completely on organic marketing. That is where paid marketing can help businesses. Paid marketing can give faster results, and these efforts can target a specific audience with specified goals. With the collaboration of paid marketing with other marketing efforts, businesses can stand out with respect to their marketing strategies.
GoodFirms survey titled- ‘Paid Marketing: Challenges, Market, Tips & Future' attempts to overview the various aspects of paid marketing. The survey tries to get insights into the challenges and market share of the technology. It also sheds light on the future of paid marketing and gives valuable tips to excel in paid marketing strategies. An online survey was conducted between 15th October 2022 to 21st October 2022. 470 businesses were queried to understand the benefits and challenges they face while they use paid marketing and the tips they would share to ace the paid marketing strategies.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Overview of Paid Marketing
Marketing Media Used by Businesses
- Paid Search Ads
- Display Ads
- Social Media Ads
- Remarketing Ads
- Google Shopping Ads
- Gmail Sponsored Ads
- Local Service Ads
- Instream Ads
Marketing Budget Spent on Paid Marketing
Market Share
Benefits of Paid Marketing
Challenges in Paid Marketing
Tips to Improve Paid Marketing
Introduction
Paid marketing is when a business pays for marketing its products or services online to a targeted audience. It is a systematic process that targets specific audiences based on location, internet search histories, and buyer interests. Pay-per-click advertising forms a major part of digital marketing campaigns for businesses owing to the high ROIs they offer. Paid marketing provides a variety of benefits for the growth of businesses and is the need of the hour. Paid Marketing has gained more popularity after the pandemic for obvious reasons. The rise in paid marketing has been evident in the past few years, and the trend is here to stay.
‘Paid Marketing: Challenges, Market, Tips, & Future’ is a survey conducted by GoodFirms that aims to get insights regarding the current state of paid marketing, the market scenario, and its associated challenges. The survey also aims to get some tips for paid marketing and assess its future.
Overview of Paid Marketing
Marketing has always played an important role in promoting the brand and in connecting businesses with their audiences. Marketing, in all its forms, has helped businesses grow. The invention of the internet transformed advertising into digital, thus covering a wider audience.
Marketing Media Used by Businesses
Marketing is a huge industry, and various businesses employ a variety of marketing media to promote their products and services. The survey by GoodFirms gives an overview of the different types of marketing media employed by various businesses.
Social Media Emerges as the Most Preferred Marketing Media
97% of global organizations surveyed by GoodFirms rely on social media for marketing their products or services
Businesses use social media as a potential marketing channel, for various reasons, from building brand awareness, generating leads, social listening, and customer service to connecting with potential customers. Finding insightful customer analytics and driving referral traffic to websites. Social media’s ability to empower businesses and influence customer purchase decisions is reflected in the fact that 97.9% of surveyed companies reported using it as their preferred marketing media platform. Social media ads - image, audio, and video ads are mobile responsive, targeted, and can be customized to fit desired budgets.
72.3% of organizations use email marketing in their marketing campaign
Email marketing happens to be another popular choice among marketers to promote their products and services. Emails stay in a user's inbox until the mail is read or deleted. The fact that the number of email users keeps increasing regularly makes it a convenient method of connecting with audiences. Also, the higher ROI offered by email marketing makes it even more efficient to be a major part of any business's marketing strategy.
41.4% of surveyees depend on content marketing to promote their products or services
Content marketing is a very effective marketing technique where written or visual content is circulated to promote awareness regarding a product or service. Content marketing includes publishing online or offline content, including videos, ebooks, or social media posts. The emergence of social media has made sharing of content possible, making content marketing an effective channel for promoting products and services.
The ongoing trend of PPC marketing has grown quite popular and is opted for by 34.6% of organizations, while Print marketing is adopted by 23.4% of businesses.
The engagement that influencer marketing provides makes it a popular choice for promoting products. Influencer marketing is, thus, a choice for 21.8% of businesses, and 18.8% of businesses choose mobile marketing for their organization.
Television marketing and radio marketing being traditional media for marketing, have grown less popular with time and are adopted by only 5.9% and 2.4% of businesses, respectively.
Paid Marketing is a subset of digital marketing
Digital marketing is majorly classified into Organic marketing and Paid Marketing. Digital marketing, also known as online marketing, uses ways like search engine marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, and other digital channels to promote products or services. While in organic marketing, there are no direct fees or charges paid to advertisers or online platforms, paid marketing involves the payment of a fee to the advertising platforms.
Let us analyze both types in detail:
Organic Marketing
21.3% of businesses use organic marketing to promote their products
Digital marketing techniques that involve less or no cost are referred to as Organic Digital Marketing. Organic marketing technologies involve the use of unpaid efforts that help create brand awareness and drive considerable traffic to the website. It involves the use of blog posts or social media posts that help improve the search results for business sites on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP).
Organic Marketing efforts include
- Blog posts
- Guest posts
- SEO
- Unpaid social media posts
- Case studies
- Online PR
- Email newsletters
- Youtube
The main goal of organic marketing is to increase brand awareness among audiences. It is mainly done through the mode of informative, educational, or entertaining content.
While social media is a powerful tool for organic marketing, SEO is the best tool where most marketers invest their time. Moreover, according to Hubspot, SEO drives 1000% more traffic than organic social media marketing.(1)
Paid Marketing
14.5% of surveyees have opted for purely paid marketing techniques for their businesses
Paid Marketing is the digital marketing aspect where businesses pay to advertise their products or services instead of waiting for the customers to find and approach them organically. It uses both search engine result pages (SERPs) and social media channels to gain consumers.
Paid marketing is a more sales-focused marketing strategy. Paid Marketing consists of
- Search Ads
- Social media Ads
- Display Ads
- Video Ads
- Banner Ads
Pay-Per-Click
Paid Marketing is all about the pay-per-click model. The advertising format, where the advertiser must pay every time a user clicks on the ads, is called pay-per-click. What matters in a PPC campaign is the relevance of the ad for the user.
Targeting the right consumer at the right time through PPC can generate quality leads. PPC efforts are a major part of any marketing campaign and can amount to tremendous ROI.
One of the most common forms of PPC that a business can think of is Search Engine Marketing (SEM). The ads that appear on the SERP when the relevant keywords are searched provide the highest opportunity for brands to generate leads.(2)
The ultimate goal of these ads is to take the user to the landing page and obtain conversions.
A few examples of conversion include purchasing the product or service, signing up for a newsletter, app downloads, and contacting through a phone call.
64.2% of businesses leverage the benefits of both paid and organic marketing.
While organic marketing is more about spreading the word, paid marketing works on increasing sales. Both of them are legal and complementary to each other, and none can be termed as better than the other.. Employing both of them can work wonders for any business.
By purchasing advertising space on search engines or social media platforms, businesses can appear on top of web searches. In organic marketing, the appearance at the top of web searches will depend on the quality, relevance, and value of the content served to audiences, in addition to the optimization of web pages as required by the search engines. 64.2% of businesses use both paid and organic marketing strategies to ensure their brand is easily visible to potential customers.
Types of PPC Marketing
GoodFirms queried businesses regarding the pay-per-click models they are using for their paid marketing initiatives. Search Engine Ads gained the top position as the most preferred type of PPC marketing. 72.3% of surveyed organizations indicated using paid search ads for marketing their businesses.
Paid Search Ads
72.3% of survey participants have included paid search ads in their paid marketing campaigns.
Search Engine Ads, also known as SEM, are the ads that come up on the SERPs when users enter specific keywords in the search. Search engines like Google and Bing offer paid marketing options where businesses can invest in PPC.
With the tremendous popularity of Google, paid search ads happen to be the most effective PPC technique. Google search ads require the appropriate selection of keywords to target the exact audience.
The pre-defined algorithm of Google, along with its bidding process for allotment of space to the ad on the SERP, decides on what ad will be placed when a user searches for a certain product or service. Displaying the results involves various factors like the relevance of the keyword, the bid offered by the organization, and the quality of the business's landing page.(3)
Display Ads
Display ads are a part of paid advertising strategies for 40.4% of businesses
Ads in the form of images or motion graphics that show up on websites across the internet are called Display Ads. These ads can appear on the websites on the space that is allocated on the basis of the advertising budget of the business. These ads vary in terms of placement and size of the banner. These ads lead the user to the organization's landing page. Display ads, many times, are a way of retargeting possible buyers.
Remarketing Ads
46.8% of surveyees use retargeting ads for paid marketing
Remarketing is the technique of showing ads to users who have earlier visited a website or mobile app. This form of PPC is the way to focus on the customers who have already shown interest in a particular product or service. Remarketing involves a considerably low cost as compared to the other techniques. It is an effective way to gain conversions for eCommerce businesses.
Google Shopping Ads
12.8% of survey participants have included Google shopping ads in their paid marketing campaigns.
Google Shopping ads come up on the SERP when a user's search query matches a particular product. These ads are more detailed when compared to search engine ads. Shopping ads contain a product picture, a title, a price, and details like store name. The placement of the ads is decided based on the product details provided by the brands through their merchant center. Google processes this data to match the user’s search query to show the most relevant products.
The business's cost depends on the Cost-per-click (CPC) model. Also, Google shopping ads have to participate in the ad auction to determine the placement of the ad.
Gmail Sponsored Ads
Gmail-sponsored ads are part of 14.9% of businesses’ marketing strategy
Gmail sponsored ads, or Gmail ads, are paid ads that allow advertisers to feature ads in their prospects’ inboxes. These ads show up in the users’ inboxes above all the organic emails. When clicked, the ad takes the user to the advertiser landing page.
Targeting the right audience with Gmail ads is very convenient and feasible. Gmail ads appear like any other mail in a user's mailbox, which, when opened, shows a text with a call-to-action button to the advertiser's landing page.
Local Service Ads
Local Service Ads form a part of 21.3% of businesses’ paid marketing campaigns
Google offers service-based businesses a marketing technique named local service ads. Local service ads are the ads that come up on the SERPs at the top of all the results. These ads are different from search ads in the way that they are shown in the order of region of the user, relevance, and reviews. A huge advantage these ads provide is that businesses have to pay per when a customer contacts the business directly through the ad.(4) SERPs show the user a mix of paid searches, organic search results, and local service ads. However, the display of local service ads at the top of the page makes them the most likely to be clicked.
Instream Ads
6.4% of businesses have opted for instream ads for marketing their product
The emergence of streaming platforms and the high engagement rate of video content has made marketers turn towards video streaming platforms like Youtube to promote their products or services. According to a survey by Wyzowl, people spend 19 hours a week watching videos.(5) Majority of these videos come with ads that show up during or at the beginning of the videos. These ads feature a call-to-action button which leads the user to the business's landing page. Instream ads are inevitably noticed by the users and, thus, increase the probability of lead generation.
38.3% of the participants of the survey asserted that they benefit from the combination of multiple paid marketing channels
A combination of two or more marketing technologies can always be a more beneficial choice for a business. The various marketing channels that can be used by a business may include static ads, lightbox ads, app download ads, and text ads, to name a few.
Marketing Budget Spent on Paid Marketing
With its increasing popularity and enormous benefits, more and more businesses are opting for paid marketing. The majority of companies rely on more than one marketing channel to design their marketing strategies. The portion of the marketing budget companies spend on paid marketing varies based on the industry type and the goals of their marketing campaign.
The GoodFirms survey gives an idea about the part of the budget businesses spends on paid marketing. 31.9% of businesses spend less than 10% of their budget on paid marketing. 27.7% of businesses spend 11-25% of their marketing budget on paid marketing efforts.
While 21.3% of businesses design their marketing strategies to spend 26%-50% of their marketing budget on paid advertising, 14.9% of organizations spend 51%-75% of their marketing budget on paid advertising. 4.3% of businesses spend a whopping 75%-100% of their marketing budget on paid advertising.
Market Share
Paid Marketing has been a part of businesses' marketing strategies for a while now. There have been several developments in the area with respect to technology and market share. The increasing popularity of paid marketing efforts owing to their benefits and their growth has been evident through their increasing market share.
Search Engine Advertising
According to a report by Statista, the market share of Search Engine Advertising is estimated to be US$ 260 billion for the year 2022. The ad expenditure for the United States is expected to be the highest for the year 2022, which is around UD$116.50 billion. The annual growth rate of this area is expected to be CAGR 10.85% between the years 2022 to 2027 and reach ad spending at US$ 435.20 billion.(6)
Social Media Advertising
For the social media advertising section, ad spending is projected to be USD 226 billion in 2022. The same is projected to be USD 384.90 billion by 2027, with a CAGR of 11.24%. The highest share of spending will be generated from the US, which is expected to be USD 80670 million in the year 2022.(7)
Video Advertising
With the increasing popularity of videos in organizations' marketing strategies, the future will see growth in spending in this segment. Ad spending in this segment is expected to reach USD 180.4 billion in 2022. By the year 2027, the spending in this segment is expected to reach USD 318.80 billion with a CAGR of 12.06%. Out of the total spending, USD 250.10 billion will be generated through mobile.
The US will generate the highest share of the revenue and will account for USD 1050 million in 2022. (8)
Banner Advertising
Banner advertising is commonly used in marketing campaigns by businesses, and this segment is expected to reach USD 155 billion in the year 2022. The market share of this segment is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.91% and reach USD 226.80 billion by the year 2027. Of the total amount, USD 167.80 billion is expected to be generated through mobile by the year 2027.(9)
Benefits of Paid Marketing
Due to the several benefits offered by Paid marketing, many businesses are continually opting to run a paid marketing campaign. Moreover, according to Statista, the United States spent roughly 153 billion on internet advertising, making it the largest advertising medium. The spending on paid advertising is predicted to increase by 30% by the year 2024. Amazon alone spent $32 billion on paid marketing in 2021.(10)
Targets a Specific Audience
Paid marketing has helped 44.7% of businesses showcase their products to their target audience
Paid marketing is a target-specific technique of advertising.
Businesses can choose their target audience based on the demographics like user preferences, internet search histories, age groups, and other factors. Based on the product, businesses can define their target audience. A defined target audience can help organizations decide on their marketing campaign. A well-planned marketing campaign can help businesses improve the utilization of their investments.
Maximizes Reach
34% of organizations have maximized their reach with Paid Marketing
Billions of people use Google daily to get answers to their queries. An ad on Google will definitely bring a business to the notice of billions of people, which is a huge reach. Not only paid search, but social media marketing is also a way to advertise a product.
Having an idea about where the target audience spends most of their time on the internet can help businesses analyze where they can invest for paid marketing and generate valuable leads.
Increased Revenue
Paid Market proved to be budget friendly for 27.6% of surveyees
The fact that PPC ads on any platform show up only for the specified target audience makes it efficient with respect to the costs paid. Also, businesses only have to pay when the user clicks on the ad. Directing the user to the landing page of a website increases the chances of lead generation, and this may pay the business a notable profit.
Using PPC can greatly contribute to bringing in revenue and increasing the ROI for businesses. According to Google, every $1 spent by a business can generate a revenue of $2 with a magnificent ROI of 2:1. (11)
Generate Leads
9.9% of businesses have experienced a generation of leads after opting for paid marketing.
All businesses strive to generate more and more leads that can be later converted. The generation of surplus leads can be a factor that determines the success of a marketing campaign. PPC ads or any other paid marketing formats are characterized to generate faster results. The probability of lead generation increases due to the specific audience and geographic region targeted through paid marketing.
Retargeting the audience that has approached a brand in any possible manner adds to the leads generated.
Creates Brand Awareness
Paid marketing has helped 51.1% of businesses create brand awareness.
Brand awareness is about making people know about a company’s existence. Making your target audience aware of a brand may seem tough for new businesses, however, paid marketing can do the job. The inclusion of paid searches, display ads on the internet, social media ads, or in-app ads will make people more aware of the brand.
Results are Measurable
23.4% of businesses said that paid marketing has offered measurable benefits for them.
When organizations spend considerable money on marketing, they must know if it is invested correctly. Paid marketing gives businesses the opportunity to keep track of the results of their paid marketing efforts. Social media platforms offer analytics tools that give marketers details of the performance of their advertisements. Other metrics to measure marketing results include website traffic, lead generation, conversion rate, and marketing cost per conversion, to name a few.
Platforms like Google ads use a code snippet in the source code of the conversion page, like the “Thank you page,” to track conversions. Assessing the performance of marketing campaigns is beneficial to make changes accordingly and make them more effective.
Immediate Results
Contrary to SEO, which takes considerable time to generate traffic, paid marketing can give businesses faster results. PPC aims to get customers which are not already aware of a business. Organizations can get faster results by targeting maximum users on the net without involving the efforts of their development teams.
Challenges in Paid Marketing
Creating Engaging Content
69.7% of marketers mention that creating engaging content is challenging.
Similar content floating across the web from various brands can make customers lose interest. Content, therefore, keeps evolving and will always remain so. Moreover, amidst declining organic engagement, the requirement for engaging and creative content is more than ever.(12) However, creating it is a huge challenge, and nearly 70% of marketers surveyed by GoodFirms admit it.
The rise in the number of content creators and the amount of content produced on the internet daily is predicted to give rise to an exponential rise of content that will exceed the human capacity to consume that content. This phenomenon is termed Content Shock. The content shock might also be one reason for the depletion of quality content.
“The very best marketers will not only familiarize their audience with their brand but inspire people to feel good about their brand,” says James Smith, Digital Marketing Professional at AZFullForm.
With content's crucial role in paid marketing, engaging and creative content must be the top priority for businesses to reap the maximum benefits of marketing.
Abiding by the Regulations and Data Privacy
31.9% of businesses find paid marketing challenging in terms of abiding by regulations and data privacy
Data privacy has always been an important factor for businesses. Carrying out transactions online has increased the risk of data breaches. Marketers must ensure they are abiding by all the data privacy regulations.
With the increasing rules and regulations on maintaining user data privacy and abiding by all the laws and regulations, marketers must keep marketing strategies compliant with the data privacy regulations.
Mobile-friendly Approach
12.8% of organizations said that maintaining a mobile-friendly approach is challenging
Smartphones have taken over every single person’s life. That makes keeping all the marketing campaigns mobile-friendly necessary. According to Statista, nearly 4.32 billion, which accounts for nearly 90% of the global internet population, use mobile phones to go online. As of April 2022, there are 5 billion internet users, of which 4.7 billion use social media. This indicates that a large portion of internet users prefer using mobile devices to access the internet. (13)
These numbers are crucial to take into account when designing a paid marketing strategy. Also, being accessible through mobile devices increases the chances of an advertisement being noticed. A high number of users accessing social media through their smartphones make it even more important for marketers to have a mobile-friendly approach while designing a paid marketing strategy.
Creating a Paid Marketing Strategy that Includes all the Channels
Creating an omni-channel strategy is challenging for them, said 38.3% of surveyees.
People nowadays access various social media channels to stay updated. Brands must try to accommodate as many channels as possible in their marketing strategy to ensure maximum reach. Relying on a single channel to keep in touch with customers can cause businesses to encounter issues that are difficult to tackle.
Even having expertise in a particular channel can be a failure in situations like the outages that were experienced by Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp in recent times.(14) Businesses must make sure they create an omnichannel marketing strategy.
“In order to improve paid marketing, businesses should consider diverse marketing platforms instead of focusing on just one. This will make sure that you are able to reach more people,” says Rhett Stubbendeck, CEO of LeverageRx
Budget Control and Planning
57.4% of survey participants face challenges in planning and controlling budget
Although a stringent budget is usually a challenge for small or mid-sized businesses, it may also become a problem for large organizations in the future. Paid advertising is more of a need now than an option.
Since the channels for paid marketing are becoming numerous, it is crucial for organizations to utilize the available resources efficiently. Planning the available budget and controlling the expenses on paid marketing is of utmost importance.
Knowing the Customers
Advertising is about presenting a product or service to the right people at the right time. Paid marketing is about seeking the right audience's attention for a brand.
Determining the target audience has, thus, always been a challenge for businesses. Creating engaging content and targeting the appropriate audience with that content is what matters to running a successful marketing campaign.
With the increasing competition in the SEO and paid advertising industry, targeting the correct audience will get even more difficult. Investing money in long-tail keywords and content may help, but it is not sufficient. It is necessary for businesses to know their customers for better sales results.
Tips to Improve Paid Marketing
Paid Marketing has emerged as an important tool to promote the products and services of a business. While several organizations have already adopted paid advertising, many are in the process of applying it. Although paid advertising is growing, there are brands that lack knowledge, which creates hurdles to reaping the benefits of this marketing segment.
With appropriate knowledge and some helpful tips, businesses can ace their paid advertising strategies.
Let us discuss a few important tips for improving paid marketing:
Determine Goals to be Achieved
A marketing goal is what can help businesses measure the impact of their marketing efforts. While opting for paid marketing, a business can consider goals ranging from creating brand awareness to obtaining quality leads.
. Setting the objectives to be achieved from a marketing campaign can:
- Help businesses in deciding the channels that are to be included in the brand's marketing strategy.
- Make a marketing plan successful
- Help brands efficiently utilize the resources
- Reduce waste of invested money
- Provide a framework for tracking marketing efforts
Some of the prominent goals that businesses can consider while defining the objectives of their marketing campaigns include
- Creating Brand Awareness
- Increase Website Traffic
- Generate Quality Leads
- Improve Brand Engagement
- Better Conversions
“The first step to improving your paid marketing is to have a clear understanding of what your marketing goals are. Without this, it will be difficult to determine whether or not your paid marketing efforts are successful”, says Linda Chavez, Seniors Life Insurance Finder.
Research the Target Audience
Paid marketing helps marketers target a specific audience interested in the product or service. Advertising efforts without knowing the target audience reduces the efficiency of the efforts.
Businesses planning to invest in paid marketing are expected to research and know their target audience. The most important factor that can define the target audience is the product being promoted. The target audience selection is based on the section which is more likely to buy the product. The target audience can also be defined based on the behavior of the users, their internet search history, hobbies, likes, and dislikes.
Defining a precise target audience increases the possibility of better conversion rates.
“Advertising needs to be strategic, clients get irritated by the pushy nature of untargetted messages. Rather than forcing irrelevant ads to consumers, one can invest in targeted inbound campaigns and get the right customer.”
Selection of the Marketing Platform
Not all marketing platforms are suitable for every business. While it is important to select the target audience with care, the selection of the marketing platform to promote a brand is equally important.
To choose the right platform, businesses must know where their audience spends most of their time. It also depends on the nature of the product promoted. Other factors that businesses need to consider while choosing a platform are the allocated budget for the campaign (the budget needs to be adequate for the particular platform) and the goals of the campaign.
“If a new social media app gains popularity, it may be worth considering advertising there if it fits with your target audience and campaign goals. This is how TikTok quickly became a major player in the paid marketing world,” states Serg Aspidoff, Founder and CEO of Shoutcart
Proper Budget Planning
A marketing budget is all the money an organization intends to spend on advertising. Paid marketing can be expensive; therefore, having a proper budget for paid marketing becomes necessary.
While budget constraints may not be an issue for large-scale businesses, they can make a difference for small businesses. Having proper budget planning can help organizations keep track of their financial spending and prevent overspending.
It is essential for businesses to consider all the costs associated with driving a paid marketing campaign. Having a proper budget plan can assist businesses in determining their goals and platforms for a successful paid marketing strategy.
“It's best to split your campaign / budget amongst many different unique searches as opposed to one main keyword,” says Paul Lambden, Founder of Forest Design.
Monitor Achieved Results
The success of a marketing campaign can be determined by a number of factors. Knowing the effectiveness of a marketing campaign can help businesses make changes to the strategy as and when needed.
“Once your campaign is live, it is important to monitor your results. This will help you understand what is working and what is not. You can then make changes to improve your results”, says Boris Jabes, CEO & Co-Founder, Census.
The various factors that can be considered to monitor the results of a marketing campaign include tracking conversion rates, click-through rates, return on ad spend(ROAS), monitoring overall website traffic, engagement levels, and return on investments(ROI), to name a few.
Focus on Retargeting
Retargeting is the technique used to approach customers who have previously visited a business's website or shown interest in a particular product or service. Retargeting efficiently increases traffic by approaching customers who have previously shown interest in a particular product or company. It is also a way to keep prospects engaged.
“Advertising takes time to pay off and it's also worth considering retargeting which is a method of showing your ads to previous visitors from previous ads. Retargeting is important because customers are more likely to pay for your product on repeat visits”, explains Jeffrey Miles, Founder/Owner, Jeff Social Marketing.
Retargeting can help businesses keep track of conversions. Retargeting customers can encourage repeat purchases and increase the brand’s loyal customer base.
Optimize the Landing Page
A landing page is where a user is directed when an ad is clicked. The quality of the landing page is one of the factors that is used by search engines to determine the positioning of an ad on the SERP. It is, therefore, important for marketers to develop a high-quality landing page.
A good landing page must have a catchy headline, a great picture that refers to the offer provided by the company, great content, and an offer that is worth it for the users to give their contact information.
A/B Test Research
There is no perfect marketing strategy that can prove successful for every business. With all the factors considered while designing a campaign, it is necessary to test if it is suitable for a particular organization.
An A/B test can help businesses identify the factors that prove beneficial to their advertising campaign. A/B testing or split testing is a procedure carried out by splitting the entire audience, providing them with campaign variations, and analyzing which variation performs better.
“The best tip I can offer to business owners considering getting into paid marketing for the first time is to use multiple iterations of a campaign over short time periods. This will let you A/B test while keeping expenditures cost-efficient. You'll get more results to measure and gain insight from, allowing you to tweak your campaigns for better results”, Jonathan Merry, Co-founder, CryptoMonday.
A/B testing may appear to be a complex, time-consuming, and expensive process for a business. However, it helps marketers understand what aspect of their campaign works better for success. There are multiple options that the business can choose from to analyze the results of the A/B test based on the objective of a marketing strategy.
A/B testing can be carried out for a number of variables like alternatives of design, wordings, design of the CTA, and email texts, to name a few. Marketers might feel the need to test more than one variable. However, all the variables must not be tested at the same time. Testing multiple variables at the same time will make it difficult to understand what changes have given results.
“A/B testing can also help determine which ad elements perform the best by comparing two variations”, says Serg Aspidoff, Founder & CEO, Shoutcart.
A split test must be conducted with a sample size that gives better statistical results. It is also important that the test for both variations is run at the same time except if the factor to be tested is time itself. The factors to be tested and the testing time are determined by the business's nature and target audience.
The significance of the test increases when the test is conducted for a better time period to show considerable results. A longer time period of conducting a test ensures statistically significant results with a larger sample size.
Organizations must read the test results carefully and plan their further actions accordingly. Once the result of one factor is out, and one variation is proved to be better than the other, the test is completed only after the less effective variant is disabled from the campaign. Marketers can then turn to testing some other feature of the campaign as there is always a scope for improvement.
Influencer Marketing
The post-pandemic era has seen a rise in social media marketing. One form of the social media marketing that has shown impressive growth is influencer marketing. Influencer marketing refers to the endorsement of a product through an influencer. An influencer is a public figure who has a huge social media following or is considered an expert in a particular niche.
The effectiveness of influencer marketing can be predicted by the rise of social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. According to a report by Influencer Marketing Hub, the influencer marketing industry is set to grow to USD 16.4 Billion in 2022.(15)
Many organizations are leveraging the benefits of influencers in their paid marketing campaigns, and the trend is here to stay for a long time. The visibility of a brand that paid advertising provides can be amplified to a great extent when businesses collaborate with an influencer. Not only celebrities or bloggers but micro and nano influencers can also help brands boost their reach.
An influencer's review of a product can be considered a review by an expert. Reviews and recommendations are one of the most effective ways to advertise, and influencer marketing can do that for a brand.
Jae Pak, MD of Jae Pak Medical says, “If you’re starting to dabble in influencer marketing, work with micro-influencers. Not only are they more affordable, but research shows their audiences tend to be more engaged.”
The followers of an influencer are a targetted and loyal audience. The promotion of a product or service by such influencers has better chances of lead generation and conversions. Moreover, when collaborating with a number of influencers from various interconnected expertise, businesses can enhance the target audience.
Future of Paid Marketing
The difficulties that brands had to face during the pandemic forced them to think of various solutions to tackle uncertainties. With the transaction being performed online, paid marketing also gained immense popularity. Paid advertising is here to stay for a long time and has a future to grow.
The evolution of paid marketing can be predicted from the fact that the amount spent on paid marketing has been consistently increasing for some years. According to a survey conducted among CMOs by Statista, nearly a quarter of marketing budgets were spent on paid marketing in the year 2022.(16)
There are a few trends that will drive the growth of paid marketing in the future.
The Growing AI Approach
Technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence have now become familiar in many industries. These technologies have proved to be useful for marketing strategies in many revolutionary ways.
Several websites today offer chatbots that help an interactive experience for customers. The implementation of chatbots can serve as a great means to collect valuable information from clients. The use of AI in paid marketing efforts can also provide businesses with faster and deeper market insights.
Integration with AR/VR
Customers expect a more personalized experience when it comes to shopping. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are the technologies that can help businesses to offer that convenient experience to their consumers.
Improving product visualization and the possibility to virtually try products before purchasing will help organizations generate loyal customers. Appropriate AR/VR technology adoption will help brands soar in their sales.
Rise of Social Commerce
The Covid19 pandemic forced several brands to re-strategize their marketing tactics as more transactions were happening online. Targeted marketing picked up well due to the facilities offered by social media platforms. The ease of transaction that social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram are making social commerce more favorable.
The presence of paid advertising on social media platforms will see a rise to improve brand sales.
Video Advertising Will be a Favorite
Video ads happen to be more engaging compared to text advertisements. 96% of users watch explainer videos before purchasing a product or service, while 86% of users said that they were convinced to buy a product or service after watching the brand's video. The sharing of these videos by consumers is a great source of spreading brand awareness.(17)
Moreover, according to a survey conducted by Sprout Social, short-form videos are 2.5 times more engaging than long-form videos, which is a trend to continue. The rise in the consumption of short-form videos will give a boost to the popularity of video advertising.(18)
With the many advantages that video advertising offers, video advertising is the future of Paid Advertising on channels like Youtube, TikTok, Facebook, or Instagram.
Key Findings
- With the increase in internet use, digital marketing has emerged as an important tool for marketers.
- The use of paid marketing in collaboration with organic marketing can reap enormous benefits for businesses.
- Social media marketing is the most preferred method of marketing adopted by around 97.3% of organizations
- While paid search ads form part of marketing campaigns of 72.3% of businesses, 69.5% of businesses have employed social media advertising.
- The pay-per-click costing model used in paid marketing makes paid marketing cost-efficient.
- Paid marketing is beneficial for businesses as it is meant for a targeted audience based on their internet search histories, regions, user behaviors, and interests.
- The highest contributor to the market share of Paid Marketing is expected to be the US by the year 2027.
- Around 31.9% of businesses spend less than 10% of their marketing budget on paid marketing, whereas only 4.3% of businesses spend more than 75% of their marketing budget on paid marketing.
- While paid marketing has helped 44.7% of businesses target a specific audience, 51.1% of businesses have achieved increased brand awareness with paid advertising.
- While adopting paid marketing, 69.7% of businesses find the creation of engaging content challenging, and 57.4% of surveyees face difficulty with budget planning and management.
- Automation technologies like AI integration with AR/VR are the expected future developments in paid advertising.
Conclusion
The success of any business depends on various factors, and marketing is a prominent one of them. The marketing industry has seen different trends over the years. Internet marketing was an all-new invention and offered significant opportunities to all marketers. While organic marketing has its own advantages, paid marketing offers faster and more measurable results. With appropriate marketing efforts directed towards paid and organic marketing, businesses can leverage maximum benefits and earn considerable profits.
With the application of automation and being up-to-date with the current trends of the paid marketing industry, businesses can optimize their marketing campaigns and leverage the advantages of the technology.
We sincerely thank our Research Partners who participated in the survey.
Survey Participants
The data is sourced from a survey of the selected group of 470 organizations worldwide.
The survey participants belonged to the below firmographics:
Company Age
- 0-2 Years (21.5%)
- 3-5 Years (24%)
- 6-8 Years (14.5%)
- 8-10 (16.5%)
- Above 10 years (23.5%)
Countries: 28
Company Size
- Small-size: 42.9%
- Mid-size: 31.5%
- Large Scale: 25.6%
References
- https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/organic-marketing
- https://www.portent.com/services/ppc/pay-per-click-explained
- https://ads.google.com/intl/en_in/home/resources/advanced/
- https://ads.google.com/local-services-ads/
- https://www.wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics/
- https://www.statista.com/outlook/dmo/digital-advertising/search-advertising/worldwide
- https://www.statista.com/outlook/dmo/digital-advertising/social-media-advertising/worldwide
- https://www.statista.com/outlook/dmo/digital-advertising/video-advertising/worldwide
- https://www.statista.com/outlook/dmo/digital-advertising/banner-advertising/worldwide
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/191926/us-ad-spending-by-medium-in-2009/
- https://economicimpact.google.com/methodology/
- https://www.rivaliq.com/blog/social-media-industry-benchmark-report/#title-live-benchmarks
- https://www.statista.com/topics/779/mobile-internet/#dossierKeyfigures
- https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/04/technology/facebook-down.html
- https://influencermarketinghub.com/influencer-marketing-benchmark-report/
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/254393/allocation-of-marketing-budgets-worldwide-by-channel/
- https://www.wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics/
- https://media.sproutsocial.com/uploads/The-Sprout-Social-Index-Edition-XVIII_US-Forecast.pdf?mkt_tok=NTAxLVBUVy05MzgAAAGFu6GmbYZzH3329hQ5NqqAUe2yoesuCMBPzJFzgVq-j1QAfPNf109dWlSdxl3KluBKkss1Fzu0_hf99erlyBEU2uhAX7qZepHjpvbeYVzSGnA
