The Real Reason Paid Ads Work

There are a wide variety of digital marketing tactics, and there are new methods and strategies constantly developing within the field. Among all of them, paid advertising is known to be one of the most effective, but one of the most complex to effectively integrate.

What makes paid ads so incredibly powerful for a business is not only the capability they hold on their own, but even more so the incredibly large potential they hold when leveraged with other strategies and themselves! In this short article I’m going to explain how and why this is the case, and how anyone reading this can take advantage of this opportunity.

?? How paid advertising boosts itself

One of the most frustrating statements I hear speaking to potential clients is that their last agency said they only needed to use one platform and that they shouldn’t try anything else.

Not once in my life have I ever heard someone successful say “don’t diversify”. Just take a step back, picture yourself going all in on Facebook only and next month another ridiculous update comes out and your ads completely stop converting. Or instead you only use TikTok and a new privacy policy comes out restricting the platform from taking data from users in other countries. What if instead you had already had a presence on a variety of platforms including Facebook and Instagram, TikTok, Google, and LinkedIn? Now you would already have warmed up ad accounts in a variety of places, and you’d simply reallocate your budget to the high performing accounts.

I mention this scenario because I dealt with this first hand. One of our clients got their ad account shut down on Facebook right before Black Friday for virtually no reason! Had we not diversified our clients digital marketing presence to other platforms, they would have potentially missed out on hundreds of thousands in revenue. We were able to reallocate their Facebook budget to their Google budget and wound up making just as much if not more than we originally estimated. The funniest part was that two days later Facebook gave the account back and lifted the restriction with no explanation as if it never even happened.

In addition to understanding the general importance of diversification, using multiple channels of paid advertising is also a great way to make the most out of winning audiences, incredible media content, and killer copy. At our agency we take full advantage of when we find and create incredible audiences for testing and retargeting. Along with this, we can use winning images and copy for platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Google, and videos/GIFs for TikTok, Facebook, Instagram without having to create new content every single time for each platform.

?? How paid advertising leverages organic marketing

When I started Adamant Media, I actually only offered paid advertising. I was fortunate enough to get some incredible results for some awesome clients and because of this, I had the opportunity to scale pretty quickly for the field. What I quickly realized was that I could make my clients even more if I learned how to help them capitalize on other elements of their growth too.

As we scaled their ads and continued driving highly targeted traffic to their brand, a natural bi-product was the cultivation of an extremely warm subscribers list just waiting for elite email and SMS marketing. It was for this reason that I decided to build out an entire creative team dedicated to email and SMS marketing at the agency.

Not only does paid advertising leverage organic marketing, but organic marketing can also help leverage paid advertising! Good organic traffic (typically SEO and social media/digital presence) can provide incredible data for retargeting campaigns and audience testing. Likewise, if your brand has a good conversion rate it means that every potential customer we drive to your website is more likely to make a purchase (if it’s low consider learning more about conversion rate optimization which I mention in other posts).

?? Are you ready?

Just as I say with everything, diversification is key!

I would never suggest trying to do all of these things at once, nor would I suggest trying to start advertising on multiple platforms at once. I suggest setting thresholds and benchmarks with well defined KPIs to make sure you know when you will deem something successful.

If you're feeling lost as to what exactly your business might need, I would suggest considering a few elements:

• What kind of monthly traffic and revenue are you currently generating?
• If you're monthly traffic is on the low end how is your SEO?
• If you have decent traffic, what is your conversion rate?
• Do you have a social media presence?

If you can check off most of these points above, then the question is are you ready to utilize paid traffic and email/SMS marketing? At our agency we analyze what your brand needs most, even if it isn’t something we offer at our agency. For our clients, we develop unique roadmaps and strategies for each brand, and we set benchmark goals that we reach before expanding to additional strategies and methods. When we can confidently check off these types considerations and optimization requirements, we can step into our primary services and rapidly scale our client's brands.

The most important piece of advice I can give is to consider exactly what your brand needs, and to stay consistent with your efforts. Don’t fall victim to shiny object syndrome! Make sure to stick to your plan, follow through with your goals, and constantly diversify your efforts as you begin to scale!

I am always happy to answer any questions you have, so feel free to shoot me a message or leave a comment below! ??

-- Scott Caputo

CEO & Founder at Adamant Media