Paid Promotions:A Getting Started Guide for Small Businesses

Paid promotions and online advertising are a great way for small

businesses to increase their brand exposure and drive more traffic

to their websites.

So why aren’t more small business owners taking advantage of this tactic?

?

?So why aren’t more small business owners taking advantage of this tactic?

1. Budget Limitations

2. Intimidation

Small businesses have small budgets.

As a result, they tend to lean towards low-cost solutions like Search

Engine Optimization and social media marketing, instead.

Some business owners hold off on paidpromotions because they don’t feelconfident jumping in.

The good news is, we can help with this one! Click on to learn

everything you need to know to get started with paid promotion

today.

Glossary of TermsPPC: Pay Per Click • SEM: Search Engine Marketing • CPC: Cost Per Click

CTR: Click Through Rate • CPM: Cost Per (1000) Impression(s)

CPL/CPA: Cost Per Lead/Cost Per Acquisition • Display Advertising

Destination URL/Landing Page • Conversion • Impressions

Campaign Reach • Facebook Ads • Custom Audience

PPC: Pay Per ClickThis term describes a cost structure used by many common

advertising networks in which the advertiser only pays when their

ad is actually acted on. This helps advertisers manage their budgets

successfully

Glossary of Terms

SEM: Search Engine MarketingAlthough this term technically does refer to both paid search engine

advertising as well as organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO),

most in the industry use SEM interchangeably with “paid search”.

These are the ads the show up above and beside organic search

results on sites like Google.

Glossary of Terms

CPC: Cost Per ClickThis is the rate at which you are charged for the clicks on your ads.

This will vary by search engine, network, or platform, and is usually

based on the top price or bid you enter that you’re willing to pay for

each click, and is affected by the other top competitors.

Glossary of Terms

CTR: Click Through RateThis can be found be dividing the number of impressions by the

number of clicks. Or, the rate at which the people who saw your ad

actually clicked on it. If you have a high click through rate, you know

you’ve got an effective ad. If the rate is low, you might want to

reassess the copy, imagery, and subject of your ad, as well as the

audience to which you are serving it.

Glossary of Terms

CPM: Cost Per (1000) Impression(s)As opposed to Cost Per Click, this pay structure measure refers to

the cost you pay per every 1000 impressions (views) your ad gets.

Glossary of Terms

CPL/CPA: Cost Per Lead/Cost PerAcquisitionDepending on the goal of your campaign, you may measure either

of these things. If your goal is to obtain leads (customer contact

information that you can use in the future) that would count as an

‘acquisition’ for you. However if your goal is to get people to

purchase something, you’d only be counting the actual acquisition.

Glossary of Terms

Display Advertising:In the online sense of the term, this refers to advertisements that

appear throughout the web (social media sites, other websites) and

usually include copy, a graphic, and link to a website.

Glossary of Terms

Destination URL/Landing Page:This is the link that your ad directs people to when they click on it.

This can be a website’s homepage, a particular page or article on a

site, a social media profile, or a landing page that was created

specifically for the ad in question to direct to. This is a good way to

control the analytics of a certain ad – if the only traffic to that page

is coming from an ad, it’s easy to get insights about those visitors

and the success of the campaign.

Glossary of Terms

Conversion:Depending on the goals of your campaign, a conversion can mean

many different things. If your goal was to get someone to visit a

landing page and fill out a form, your ‘conversion’ is counted when

that email address is captured. If your goal is to have someone

purchase a product from your web store, the conversion won’t be

counted until they check out.

Glossary of Terms

Impressions:The number of times that your advertisement is seen by the

selected audience. This does not require that they click to be

counted, only that it’s served up to them.

Glossary of Terms

Campaign Reach:The number of unique viewers who saw your advertisement

(usually used by Facebook).

Glossary of Terms

Facebook Ads:These can take a number of forms, showing up in the user’s news

feed, or down the right hand side of their browser, or in their

mobile news feed. They often link to the advertiser’s Facebook

page, but can certainly have a destination URL that is a website or

landing page as well.

Glossary of Terms

Custom Audience:A relatively new option on Facebook, this ad strategy allows you to

upload a list of email addresses you have collected in your database

to Facebook and serve ads to the people on that list who have

Facebook profiles. This is a great way to target your most engaged

potential customers.

Glossary of Terms

Now that you know the lingo, you’re almost ready to start your first campaign.

As with every marketing strategy, the first step is a great plan. Run

through this paid promotion checklist and set yourself up for success.

Paid Promotion Checklist

Step 1: Identify Your Goals

Step 2: Identify Your Audience

Step 3: Choose Your Media

Step 4: Set Your Budget

Step 5: Prepare Your Assets

Step 6: Pick A Landing Page

Step 7: Choose A Provider

Step 8: Monitor Your Progress

Step 9: Analyze The Results

Step 10: Take Notes, Make Plans

Step 1: Identify Your Goals

It will be hard to gauge the success of your paid promotion if you

don’t first determine your goals for the campaign. Do you want to

drive more traffic to your website? Get more likes on Facebook?

Increase awareness of your brand? Make a note before you get

started.

Paid Promotion Checklist

Step 2: Identify Your Audience

This is an off-shoot of something you probably have already done

for your business – identifying the ideal customer for you and

thinking about how you speak to them. The audience you choose

for your paid promotions may be the same general audience, or

perhaps a subset of that audience. For example, instead of

women with college degrees in the Washington, DC area, your

campaign might target women with college degrees in the

Washington, DC area who are between the ages of 25 and 35.

Paid Promotion Checklist

Step 3: Choose Your Media

This is the part where you decide how you’ll best read the audience

you identified above. Should you try Facebook advertising? Maybe

display ads on specific websites they might visit? Or perhaps search

engine marketing (SEM) is the best vehicle for your message. The

answer depends on the answers to ‘what’ and ‘whom’ that you

determined above.

Paid Promotion Checklist

Step 4: Set Your Budget

The cost and pricing structures vary across digital promotion types,

and you’ll often have options for how you’d like to pay within one

medium. For example, you can choose today pay per click, or pay

per impression (or 1,000 impressions, technically). So depending on

the money you have set aside for this, and the goal of your

promotion, you’ll need to choose the one that fits you best.

Paid Promotion Checklist

Step 5: Prepare Your Assets

Whether you choose display advertising on websites, Facebook

advertising, or search engine marketing, there are certain creative

assets you’ll need. Prepare the images you might use, logos, coupon

or offer codes, and the copy (text) in this step so you have easily

access it as you’re creating your promotions.

Paid Promotion Checklist

Step 6: Pick A Landing Page

One of the things that your ads will include is a link to…something.

It’s up to you to decide what it is. Again, this will be determined by

the goal of your campaign, but choices include your website’s home

page, a certain product in your web store, your Facebook page, or a

dedicated landing page you create on your website just for this

purpose.

Paid Promotion Checklist

Step 7: Choose A Provider

Depending on the type of ad you want to run, you have some

options for providers. These include Google for SEM, Facebook for,

well, Facebook, and BuySellAds.com for display advertising on

websites. There are lots of options out there though, so a little

research and pick the one that’s best for your purposes, goals, and

budget.

Paid Promotion Checklist

Step 8: Monitor Your Progress

Once you start your campaign, most providers will offer some kind

of insights tool to help you track the success of your campaign.

Many will also allow you to make tweaks to the message, creative,

or audience as you go along so you can optimize your results if you

see something that’s not working.

Paid Promotion Checklist

Step 9: Analyze The Results

Using an analytics tool like Google Analytics or Stats (if you have a

Webs website), you can easily see the effect your paid promotion

had on your website. If you ran a promotion solely for social media,

you can check your metrics with Facebook Insights, but hopeful-

ly you’ll also see some more referrals from Facebook back to your

website if traffic on social media increased significantly. Did you get

more traffic to your homepage? To specific page on your site? Did

anyone redeem offer codes? Did you sell more of a certain product?

Paid Promotion Checklist

Step 10: Take Notes, Make Plans

Once you’ve collected your insights and analytics, it’s time to assess

the overall success of your campaign and decide if it’s a tactic you

should include in your small business’s marketing plan going

forward. Measuring the success of paid promotions depends on

several factors, including your goals, your budget, the lifetime value

of new customers, and the cost to acquire each one. You can learn

more about the formulas involved in these calculations in the article

link above.

Paid Promotion Checklist

Measuring Results

The often-overlooked final step of anysuccessful marketing campaign is to measure the results. Do yourself a favor and figure out how you’re going to measure success before you even get started. When you’re doneevaluate your results and determine if paid promotion is the right tactic for you!

1. Determine the Value of Your Average Customer

The first step in judging paid promotion success is understanding

the value of your average customer. For someone who buys your

product or service, what is the average order value? What percent

of customers order again in the future?

Let’s say your average customer order is $100 and 50% of customers

reorder at the same average order size of $100. Your average

customer would be worth $150 = $100 + (50% X $100).

Measuring Results

2. Track the Traffic That Your SocialCampaign is Generating for Your Business

There are several ways that you can determine how much social

traffic you are driving with a paid promotion. One of the easiest is

to extend a special offer through your social channels that can be

redeemed with a specific code or phrase.

For example, if you’re a florist and want to track traffic generated by

a social media promotion on mother’s day, offer a 10% discount for

customers who use the promo code “MOM2014” on your website or

at your physical store. After the promotion ends, you’ll be able to

total up all of the purchases that were generated.

Measuring Results

3. Compare Earnings and Expenses

The final step of determining success is comparing how much you

earned with the promotion to how much you spent in social media

advertising.

Earnings: Average Customer Value X Number of Customers

Expenses: Social Media Advertising Expense + Any Discounts or

Free Giveaways

A good rule of thumb for any campaign is to have your Earnings greater than twice your Expenses. This builds in a margin of error

for the above calculations and provides more confidence that social

media truly is working for your business!

Measuring Results

Now that you have all the tools you needto run a successful paid promotion

campaign, it’s time to dive in.

Good luck!

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all over the Web?

Visit www.Pagemodo.com.