Paid strategies can achieve a lot of marketing objectives and they often reach that success in a fraction of the time compared to organic and unpaid methods.
Shopping ads, for example, directly connect customers to new products. And, they simplify the buying process to help encourage successful purchases. This sort of paid tactic doesn’t just result in new sales, but it sometimes creates a loyal customer that will continue to be a source of revenue for the time to come!
2. Brand Awareness
However, because of the paid aspect of these marketing strategies, it is important to have a clear goal in mind. This will keep your paid strategies on target and ensure that they help you reach your marketing objectives, rather than unnecessarily wasting spending.
This discussion will look at 10 of the overarching marketing goals that can be achieved through paid tactics.
1. Revenue & Sales
It’s no secret that increasing sales, generating revenue and otherwise producing a healthier bottom line is the primary objective for most marketers. Paid strategies can directly produce sales and help create new sources of revenue. This is perfect for marketers that want to make money as a result of their paid marketing strategies.
Shopping ads, for example, directly connect customers to new products. And, they simplify the buying process to help encourage successful purchases. This sort of paid tactic doesn’t just result in new sales, but it sometimes creates a loyal customer that will continue to be a source of revenue for the time to come!
2. Brand Awareness
Next to generating sales, perhaps the second most common paid marketing goal is to increase brand awareness. Paying to increase the normal reach of your marketing efforts is why many marketers choose this route over organic means.
Increasing your brand awareness leads to many benefits that can be crucial when launching a new product or starting a company. If you need to get the word out, this is your goal.
Increasing your brand awareness leads to many benefits that can be crucial when launching a new product or starting a company. If you need to get the word out, this is your goal.
3. Establishing Thought Leadership
While brand awareness aims to get you noticed, thought leadership establishes your credibility and authority in a given space. In other words, once audiences are aware of your brand and its offerings, how do you showcase that you’re the best choice?
Thought leadership marketing is formed by creating content and events that help showcase your knowledge and expertise in your field. Displaying a high level of experience and know-how makes a brand more appealing over competitors.
By paying to promote thought leadership pieces, you can draw more people to your content and grow your reputation as an authoritative business in the industry.
4. Clicks & Website Traffic
In the Digital Age, one of the supreme challenges is diverting Internet users from their normal activities to your website. For example, paid search marketing hopes to drive search users from Google (or another search engine) to the target website. Similarly, the goal of social media marketing is to bring audiences on Facebook, Instagram, etc. to your website.
Increasing website traffic means having more potential opportunities to convert those visitors into customers. Thus, paying to generate more website traffic can positively impact a number of other objectives, including sales!
5. Generating Leads
When trying to draw traffic or generate brand awareness, the purpose isn’t always sales related. Generating lists of leads is an important step in the marketing process, especially for B2B companies. Without an expansive list of leads, these businesses don’t have any new opportunities to investigate.
Lead generation can be performed through paid marketing by connecting your sponsored posts or ads to email lists or other signup forms. It’s about getting people interested in a subject and then following up on that interest with additional materials later on.
Often, generating leads is the first stage in the marketing funnel. You should use this marketing goal if you’re trying to test the interest in a new product or need to establish contacts in a particular industry.
6. Product/Brand Consideration
Competition is an inevitable factor in digital marketing. Whether pursuing paid or organic tactics, your messages are always going to be contested by efforts from the competition. Your competition should also experience the same pressure from you!
With this marketing goal, the objective is to ensure that your products or brand appear alongside the competition. This creates the opportunity for consumers to make a fast decision on which brand or product is best.
This strategy is ideal for product-focused companies that have a clear marketing advantage (a cheaper price, more options, better quality, etc.)
7. Competitive Outranking
On the topic of competition, some marketers enjoy an aggressive approach to their marketing that aims to outrank the competition in paid channels. On Google Ads, for example, there are only a handful of potential search ad spots available.
The outranking approach pays more to ensure that your ad messages placed in the limited real estate and the competition do not. By continuously outranking the competition, you can silence their marketing messages and ensure the continuous visibility of your own.
8. Maximize ROI
Some businesses aren’t fortunate enough to have the budget necessary for outranking and other expensive tactics. These companies have to pay close attention to how much money is being earned on every dollar spent. Focusing on max ROI will help you stretch your marketing budget further and only focus on strategies that are very likely to produce results.
Over time, these positive returns can help you grow your marketing budget. Eventually, you may have enough to pursue other goals.
9. Retargeting
Another persistent challenge facing marketers is how to re-engage past customers and leads that have shown interest but disappeared. These are valuable audiences because they’ve already interacted with your brand and demonstrated interest. Thus, they are more likely to convert than fresh leads.
With paid marketing, you can place messages in front of audiences that you’ve engaged before. This allows you to follow them across the Internet and remind them to come to check out what’s new.
I have applied this technique on a few of my websites but it was an amazing experience on the following terms: Best smartwatch, Best crossbow, Best vacuum cleaner.
10. App Promotion
If your business has created an app, drawing downloads to that program is a high-value target. Apps can present an entire brand experience with more function and useability than a website. Yet, encouraging audiences to go through the rigorous process of downloading and using that program is a massive obstacle.
While you can’t pay for app downloads, you can place paid advertisements that showcase the functions of your app and encourage people to give it a try.
Conclusion
You don’t have to settle on a single goal for your paid marketing strategy. But, each paid tactic you perform should have a clear objective that supports one of your goals. This approach protects you from ineffective paid messages that don’t produce the results you need. And, you’ll have a much better idea of what paid tactics are worth your investment!