July 24, 2024 • 23 mins
On this episode of 1000 Ways to Market Your Business, Samantha Scott, APR, is joined by Paige Johnson, Marketing Assistant at PTE and a Meta Certified Media Buying Professional. The two discuss why the saying "if you build it, they will come" doesn't necessarily apply to digital marketing.
The episode explores ways to leverage paid strategies to grow your business, including advertising with Meta, LinkedIn campaign management, and Google pay-per-click.
Have a question or feedback to share? Visit www.getpushing.com or one of our many social media channels. We look forward to hearing from you.
#marketing #business #communication #strategy
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Samantha (00:05):
Welcome to the next episode of 1000 Ways to Market
Your Business.
I'm Samantha Scott APR.
And today we're talking allthings paid and with me, I have
Paige Johnson.
Paige (00:13):
Hi, I am Paige.
I am PTE's Marketing Assistant.
I am certified in Meta mediabuying so that's going to be
media buying on Meta platformsthat has Facebook, Instagram,
and WhatsApp.
But today we're also going totalk a little bit more about the
other strategies with paid withPPC, LinkedIn campaign
management.
So we'll dive into a little bitof everything with paid.
Samantha (00:36):
Yes, awesome.
I'm so glad to talk about thisbecause I think people for a
long time thought, you know, ifthey build it, they will come,
right?
And it's still important to haveorganic elements in your
marketing strategy online.
But you really have to marrythat with some paid to see the
performance that you want.
So why don't we talk first aboutwhy leverage paid?
Why should that be part of yourstrategy?
(00:57):
Aside from just wanting moreeyeballs on your content.
Paige (01:00):
Right.
And I do agree.
I think there is a good way tobalance the organic and paid,
but there is a lot of benefitfrom doing paid.
And it can be done with avariety of businesses.
You know, it can be smallbusinesses, it can be huge
companies.
So the beauty in it first andforemost is that if you want a
wider reach, wider visibilityfor your brand, a bigger
audience overall, when you putpaid behind your marketing
(01:24):
strategy, you're going toachieve those results, not only
quicker, but on a larger scale.
The reach of organic has a limitand it takes more time.
So what you can do with paid canhappen at an exponential pace
compared to that.
Both are important.
You should use your strategy forsocial, behind paid, what works
organically.
(01:45):
But I think first and foremost,to summarize that, is that when
you put money behind yourmarketing strategy with paid
media, it just accelerates thereach and the amount of people
that your brand gets in frontof.
Samantha (01:58):
Yeah, I like to say it's short game, long game,
right?
So, short game, I need instantgratification, then you
definitely should put some moneybehind it.
Long game is you build yourcontent, you build your
following and your audience andyour engagement.
But I also want to touch onsomething you said about
audience and reach.
So, we're not saying that paidjust means, oh, let's put this
out to the masses.
No, you can get very specificwith targeting in your paid, and
(02:20):
I know you're going to touch onthat some more.
But I think that's reallyimportant to keep in mind.
If you have specific audiencesand people that you need to
reach or you want to reach foryour business, paid's a great
way because organic is literallythat.
It's out of your control.
Anybody can see it and it'spresented to anyone that gets
connected with it.
So, a lot more control with paidthan with the organic.
(02:41):
It's also really measurable,which we all know, I love data.
If you listen to any of ourother podcasts or if you listen
to my LinkedIn series, you hearme talk about data a lot.
So it's highly, highlymeasurable and that's really
important.
So you can determine your ROI,the return on your investment,
and that's through any of these.
So whether it's on social mediaor PPC, which is pay per click,
Google, Bing, et cetera.
(03:02):
So, why don't we talk throughthe tools?
I know there's three main ones.
Maybe we'll think of some otherones that we want to talk about
too.
But let's start with the firstone.
I think it's kind of the 800pound gorilla, the most easy
entry for most (03:13):
Facebook.
Paige (03:15):
Right.
So Meta Ads Manager and theBusiness Manager is kind of a
comprehensive tool, a specificplace where you can manage
everything within Facebook,Instagram, and WhatsApp.
Within these, you can run thosepaid ads.
What's really important when youdo that is that you set the
objective that you really,really want to see your results.
So we talk about conversionswhen we began and that paid ads
(03:38):
really can help you get thoseconversions.
And a common mistake that peoplemake with paid ads is selecting
the wrong conversion for whattheir objective is.
So, those are going to beawareness, traffic, engagement,
leads, and app promotion.
A lot of times people will say,I'm not an e-commerce business,
so why do I need to run paidads?
(03:59):
I'm not selling anything online.
So this is where the objectivescome in, where it's very common
to use paid ads to bring thatawareness, engagement, get
people to your website to learnabout you.
Samantha (04:11):
So we really want to leverage paid strategically, and
I think you're so smart to startwith objectives because that's
what we should be doing with allof our marketing is what's the
end goal?
What are we trying toaccomplish?
What behavior are we trying todrive out of the consumers or
people that are looking at ourads?
And of course targeting as well,which I know you'll talk about
that too.
And I think that's so importantis making sure your ads are set
(04:32):
up with the correct objectiveand then the rest will follow
the creative, the setup, thecopy, everything else.
Paige (04:37):
Right.
So yeah, the first thing isdefinitely making sure that you
have the strategy behind yourpaid ads.
You should never just run an adand see what happens.
It starts with that, what do Ireally want out of putting money
behind something?
So that's again, the, theawareness, the sales, the leads
at promotion.
And then from there, like yousaid, we move into audience
targeting.
The beauty of audience targetingis that you can look
(05:00):
geographically, you can go, youknow, all of the U.S.
You can narrow down based onage, gender, likes, dislikes, if
they're married, if they havekids, and so you can really
narrow down your audience asneeded to put money behind ads
that you really want your peopleto see, that you want your
audience to see, rather than,like you said, with organic,
(05:23):
it's often just kind of seeingwhat ends up happening and who
it ends up reaching.
Samantha (05:28):
It's so unfortunate sometimes we hear about these
kind of spray and prayapproaches, like,"Oh, I'm just
going to put it out there andhope somebody picks it up." And
you know, we've actually workedwith clients in the past who
have had somebody else doingtheir work, and I'm not saying
that we're perfect, but, youknow, we'll come in and they'll
say,"Oh, well, they were sayingwe're getting, you know, these
many thousands of impressions orthis many leads." But maybe it's
a company that can only servicein their market, right?
(05:48):
So they can only work here, butthey're getting people out of
state that are looking at theircontent.
Well, that's not valuable leads.
Those are not valuable leads.
So we want to make sure thatyou're very targeted, very
specific.
And the other thing I want totouch on is budget, too, right?
And these objectives.
So you don't have to havethousands of dollars to do this.
You can spend$20 on boosting apost and see results.
You can spend 200, 2,000, sure,but don't feel like you have to
(06:11):
go into it with a huge budget.
The other thing is with yourbudget is you can spread it out.
And so if you're differentiatingyour objectives, maybe you have
two ads that are running.
Nothing says you have to haveone ad that covers every single
thing.
So maybe you have one that's forawareness, one that's for lead
gen or website generation.
There's lots of ways that youcan do it and you can run more
than one ad at one time.
Paige (06:31):
Right.
You can have a small budget or alarge budget.
And I've seen, you know, budgetsof$50 get 40,000 impressions and
budgets with$500 get 40,000impressions.
I think the important thing,though, is that when you're
looking at the results, is thatyou know what it means and you
ask yourself what the why is.
A lot of times, numbers lookgood, you might have a large
(06:54):
reach, but
Samantha (06:55):
No action was taken.
Paige (06:56):
Yes, nobody actually went to your website.
So I think a huge thing withpaid is being curious, wanting
to know the why, and alwaystesting and seeing what's
working with your audience, bothorganically and paid, but
specifically on paid, whetherthat's A/B testing, different
types of creatives, narrowing orwidening your audience, looking
at how they're responding, why,what's working, what's not
(07:19):
working.
It's never a good idea to justthrow money and come back in a
month when the budget is goneand say how'd it go.
You should, I think, alwaysmonitor, refine it.
In real time.
In real time.
Yeah.
Samantha (07:32):
So I want to peel apart a couple of things you
said for those of you who mightnot be as familiar with what
we're talking about.
So impressions.
Impressions are the number ofpeople that have been exposed to
your ad or your organic content.
Eyeballs on it, essentially.
But what we're talking abouthere in terms of conversions or
clicks is did someone takeaction?
If not, you're really justlooking at a popularity contest.
(07:52):
Oh, that feels good that, youknow, 4,000 people saw this, but
if they didn't take an action,they didn't click to go to your
website, they didn't want tolearn more, they didn't play the
video, they didn't do whateverbehavior you want, it's really
meaningless at the end of theday.
I mean, there's some awarenessbenefit, but, that's something
really, really important to keepin mind.
The other thing with targetingis you can get very specific and
so your budget reflects that aswell.
(08:13):
Facebook tends to be very, verycost effective, and you can
really track what's the clickthrough rate, what's the average
cost per click, so that's CTRand CPC, click through rate and
cost per click.
Those are important things tolook at, and absolutely, what's
happening as a result?
Did someone see it and then acton it?
And then what did they do as aresult of that?
(08:34):
Because we don't want to justlead the horse to water.
We want that horse to drink.
And that's why reporting andreviewing your analytics is so
important.
And to your point, I willreiterate, because I think it's
so very important, is you haveto monitor in real time.
It's not set it and forget it.
Oh, okay, I put it in place andthen at the end of the month
I'll check on it.
Because if something's bombing,you want to make sure you stop
that bleed immediately.
(08:54):
Or if something's going really,really well, why not pour more
fuel on that flame?
So make sure you're checkingyour campaigns mid month,
throughout the campaign, andmake adjustments as needed.
Paige (09:03):
And I will say too, part of the beauty of Meta, before we
move into PPC, that you justreminded me, is that we can
target with audiences interests,location, and everything, but we
can also deliberately targetpeople in the funnel for if they
visited our page, they visitedour website, they've liked
something previously.
So we get to revisit peoplewhere they're at.
Samantha (09:25):
Yeah, remarketing.
That's a great point, Paige.
So remarketing, think of aproduct or a service that you've
looked for.
Maybe you were looking for apair of shoes, you didn't
purchase them, but now you'regetting served ads over and over
again for these shoes.
That's remarketing.
You are a warm lead.
So that company is trying tosell you those shoes and that's
a really great point.
Paige (09:42):
Yeah.
And you don't have that abilitywith organic.
I mean, usually people who seeyour content organically are
going to maybe be more likely tointeract with it or more loyal.
But when you do this audiencetargeting and you're able to
find people who have showed alittle bit of interest and then,
bring them back.
That's really the beauty of paidis that you're targeting
(10:03):
intentionally and, specifically.
Samantha (10:06):
And to that point, you can segment people that are
already familiar with your brandor like your page and those that
don't.
So that's also helpful.
So if you've got a campaignthat's really targeted at
capturing new customers, well,you want to exclude everybody
that already knows about you.
Don't spend your money on them,they already know you.
So make sure you're looking atthat audience segmentation as
well.
Paige (10:25):
Yeah, definitely, something that's interesting is
that you can exclude people,include specific people, and
then you can do groups of peoplethat look like the people that
you want to include.
Samantha (10:34):
Yes.
Lookalike audiences.
Talk about that.
Paige (10:36):
So that's really interesting is that, with the
software for Meta, they can makean audience that looks just like
the one that you want to target.
Maybe it's a email list orsomeone who has interacted with
your page, Metas AI essentiallycan make a clone, but it's a
whole new group of people andit's really effective in
targeting people that are goingto be likely to engage with your
(10:59):
brand to use those lookalikeaudiences.
You don't want your ads or yourcampaigns to compete with
themselves.
So it's nice to have anothergroup of people that you have
not yet targeted, but would bevery similar to your audience.
Samantha (11:13):
Yeah.
So to translate that, because wenerd out on this stuff all the
time, what she's saying is youcan input demographic data.
So say you have a list of yourtop 10 best customers or even a
larger list, right?
What's some information aboutthem?
So, you know, demographicinformation, location, all that
kind of stuff, you put that invia their email list or what
have you and Facebook runs thatagainst the millions and
(11:34):
billions of other people usingit to find other people that are
just like them, and to marketthose folks because they're most
likely to behave in the same wayas your best audience.
Paige (11:43):
Right.
Yes.
That was a better simplifiedversion.
And while we're on this topic,actually, it reminded me more of
the AI and I think a commonmisconception with running paid
ads or I think in social mediain general, is using AI to
optimize everything.
I think a lot of people see...
Samantha (12:00):
Be very careful.
Paige (12:02):
See like that, Facebook, for example, will say you can
use AI to optimize your budget,to optimize your creative, to
optimize your audiencetargeting.
And so I think it's a commonmisconception that you should
just hand it over and let AI runwith it.
Samantha (12:16):
Don't do that.
Paige (12:17):
For campaign budgeting, it can be very effective.
For example, you have$1,000 andit's going to distribute the
budget to the audience that isreceiving it better or to the ad
that's receiving it better.
It can be useful, but it alsomakes you lose a little bit of
the control that you have.
And then with the audiencetargeting, the software can
(12:39):
reach beyond who you want totarget, which can be good, but
then it's, do you want yourbudget to go to people who don't
really fit your targetdemographics and audiences?
And then one step further, youcan use AI to optimize your
creative, where then it can kindof touch your copy, put
headlines,
Samantha (12:58):
change graphics,
Paige (12:58):
change graphics, where it might work with some cases, but
it all goes back to the originalstrategy of like, what is your
brand voice and do you want tobe received in a different way
for every audience member, or?
Samantha (13:12):
Well, and I would also say brand consistency.
Right.
And control, you know, andremember too, AI is learning.
So there's a lot it can do.
Like I think your example of thebudget, how it optimizes budget,
it's really good at that.
Right.
But the creative updates, atleast as of now, in early 2024,
it's not quite there yet.
So you have to be very careful.
We've had an experience where wetrialed it, and what it came up
(13:35):
with was way off brand and wewould never recommend that.
So, trial and error to a degree,but always be very careful and
monitor, which is also why youhave to keep an eye on your
campaigns.
Paige (13:44):
Yes, and with monitoring, even I've seen recently that
I'll go in and there's two adsin an ad set, one is getting 75
percent of the budget and one isgetting 25.
I mentioned asking the whyearlier, it's getting more of
the budget, but is it gettingproportionately the right amount
of clicks and actions?
Samantha (14:01):
Are the results matching the budget?
Paige (14:04):
And so that would be a scenario where I might not
listen to the AI and turn one ofthe ads off and let it kind of
level itself out.
Ultimately AI is a great tool, Ijust think that before you use
it, you should know the limitsand the capabilities.
Samantha (14:18):
And as I have often said, speaking on the topic of
AI, it still requires the humanelement.
There's some human logic that itjust isn't capable of yet.
And to wrap up this Metaconversation, I would just add
one other thing, which is, youcan run simultaneous ads on
Facebook and Instagram, but justkeep in mind that may not be the
best play for your brand orbusiness and realize that while
(14:41):
you might have some overlap inyour Facebook and Instagram
audiences, there's probablygoing to be some differences
too.
And the etiquette, the style ofFacebook content versus
Instagram content is different,so keep that in mind, what works
well on Facebook may not work aswell on Instagram or vice versa.
So don't always take the easyroute and just hit the button to
make it go on both.
(15:02):
Keep that in mind.
Paige (15:03):
100 percent agree.
And I think going off of that,moving into LinkedIn campaign
manager, this is a platform thatis not a part of Meta, but
thinking about where you want tomeet your audience and how you
want to speak to them on whichchannel.
LinkedIn campaign manager isvery similar in layout and
organization as Meta, but ofcourse it's on LinkedIn where
(15:25):
people are in a networking,trusting, professional mindset.
If you're talking to otherpeople in business, LinkedIn is
a great place to be.
We also believe at PTE that yourcompany doesn't need to be
everywhere at once.
You don't always need to be onTwitter, Facebook, TikTok,
Instagram.
You don't need to be everywhere.
So if it's a good fit, LinkedIncan be an excellent tool for,
(15:48):
you know, banks, sales,marketing, like I said, you're
meeting people where they're atand putting money behind great
content that resonates with themwhen they're in that
professional mindset and mood.
Samantha (16:00):
A great example of LinkedIn would be, some content,
for an ad would be value added,resources, education, helping
people learn more aboutsomething or helping their
business grow.
It's not so much about buy thisproduct or come to this event.
That's not really the place forit on LinkedIn, but more if it's
something that can help theirbusiness grow or create return
that way, that's a really greattool.
(16:21):
So think eBooks, blogs,podcasts, things like that.
Anything that could be valuableto them and help them in their
profession.
Paige (16:28):
I agree.
Samantha (16:29):
That's a great place for LinkedIn.
Yeah, so, okay, well now let'sgo into Google pay per click.
You can do pay per clickadvertising on other things like
Bing and other browsers.
We're going to focus on Googletoday.
It's really, again, kind of thebig kid in terms of everybody
stacking up here.
So why don't we talk a bit aboutthat.
I think people kind of getconfused when I'm searching in,
(16:52):
you know, Google, what shows up,what's paid versus organic.
You know, not everybody's supertuned in on that.
How, how can somebodydifferentiate that?
And then why would you use itdisplay versus others?
Paige (17:04):
Yeah.
So I think to simplify it a payper click ad is the brand is
paying when someone clicks onthe ad, so that's going to be
the cost per click that they endup having as a result of meeting
their audience where they arewhen you search on a search
engine.
Samantha (17:18):
I'll chime in there.
This is a great example of yourshort term versus long term.
Yes.
So we absolutely advocate forSEO, search engine optimization,
putting out the best content youcan on your website and
organically rising through theranks of billions of pages.
So when someone searches foryour business type and or name,
you come up at the top of pageone.
(17:39):
But that takes a long time and alot of effort from the metadata
that's in the back end of yoursite, tags, links, all kinds of
stuff that we're not gettinginto today.
So the short game is Google payper click, where we can set up a
budget and hit start, andimmediately you're going to show
up there on the top couple.
And if you want to identifywhat's paid versus organic,
(18:00):
it'll say sponsored or ad, whathave you, and they're usually on
the very top of that search bar.
Paige (18:05):
Yeah, exactly.
The benefit, like Samantha said,is that immediate visibility.
You're meeting your audiencewhere they are.
If I'm searching"black blazer,"or I'm selling a black blazer,
excuse me, I want my audience,when they search it, hopefully
I'm the first or second to popup.
The way I see PPC, and tell mehow you feel, I think that it
goes hand in hand though, withthe paid and organic, because
(18:28):
PPC is a lot about intent.
And so people are searchingcause they're trying to find
something.
And so this goes hand in handwith using paid and organic
social to bring awareness sothen your audience is aware and
then when they go to search foryou now they know and they can
find you and you're meeting themwhere they're at at every stage
of the journey.
Samantha (18:48):
Yeah, I think you touch on a really great point is
it takes on average seven timesfor someone to be exposed to
something before they rememberit or take action.
So hopefully they've beenexposed to something on
Facebook, on Instagram, in asearch, on LinkedIn, on YouTube.
I mean, there's tons ofdifferent places.
You can do YouTube advertisingas well.
I knew we were going to come upwith another one.
Yeah.
That would be a fourth one.
Yeah.
(19:08):
We'll have to cover that onanother edition of this podcast.
But, yes, you want people tohave that familiarity so that
once they're in the buyingmindset, they just pull the
trigger and they move on it.
I think it's also important tokeep in mind that we are not
advocating that you do one orthe other.
Or even both, necessarily.
Walk before you run.
We are big believers in qualityover quantity.
(19:29):
So make sure if you're going tostart in paid you pick one and
you pour yourself into it.
There's tons of educationalresources.
If you want to comment on this,feel free, we'd be glad to send
you links and resources.
There's lots of ways to learn.
So we would say do one thingreally, really well and then add
on to the next.
And keep in mind, like you saidearlier, that not every channel
is right for every business.
Right?
I don't necessarily think likeprofessional service firms
(19:51):
should always be on TikTok, forexample.
Nor do hair salons necessarilyneed to be on LinkedIn.
So, it just depends on whatyou're trying to accomplish.
But, what are some other tipsand strategies for using PPC,
Paige?
Paige (20:03):
The basics are going to be using keywords, knowing what
people are looking for whenthey're looking for your brand.
Samantha (20:09):
Yeah, and making sure that you're not just pulling
those keywords from what youwould use or what you would
search for.
Because, you know, you're tooclose to it.
There are keyword volume searchtools that are free that you can
use, even when you set up yourads, you can do that.
So you might think, you know, ifI'm a nursery, that someone's
going to be searching for treesor perennials or what have you
(20:29):
but maybe somebody's searchingfor how to make my yard look
better.
You know, you have to keep thatin mind.
What are your customers using ortargets using to search for your
business or service, not justwhat you're using.
Paige (20:39):
Right.
And I think that's true of allmarketing strategies.
It's a common mistake ormisconception that you are your
target audience.
And a lot of times you're not,even if you think you are.
So making sure you're usingthose keywords, like you said,
that are relevant and thatpeople are actually searching
for, not that you just assume.
Samantha (20:57):
And it's about what they need or want, not what
you're trying to sell.
Paige (21:01):
Yes.
Samantha (21:01):
And so when you keep that in mind, you're helping
solve a need or a problem,you're much more likely to
generate the traffic and theattention that you're looking
for.
Paige (21:10):
Right.
And going hand in hand withthat, making sure you're using
negative keywords as well.
A negative keyword is somethingthat when people search for your
brand or what your service oroffering is, you don't show up.
Samantha (21:22):
For example, we don't do event planning.
I do not like that.
I've planned a wedding.
I'm good.
I don't need to do any more ofthat.
So I would not want someonesearching for event planner in
marketing and to have ourbusiness show up.
Paige (21:33):
So definitely best practices is using the right
keywords and then the rightnegative keywords as well to
make sure that you're not payingfor those clicks for value
that's not going to be added toyou or the person searching for
you.
Samantha (21:47):
All right.
Well, how should we wrap thisup?
What are the highlights that ifsomebody is listening to this,
you really want to make surethat they grasp when we're
talking about paid?
Paige (21:56):
Ad creative I think is the number one thing I would
suggest for people who are goinginto paid.
I think when you put a strategybehind something and you create
something that you're willing toput money behind to represent
your brand and reach morepeople, the first thing is, is
ad creative.
Samantha (22:11):
And that could be visual content that's still, so
photos or video.
We didn't really touch on that,but video is very powerful in
paid because you think about thedoom scrolling, you want to
catch them with attention andsometimes moving graphics can do
that in a better way than still.
And you can do displayadvertising as well as non
display or image or non imageadvertising on pay per click as
(22:32):
well.
Paige (22:32):
Everybody kind of receives ads and digital ads
differently.
Some people don't want to seesponsored content at all.
So I think it's really importantputting yourself in the shoes of
a consumer and thinking aboutthe content that's put in front
of your audience, how they'regoing to digest it.
There's so much that people seeon social platforms, on their
(22:55):
browsers, and so giving themhigh quality creative, that's
the ad copy as well, so whatyou're asking them to do or
telling them that you can solvefor them, and then the photo,
video, GIF, whatever you use tograb their attention.
I think the biggest thing ismaking sure you have the quality
(23:15):
creative, you're speaking to theright people, that you're not
spray and praying like we said.
Samantha (23:21):
It goes back to marketing 101.
Yeah.
If you've got the right offerand the right people, the rest
will follow.
Paige (23:26):
Yeah.
Samantha (23:27):
So it's all about the consumer, as with all marketing.
And we hope that these tips andtools about paid, so we talked
about pay per click, Meta, aswell as LinkedIn, have been
helpful.
And of course, if you've gotquestions, we'd love to answer
them.
So feel free to leave commentsbelow and tune in for the next
episode of 1000 Ways to MarketYour Business.
Welcome to the next episode of 1000 Ways to Market
Your Business.
I'm Samantha Scott APR.
And today we're talking allthings paid and with me, I have
Paige Johnson.
Paige (00:13):
Hi, I am Paige.
I am PTE's Marketing Assistant.
I am certified in Meta mediabuying so that's going to be
media buying on Meta platformsthat has Facebook, Instagram,
and WhatsApp.
But today we're also going totalk a little bit more about the
other strategies with paid withPPC, LinkedIn campaign
management.
So we'll dive into a little bitof everything with paid.
Samantha (00:36):
Yes, awesome.
I'm so glad to talk about thisbecause I think people for a
long time thought, you know, ifthey build it, they will come,
right?
And it's still important to haveorganic elements in your
marketing strategy online.
But you really have to marrythat with some paid to see the
performance that you want.
So why don't we talk first aboutwhy leverage paid?
Why should that be part of yourstrategy?
(00:57):
Aside from just wanting moreeyeballs on your content.
Paige (01:00):
Right.
And I do agree.
I think there is a good way tobalance the organic and paid,
but there is a lot of benefitfrom doing paid.
And it can be done with avariety of businesses.
You know, it can be smallbusinesses, it can be huge
companies.
So the beauty in it first andforemost is that if you want a
wider reach, wider visibilityfor your brand, a bigger
audience overall, when you putpaid behind your marketing
(01:24):
strategy, you're going toachieve those results, not only
quicker, but on a larger scale.
The reach of organic has a limitand it takes more time.
So what you can do with paid canhappen at an exponential pace
compared to that.
Both are important.
You should use your strategy forsocial, behind paid, what works
organically.
(01:45):
But I think first and foremost,to summarize that, is that when
you put money behind yourmarketing strategy with paid
media, it just accelerates thereach and the amount of people
that your brand gets in frontof.
Samantha (01:58):
Yeah, I like to say it's short game, long game,
right?
So, short game, I need instantgratification, then you
definitely should put some moneybehind it.
Long game is you build yourcontent, you build your
following and your audience andyour engagement.
But I also want to touch onsomething you said about
audience and reach.
So, we're not saying that paidjust means, oh, let's put this
out to the masses.
No, you can get very specificwith targeting in your paid, and
(02:20):
I know you're going to touch onthat some more.
But I think that's reallyimportant to keep in mind.
If you have specific audiencesand people that you need to
reach or you want to reach foryour business, paid's a great
way because organic is literallythat.
It's out of your control.
Anybody can see it and it'spresented to anyone that gets
connected with it.
So, a lot more control with paidthan with the organic.
(02:41):
It's also really measurable,which we all know, I love data.
If you listen to any of ourother podcasts or if you listen
to my LinkedIn series, you hearme talk about data a lot.
So it's highly, highlymeasurable and that's really
important.
So you can determine your ROI,the return on your investment,
and that's through any of these.
So whether it's on social mediaor PPC, which is pay per click,
Google, Bing, et cetera.
(03:02):
So, why don't we talk throughthe tools?
I know there's three main ones.
Maybe we'll think of some otherones that we want to talk about
too.
But let's start with the firstone.
I think it's kind of the 800pound gorilla, the most easy
entry for most (03:13):
Facebook.
Paige (03:15):
Right.
So Meta Ads Manager and theBusiness Manager is kind of a
comprehensive tool, a specificplace where you can manage
everything within Facebook,Instagram, and WhatsApp.
Within these, you can run thosepaid ads.
What's really important when youdo that is that you set the
objective that you really,really want to see your results.
So we talk about conversionswhen we began and that paid ads
(03:38):
really can help you get thoseconversions.
And a common mistake that peoplemake with paid ads is selecting
the wrong conversion for whattheir objective is.
So, those are going to beawareness, traffic, engagement,
leads, and app promotion.
A lot of times people will say,I'm not an e-commerce business,
so why do I need to run paidads?
(03:59):
I'm not selling anything online.
So this is where the objectivescome in, where it's very common
to use paid ads to bring thatawareness, engagement, get
people to your website to learnabout you.
Samantha (04:11):
So we really want to leverage paid strategically, and
I think you're so smart to startwith objectives because that's
what we should be doing with allof our marketing is what's the
end goal?
What are we trying toaccomplish?
What behavior are we trying todrive out of the consumers or
people that are looking at ourads?
And of course targeting as well,which I know you'll talk about
that too.
And I think that's so importantis making sure your ads are set
(04:32):
up with the correct objectiveand then the rest will follow
the creative, the setup, thecopy, everything else.
Paige (04:37):
Right.
So yeah, the first thing isdefinitely making sure that you
have the strategy behind yourpaid ads.
You should never just run an adand see what happens.
It starts with that, what do Ireally want out of putting money
behind something?
So that's again, the, theawareness, the sales, the leads
at promotion.
And then from there, like yousaid, we move into audience
targeting.
The beauty of audience targetingis that you can look
(05:00):
geographically, you can go, youknow, all of the U.S.
You can narrow down based onage, gender, likes, dislikes, if
they're married, if they havekids, and so you can really
narrow down your audience asneeded to put money behind ads
that you really want your peopleto see, that you want your
audience to see, rather than,like you said, with organic,
(05:23):
it's often just kind of seeingwhat ends up happening and who
it ends up reaching.
Samantha (05:28):
It's so unfortunate sometimes we hear about these
kind of spray and prayapproaches, like,"Oh, I'm just
going to put it out there andhope somebody picks it up." And
you know, we've actually workedwith clients in the past who
have had somebody else doingtheir work, and I'm not saying
that we're perfect, but, youknow, we'll come in and they'll
say,"Oh, well, they were sayingwe're getting, you know, these
many thousands of impressions orthis many leads." But maybe it's
a company that can only servicein their market, right?
(05:48):
So they can only work here, butthey're getting people out of
state that are looking at theircontent.
Well, that's not valuable leads.
Those are not valuable leads.
So we want to make sure thatyou're very targeted, very
specific.
And the other thing I want totouch on is budget, too, right?
And these objectives.
So you don't have to havethousands of dollars to do this.
You can spend$20 on boosting apost and see results.
You can spend 200, 2,000, sure,but don't feel like you have to
(06:11):
go into it with a huge budget.
The other thing is with yourbudget is you can spread it out.
And so if you're differentiatingyour objectives, maybe you have
two ads that are running.
Nothing says you have to haveone ad that covers every single
thing.
So maybe you have one that's forawareness, one that's for lead
gen or website generation.
There's lots of ways that youcan do it and you can run more
than one ad at one time.
Paige (06:31):
Right.
You can have a small budget or alarge budget.
And I've seen, you know, budgetsof$50 get 40,000 impressions and
budgets with$500 get 40,000impressions.
I think the important thing,though, is that when you're
looking at the results, is thatyou know what it means and you
ask yourself what the why is.
A lot of times, numbers lookgood, you might have a large
(06:54):
reach, but
Samantha (06:55):
No action was taken.
Paige (06:56):
Yes, nobody actually went to your website.
So I think a huge thing withpaid is being curious, wanting
to know the why, and alwaystesting and seeing what's
working with your audience, bothorganically and paid, but
specifically on paid, whetherthat's A/B testing, different
types of creatives, narrowing orwidening your audience, looking
at how they're responding, why,what's working, what's not
(07:19):
working.
It's never a good idea to justthrow money and come back in a
month when the budget is goneand say how'd it go.
You should, I think, alwaysmonitor, refine it.
In real time.
In real time.
Yeah.
Samantha (07:32):
So I want to peel apart a couple of things you
said for those of you who mightnot be as familiar with what
we're talking about.
So impressions.
Impressions are the number ofpeople that have been exposed to
your ad or your organic content.
Eyeballs on it, essentially.
But what we're talking abouthere in terms of conversions or
clicks is did someone takeaction?
If not, you're really justlooking at a popularity contest.
(07:52):
Oh, that feels good that, youknow, 4,000 people saw this, but
if they didn't take an action,they didn't click to go to your
website, they didn't want tolearn more, they didn't play the
video, they didn't do whateverbehavior you want, it's really
meaningless at the end of theday.
I mean, there's some awarenessbenefit, but, that's something
really, really important to keepin mind.
The other thing with targetingis you can get very specific and
so your budget reflects that aswell.
(08:13):
Facebook tends to be very, verycost effective, and you can
really track what's the clickthrough rate, what's the average
cost per click, so that's CTRand CPC, click through rate and
cost per click.
Those are important things tolook at, and absolutely, what's
happening as a result?
Did someone see it and then acton it?
And then what did they do as aresult of that?
(08:34):
Because we don't want to justlead the horse to water.
We want that horse to drink.
And that's why reporting andreviewing your analytics is so
important.
And to your point, I willreiterate, because I think it's
so very important, is you haveto monitor in real time.
It's not set it and forget it.
Oh, okay, I put it in place andthen at the end of the month
I'll check on it.
Because if something's bombing,you want to make sure you stop
that bleed immediately.
(08:54):
Or if something's going really,really well, why not pour more
fuel on that flame?
So make sure you're checkingyour campaigns mid month,
throughout the campaign, andmake adjustments as needed.
Paige (09:03):
And I will say too, part of the beauty of Meta, before we
move into PPC, that you justreminded me, is that we can
target with audiences interests,location, and everything, but we
can also deliberately targetpeople in the funnel for if they
visited our page, they visitedour website, they've liked
something previously.
So we get to revisit peoplewhere they're at.
Samantha (09:25):
Yeah, remarketing.
That's a great point, Paige.
So remarketing, think of aproduct or a service that you've
looked for.
Maybe you were looking for apair of shoes, you didn't
purchase them, but now you'regetting served ads over and over
again for these shoes.
That's remarketing.
You are a warm lead.
So that company is trying tosell you those shoes and that's
a really great point.
Paige (09:42):
Yeah.
And you don't have that abilitywith organic.
I mean, usually people who seeyour content organically are
going to maybe be more likely tointeract with it or more loyal.
But when you do this audiencetargeting and you're able to
find people who have showed alittle bit of interest and then,
bring them back.
That's really the beauty of paidis that you're targeting
(10:03):
intentionally and, specifically.
Samantha (10:06):
And to that point, you can segment people that are
already familiar with your brandor like your page and those that
don't.
So that's also helpful.
So if you've got a campaignthat's really targeted at
capturing new customers, well,you want to exclude everybody
that already knows about you.
Don't spend your money on them,they already know you.
So make sure you're looking atthat audience segmentation as
well.
Paige (10:25):
Yeah, definitely, something that's interesting is
that you can exclude people,include specific people, and
then you can do groups of peoplethat look like the people that
you want to include.
Samantha (10:34):
Yes.
Lookalike audiences.
Talk about that.
Paige (10:36):
So that's really interesting is that, with the
software for Meta, they can makean audience that looks just like
the one that you want to target.
Maybe it's a email list orsomeone who has interacted with
your page, Metas AI essentiallycan make a clone, but it's a
whole new group of people andit's really effective in
targeting people that are goingto be likely to engage with your
(10:59):
brand to use those lookalikeaudiences.
You don't want your ads or yourcampaigns to compete with
themselves.
So it's nice to have anothergroup of people that you have
not yet targeted, but would bevery similar to your audience.
Samantha (11:13):
Yeah.
So to translate that, because wenerd out on this stuff all the
time, what she's saying is youcan input demographic data.
So say you have a list of yourtop 10 best customers or even a
larger list, right?
What's some information aboutthem?
So, you know, demographicinformation, location, all that
kind of stuff, you put that invia their email list or what
have you and Facebook runs thatagainst the millions and
(11:34):
billions of other people usingit to find other people that are
just like them, and to marketthose folks because they're most
likely to behave in the same wayas your best audience.
Paige (11:43):
Right.
Yes.
That was a better simplifiedversion.
And while we're on this topic,actually, it reminded me more of
the AI and I think a commonmisconception with running paid
ads or I think in social mediain general, is using AI to
optimize everything.
I think a lot of people see...
Samantha (12:00):
Be very careful.
Paige (12:02):
See like that, Facebook, for example, will say you can
use AI to optimize your budget,to optimize your creative, to
optimize your audiencetargeting.
And so I think it's a commonmisconception that you should
just hand it over and let AI runwith it.
Samantha (12:16):
Don't do that.
Paige (12:17):
For campaign budgeting, it can be very effective.
For example, you have$1,000 andit's going to distribute the
budget to the audience that isreceiving it better or to the ad
that's receiving it better.
It can be useful, but it alsomakes you lose a little bit of
the control that you have.
And then with the audiencetargeting, the software can
(12:39):
reach beyond who you want totarget, which can be good, but
then it's, do you want yourbudget to go to people who don't
really fit your targetdemographics and audiences?
And then one step further, youcan use AI to optimize your
creative, where then it can kindof touch your copy, put
headlines,
Samantha (12:58):
change graphics,
Paige (12:58):
change graphics, where it might work with some cases, but
it all goes back to the originalstrategy of like, what is your
brand voice and do you want tobe received in a different way
for every audience member, or?
Samantha (13:12):
Well, and I would also say brand consistency.
Right.
And control, you know, andremember too, AI is learning.
So there's a lot it can do.
Like I think your example of thebudget, how it optimizes budget,
it's really good at that.
Right.
But the creative updates, atleast as of now, in early 2024,
it's not quite there yet.
So you have to be very careful.
We've had an experience where wetrialed it, and what it came up
(13:35):
with was way off brand and wewould never recommend that.
So, trial and error to a degree,but always be very careful and
monitor, which is also why youhave to keep an eye on your
campaigns.
Paige (13:44):
Yes, and with monitoring, even I've seen recently that
I'll go in and there's two adsin an ad set, one is getting 75
percent of the budget and one isgetting 25.
I mentioned asking the whyearlier, it's getting more of
the budget, but is it gettingproportionately the right amount
of clicks and actions?
Samantha (14:01):
Are the results matching the budget?
Paige (14:04):
And so that would be a scenario where I might not
listen to the AI and turn one ofthe ads off and let it kind of
level itself out.
Ultimately AI is a great tool, Ijust think that before you use
it, you should know the limitsand the capabilities.
Samantha (14:18):
And as I have often said, speaking on the topic of
AI, it still requires the humanelement.
There's some human logic that itjust isn't capable of yet.
And to wrap up this Metaconversation, I would just add
one other thing, which is, youcan run simultaneous ads on
Facebook and Instagram, but justkeep in mind that may not be the
best play for your brand orbusiness and realize that while
(14:41):
you might have some overlap inyour Facebook and Instagram
audiences, there's probablygoing to be some differences
too.
And the etiquette, the style ofFacebook content versus
Instagram content is different,so keep that in mind, what works
well on Facebook may not work aswell on Instagram or vice versa.
So don't always take the easyroute and just hit the button to
make it go on both.
(15:02):
Keep that in mind.
Paige (15:03):
100 percent agree.
And I think going off of that,moving into LinkedIn campaign
manager, this is a platform thatis not a part of Meta, but
thinking about where you want tomeet your audience and how you
want to speak to them on whichchannel.
LinkedIn campaign manager isvery similar in layout and
organization as Meta, but ofcourse it's on LinkedIn where
(15:25):
people are in a networking,trusting, professional mindset.
If you're talking to otherpeople in business, LinkedIn is
a great place to be.
We also believe at PTE that yourcompany doesn't need to be
everywhere at once.
You don't always need to be onTwitter, Facebook, TikTok,
Instagram.
You don't need to be everywhere.
So if it's a good fit, LinkedIncan be an excellent tool for,
(15:48):
you know, banks, sales,marketing, like I said, you're
meeting people where they're atand putting money behind great
content that resonates with themwhen they're in that
professional mindset and mood.
Samantha (16:00):
A great example of LinkedIn would be, some content,
for an ad would be value added,resources, education, helping
people learn more aboutsomething or helping their
business grow.
It's not so much about buy thisproduct or come to this event.
That's not really the place forit on LinkedIn, but more if it's
something that can help theirbusiness grow or create return
that way, that's a really greattool.
(16:21):
So think eBooks, blogs,podcasts, things like that.
Anything that could be valuableto them and help them in their
profession.
Paige (16:28):
I agree.
Samantha (16:29):
That's a great place for LinkedIn.
Yeah, so, okay, well now let'sgo into Google pay per click.
You can do pay per clickadvertising on other things like
Bing and other browsers.
We're going to focus on Googletoday.
It's really, again, kind of thebig kid in terms of everybody
stacking up here.
So why don't we talk a bit aboutthat.
I think people kind of getconfused when I'm searching in,
(16:52):
you know, Google, what shows up,what's paid versus organic.
You know, not everybody's supertuned in on that.
How, how can somebodydifferentiate that?
And then why would you use itdisplay versus others?
Paige (17:04):
Yeah.
So I think to simplify it a payper click ad is the brand is
paying when someone clicks onthe ad, so that's going to be
the cost per click that they endup having as a result of meeting
their audience where they arewhen you search on a search
engine.
Samantha (17:18):
I'll chime in there.
This is a great example of yourshort term versus long term.
Yes.
So we absolutely advocate forSEO, search engine optimization,
putting out the best content youcan on your website and
organically rising through theranks of billions of pages.
So when someone searches foryour business type and or name,
you come up at the top of pageone.
(17:39):
But that takes a long time and alot of effort from the metadata
that's in the back end of yoursite, tags, links, all kinds of
stuff that we're not gettinginto today.
So the short game is Google payper click, where we can set up a
budget and hit start, andimmediately you're going to show
up there on the top couple.
And if you want to identifywhat's paid versus organic,
(18:00):
it'll say sponsored or ad, whathave you, and they're usually on
the very top of that search bar.
Paige (18:05):
Yeah, exactly.
The benefit, like Samantha said,is that immediate visibility.
You're meeting your audiencewhere they are.
If I'm searching"black blazer,"or I'm selling a black blazer,
excuse me, I want my audience,when they search it, hopefully
I'm the first or second to popup.
The way I see PPC, and tell mehow you feel, I think that it
goes hand in hand though, withthe paid and organic, because
(18:28):
PPC is a lot about intent.
And so people are searchingcause they're trying to find
something.
And so this goes hand in handwith using paid and organic
social to bring awareness sothen your audience is aware and
then when they go to search foryou now they know and they can
find you and you're meeting themwhere they're at at every stage
of the journey.
Samantha (18:48):
Yeah, I think you touch on a really great point is
it takes on average seven timesfor someone to be exposed to
something before they rememberit or take action.
So hopefully they've beenexposed to something on
Facebook, on Instagram, in asearch, on LinkedIn, on YouTube.
I mean, there's tons ofdifferent places.
You can do YouTube advertisingas well.
I knew we were going to come upwith another one.
Yeah.
That would be a fourth one.
Yeah.
(19:08):
We'll have to cover that onanother edition of this podcast.
But, yes, you want people tohave that familiarity so that
once they're in the buyingmindset, they just pull the
trigger and they move on it.
I think it's also important tokeep in mind that we are not
advocating that you do one orthe other.
Or even both, necessarily.
Walk before you run.
We are big believers in qualityover quantity.
(19:29):
So make sure if you're going tostart in paid you pick one and
you pour yourself into it.
There's tons of educationalresources.
If you want to comment on this,feel free, we'd be glad to send
you links and resources.
There's lots of ways to learn.
So we would say do one thingreally, really well and then add
on to the next.
And keep in mind, like you saidearlier, that not every channel
is right for every business.
Right?
I don't necessarily think likeprofessional service firms
(19:51):
should always be on TikTok, forexample.
Nor do hair salons necessarilyneed to be on LinkedIn.
So, it just depends on whatyou're trying to accomplish.
But, what are some other tipsand strategies for using PPC,
Paige?
Paige (20:03):
The basics are going to be using keywords, knowing what
people are looking for whenthey're looking for your brand.
Samantha (20:09):
Yeah, and making sure that you're not just pulling
those keywords from what youwould use or what you would
search for.
Because, you know, you're tooclose to it.
There are keyword volume searchtools that are free that you can
use, even when you set up yourads, you can do that.
So you might think, you know, ifI'm a nursery, that someone's
going to be searching for treesor perennials or what have you
(20:29):
but maybe somebody's searchingfor how to make my yard look
better.
You know, you have to keep thatin mind.
What are your customers using ortargets using to search for your
business or service, not justwhat you're using.
Paige (20:39):
Right.
And I think that's true of allmarketing strategies.
It's a common mistake ormisconception that you are your
target audience.
And a lot of times you're not,even if you think you are.
So making sure you're usingthose keywords, like you said,
that are relevant and thatpeople are actually searching
for, not that you just assume.
Samantha (20:57):
And it's about what they need or want, not what
you're trying to sell.
Paige (21:01):
Yes.
Samantha (21:01):
And so when you keep that in mind, you're helping
solve a need or a problem,you're much more likely to
generate the traffic and theattention that you're looking
for.
Paige (21:10):
Right.
And going hand in hand withthat, making sure you're using
negative keywords as well.
A negative keyword is somethingthat when people search for your
brand or what your service oroffering is, you don't show up.
Samantha (21:22):
For example, we don't do event planning.
I do not like that.
I've planned a wedding.
I'm good.
I don't need to do any more ofthat.
So I would not want someonesearching for event planner in
marketing and to have ourbusiness show up.
Paige (21:33):
So definitely best practices is using the right
keywords and then the rightnegative keywords as well to
make sure that you're not payingfor those clicks for value
that's not going to be added toyou or the person searching for
you.
Samantha (21:47):
All right.
Well, how should we wrap thisup?
What are the highlights that ifsomebody is listening to this,
you really want to make surethat they grasp when we're
talking about paid?
Paige (21:56):
Ad creative I think is the number one thing I would
suggest for people who are goinginto paid.
I think when you put a strategybehind something and you create
something that you're willing toput money behind to represent
your brand and reach morepeople, the first thing is, is
ad creative.
Samantha (22:11):
And that could be visual content that's still, so
photos or video.
We didn't really touch on that,but video is very powerful in
paid because you think about thedoom scrolling, you want to
catch them with attention andsometimes moving graphics can do
that in a better way than still.
And you can do displayadvertising as well as non
display or image or non imageadvertising on pay per click as
(22:32):
well.
Paige (22:32):
Everybody kind of receives ads and digital ads
differently.
Some people don't want to seesponsored content at all.
So I think it's really importantputting yourself in the shoes of
a consumer and thinking aboutthe content that's put in front
of your audience, how they'regoing to digest it.
There's so much that people seeon social platforms, on their
(22:55):
browsers, and so giving themhigh quality creative, that's
the ad copy as well, so whatyou're asking them to do or
telling them that you can solvefor them, and then the photo,
video, GIF, whatever you use tograb their attention.
I think the biggest thing ismaking sure you have the quality
(23:15):
creative, you're speaking to theright people, that you're not
spray and praying like we said.
Samantha (23:21):
It goes back to marketing 101.
Yeah.
If you've got the right offerand the right people, the rest
will follow.
Paige (23:26):
Yeah.
Samantha (23:27):
So it's all about the consumer, as with all marketing.
And we hope that these tips andtools about paid, so we talked
about pay per click, Meta, aswell as LinkedIn, have been
helpful.
And of course, if you've gotquestions, we'd love to answer
them.
So feel free to leave commentsbelow and tune in for the next
episode of 1000 Ways to MarketYour Business.
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