Pros

Paid advertising has several advantages over organic marketing, including the following:

• It’s quick and easy. You design and develop an ad, submit it, and pay the going rate to have it distributed to the media of your choice.
• You see returns rapidly. You receive your return on investment quickly as customers encounter the ad and perform the call to action or don’t. Either way, you’ll know soon after running the ad how effective it is.
• Paid advertising enables you to target a narrow audience. You can choose media based on demographics and interests or even, in some cases, on consumers’ behaviors and purchase histories.
• Paid advertising has a long track record of success. Advertising in traditional media and online has proved to be effective in reaching both broad and targeted audiences.

You can use paid advertising in two ways: to promote your product/service or to promote your content, such as by driving traffic to your website or blog, or encouraging people to sign up for your newsletter.

Cons

As with most things, paid advertising isn’t ideal. It has several disadvantages compared with organic marketing, including the following:

• Paid advertising can be expensive. In the world of advertising, you generally get what you pay for. According to Statista, in 2019, the average cost of a 30-second commercial aired during television programming in the United States was $104,700. Even a modest pay-per-click advertising campaign on Google can cost thousands of dollars.
• It has less chance of going viral. Unlike organic marketing efforts, which can be shared easily, paid ads often don’t go viral. As soon as you stop paying to have the ad displayed, the benefit ends. Organic marketing, on the other hand, has a much longer shelf life.
• Its effect can be diluted if the audience sees it too often. Over time, even if the ad continues to run, its impact gradually declines.

Tapping the power of search engine marketing and pay-per-click advertising

Search engine marketing (SEM) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising are very similar. I highlight the differences in the following sections.

Advertising on social media platforms

Like SEM, social media marketing encompasses both PPC and organic marketing — publishing and sharing great content and engaging with followers and fans. In Chapter 13, I focus on the organic marketing aspect of social media. My focus here is on the paid advertising opportunities on social media platforms.

Every major social media platform features some form of paid advertising, including Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/business/ads), Instagram (https://business.instagram.com/advertising), LinkedIn (https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/ads), YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/ads), and Twitter (https://ads.twitter.com).

Each social media platform has its own approach to creating and launching a digital advertising campaign. In the following sections, I offer guidance on using paid advertising on Instagram and Facebook so that you have a general understanding of the process.

Advertising through popular podcasts

You can incorporate paid advertisements into podcasts by creating a script for a podcast or paying the host to create content that promotes your brand. In this section, I offer guidance on how to find podcasters and work with them to optimize results. (See Chapter 12 for more about podcasting.)

Audio advertising contains no visual element, so it isn’t the best fit if your product relies heavily on visuals or is difficult to promote with audio alone.

Paying influencers and other talent to promote your brand

One of the newest and most popular forms of paid advertising involves the use of social media influencers — people who have large followings and are able to sway people’s opinions. The key to successful influencer marketing is picking the right person (within your budget). When you’re looking for the right influencer, consider the following qualities:

• Relevance: Choose an influencer who connects with the audience you want to reach. If you’re building a brand around cookware, for example, you may want to consider a popular chef.
• Reach: Reach is a measure of the person’s audience — friends, followers, and fans. Generally, the greater the reach, the greater the cost.
• Engagement: Engagement is a measure of the degree of interaction between the influencer and their followers, as indicated by the number of likes, shares, comments, and so on. A good engagement rate varies from platform to platform. Anything higher than 1 percent is good on Twitter, for example, whereas Instagram would require a rating above 7 percent.
• Personality, mission, and values: Choose an influencer who aligns with your brand’s personality, mission, and values. If your brand is all about having fun in the great outdoors while preserving and restoring natural habitats, choose someone who’s fun and committed to conservation.
• Connections with other influencers: Generally, an influencer who has connections to many other influencers is better than one who has only a few, but also consider who these influencers are. Do they align with your brand’s personality, mission, and values?
• Platform(s): The influencer you choose should have a strong presence on the social media platform(s) favored by your target audience. If you’re trying to appeal to people who tend to get their information from YouTube, for example, you’ll want to choose an influential and well-connected YouTuber.
• Content quality and alignment: Check out the content the influencer has posted in the past. Does it meet your quality standards? Does it reflect your brand’s personality and support its mission and values? Does it resonate with your brand story?
• Soft skills: Soft skills include communication and collaboration, a pleasant demeanor, and a strong track record of delivering quality content on time.
• Cost (including any agent fees): Costs vary considerably and are based primarily on most of the preceding criteria, especially reach, engagement, and platform. When you’re choosing among multiple candidates, you choice comes down to what you can afford.

Don’t let lack of money discourage you from engaging in influencer marketing, which doesn’t need to break your budget. You can become your own influencer, or you may be able to recruit a great influencer who’s willing to work for free products or services and an opportunity to use your product or service to increase their influence and further their career. Finding the right influencer to partner with is all about making connections, starting conversations, and negotiating mutually beneficial arrangements.

See Chapter 13 for more about teaming up with influencers.

Running TV and radio ads

TV and to a lesser extent radio traditionally have been the go-to media channels for reaching large, diverse audiences and delivering results quickly. They can be expensive, however. You pay production costs to create high-quality ads and then pay the media channels to run them. In addition, you need to run the ads often; the audience needs to be exposed to the ad repeatedly for it to have much impact.

If you decide to add TV or radio ads to your marketing plan, give careful consideration to the networks your target audience is likely to watch/listen to and the times of day they’re likely to tune in.

I strongly recommend that you hire a skilled media production business or consultant to produce your ad. A homemade ad will come across as a cheap, do-it-yourself project that will reflect poorly on your brand. You can find plenty of TV and radio commercial production businesses by searching online for “TV commercial production” or “radio ad production.” Most of these companies have samples posted on their sites, so you can check out their work. Some production companies not only help you produce quality commercials, but also help you choose the right media channels for distribution.

Another way to track down TV and radio commercial production companies is to contact the person in charge of selling advertising time on the network or station and ask them for recommendations. You can usually obtain their contact information by visiting the network’s or station’s website, scrolling to the bottom, and clicking the Advertise with Us or Contact Us link.

As in any advertising medium, consistency is key when you’re trying to extend your brand’s reach and strengthen its identity. Consistency applies to the look and feel of the ads, the music or other audio, the presentation (action, dialogue, testimonial, voice-over, and so on), characters or people in the ads (such as the spokesperson), and so on. If you’re doing several different broadcast ads for the same brand, consistency is even more important.

Advertising in print media

Print media are paper publications, including books, newspapers, magazines, journals, and newsletters. I recommend not doing much advertising in print media unless, of course, everyone in your target market reads a certain publication that sells advertising space. When creating a print ad, you have three areas of focus:

• Headline: Write a succinct, attention-grabbing headline.
• Design: Develop an attractive design using your brand’s logo, color scheme, and font and other graphic elements to convey your brand identity and any other visual message you want to send. See Chapter 6 for details about developing a logo and color scheme and choosing a font.
• Copy: Write additional content that highlights the benefits of your brand and presents the desired call to action — what you want the person viewing the ad to think or do in response to it. Note that some print ads contain no copy, relying solely on the headline and graphics to communicate the message.

Knowing when to outsource

I think that consulting an advertising agency or expert is a good idea, even if you do it only once, so you can observe what they do to promote a brand. The decision to outsource some or all of your marketing to an outside firm or person, however, generally boils down to budget and need. If you have the money to hire a firm, and you don’t have the time and expertise to do the work yourself, or if you start to do the work yourself and feel that you’re in over your head, the choice is obvious: Hire a professional. If you don’t have the money to hire an expert, the choice is also obvious: You must do the job yourself.

If you’re running a mom-and-pop operation, consider starting a small, highly focused advertising campaign on your own. As you grow and build capital in your business, consider investing in professional services. You can start by interviewing several candidates to find out what they would do to promote your brand (which is another great way to pick the brains of experts). Better yet, schedule a one- or two-hour workshop to see what sorts of ideas they come up with, which is a great way to evaluate their creativity and how well you work with them.

Choosing the right advertising agency for your brand

You can find tens of thousands of advertising agencies simply by searching the web for “advertising agency,” and you can narrow your search to local agencies by specifying your location. You can also ask for referrals from business owners you know or by posting a request for referrals in a business-oriented discussion forum. Another option is to identify advertisements you like and then contact the businesses that ran the ads to find out who created them.

When you have a few candidates, use the following criteria to evaluate them and make your choice:

• Experience in your industry
• Expertise (deep knowledge of advertising strategies and the latest techniques, tools, and technologies)
• Creativity
• Personality (would you look forward to collaborating with them?)
• Cost