A Buyer’s Guide To Paid Traffic

TIP: Using paid advertising is a particularly good way to do some tracking and testing, such as if you’re testing product titles or pricing. You can send a deluge of traffic to your page and get test results in as little as a couple days.

Of course, this sort of advertising is only effective when you choose the right venues and observe the best practices. And that’s exactly what you’re going to learn about right now!

A Buyer’s Guide To Paid Traffic

1. Vet the Ad Venue

Don’t trust what you hear from others about an ad venue (especially if you’re placing ads on a site in your niche). Instead, do your own research to determine if it’s a good fit for your business.

Here’s what you want to know:

• How much traffic does the site get? This sort of information should be available on the advertising page – if not, inquire directly. While most ads are likely to be on a “cost per X number of impressions” basis, you want to know how long it will take to get 1000, 5000, 10,000, etc. impressions.

• Where is the traffic to this site coming from? Who are they? If the site owner doesn’t mention it on their advertising page, you’ll want to inquire directly.

• Is this a high-quality site with which you’d like to be associated? For example, is the content on the site both accurate and engaging?

• Is the audience engaged? If the site has a blog, forum, or other community, check that there’s a high-level of engagement. (And be sure this engagement is from members of your target market as opposed to spammers.)

2. Focus on a Narrow Audience

One big key to running a successful ad campaign is to really hone in on a targeted audience. Fortunately, this is easy to do when you use platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads.

If you’re using a pay per click platform, then generally you’ll want to aim for longtail keywords where the user intent is clear.

Let me explain…

Let’s suppose you’re placing some sort of dog training ad. If you bid on a keyword like “dog training,” you’re going to be out a lot of money since that’s an expensive keyword. Secondly, however, you don’t even know what the searcher wants.

For example:

• Do they want to find a dog trainer in their area?
• Do they want information about becoming a dog trainer?
• Do they want dog training tips for free?
• Do they want to buy a dog training book?
• Do they want a dog training video?
• Do they want to do obedience training? Trick training?
• Do they want to train a gun dog?
• Do they want information about training an agility dog?

And so on – there’s just no way to tell based on a broad, vague search.

Instead, bid on keywords that are highly targeted to what you’re offering. For example:

• Tips for housetraining a puppy.
• How to obedience train a blind dog.
• How to start agility dog training.
• Buy a dog training guide.
• Poodle trick training video.
• Compare dog training guides.

Focus on keywords with commercial intent. These are keywords that include words such as:

• Review
• Compare
• Shop
• Buy
• Purchase
• Credit card
• PayPal
• Free shipping

And similar words.

3. Create Effective Ads

A second big key to a successful campaign is that you need to create a targeted, effective ad. This means creating compelling ad copy and, where allowed, eye-catching (relevant) graphics.

TIP: This doesn’t just apply to your ads – make sure your landing pages have compelling copy too.

Keep these tips in mind…

Know Your Audience

In many cases, your audience may just be scrolling through (as is the case on platforms like Facebook). They’re looking for posts from friends rather than ads from you. And that’s why you need to know as much about your audience as possible, so you can create an ad that interrupts the prospect and captures their attention.

You’ll need to do some research and talk to your audience in order to form an audience profile. But once you do, then you can create copy that really resonates with them.

For example, here’s a question that’s going to directly grab any cat owner whose cat is having accidents outside the box:

E.G., “Has Your Cat Stopped Using the Litterbox?”

It’s simple, but effective because a line like that basically joins the conversation that’s already going on inside your prospect’s head.

Create Benefit-Driven Copy

When someone is reading your ad (or landing page), they’re going to wonder, “What’s in it for me?” Your sales copy needs to answer that question by showcasing the big benefits.

For example: “Get your cat using the box again using this one simple trick!”

TIP: Your ad is too short to sell the prospect on whatever offer is on the landing page. That’s why you need to remember that your ad’s job is to get the click – that’s it. Then it’s your landing page’s job to hold interest, build desire, and get the prospect to take a specific action (such as joining your list or purchasing a product).

Aim for Congruence

Your keywords, the ad itself and your landing page should all be tightly related. In other words, don’t use clickbait to get ad clicks, or untargeted keywords to get more views. Keep everything congruent, and you’ll get higher conversions.

4. Start Small and Test Your Campaigns

Don’t dump your whole ad budget into a venue and expect to see good results. Instead, start with a small ad buy, and carefully track and test your campaigns to see if you’re getting good results. If you’re getting good results, and if you’ve optimized your campaign, then you can invest more money in that venue.

TIP: Even after you’ve optimized a campaign, be sure to continue to monitor the campaign’s performance. Sometimes performance can drop, maybe not even for an easily discernible reason, but you want to be on top of your campaigns so you can pull back on spending if this happens to you.

Now that you have a good handle on some of the best practices associated with paid ads, let’s have a look at some of the top venues…

The Buyer’s Guide to Paid Ad Venues

Not all paid advertising venues are created equally. That’s why we’re going to take a closer look at some of the most common advertising venues.

1. Google Ads

When you place a Google ad, your advertisement appears alongside the organic search results. This means you can potentially put your website on the first page of Google.

Your ad positioning depends on how much you bid for your keywords plus how well your ad is getting clicks. As such, this platform works best when you have a top-notch, optimized ad and landing page.

Google Ads is based on a PPC (Pay Per Click) platform, so you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. The good part about this is that the traffic that tends to click is highly targeted. The bad part is that each click can be quite costly, depending on your industry. You’ll need to explore this venue yourself to see if the ad rates are reasonable in your market.

Another advantage of using Google Ads is that Google works hard to prevent fraud. In other words, they make sure that your competitors aren’t clicking your ads just to drain your ad budget. Some lesser-known PPC platforms don’t do this (or they don’t do it well), which is why Google should be your top choice for PPC platforms.

Finally, one disadvantage is that the ads are restrictive. They’re short, and there are rules in place about common ad tactics such as calls to action. As such, you need to have some creativity and a firm grasp on copywriting to create effective ads on this limited platform.

2. Microsoft Ads (formerly Bing Ads)

The Bing Ad platform is very similar to Google in terms of how ads are displayed and how you pay for them (PPC). One difference is that your Bing ads display across three properties: AOL, Yahoo!, and Bing, and you can show both text ads and visual ads.

One potential disadvantage of Bing is that it doesn’t have the same volume of traffic as Google. However, this creates an opportunity in that you also don’t have the same level of competition either, which can result in lower advertising costs for you. Some advertisers also report higher conversions on Bing, though that may depend on your market.

If you’ve already optimized a campaign for Google, one nice feature is that Bing lets you import your Google Ad campaigns directly to Bing.

3. Facebook Ads

The biggest advantage of using Facebook Ads is the level of audience targeting you can do, which results in higher conversions when you get the right ad in front of the right audience. You can target based on:

• Audience demographics, such as age, gender, and location.

• Audience interests, which is based on topics they’ve chosen as their interests, their groups, Pages they’ve liked, and similar.

• Audience behaviour, such as whether someone has interacted with your business before or what type of device they’re using (e.g., mobile).

NOTE: Re-targeting people who’ve visited your site before is a great way to boost conversions.

The other big advantage of using Facebook Advertising is that you have a lot of different ad formats from which to choose. This includes carousel ads, videos, newsfeed ads and more.

A third advantage is that if you post a clever ad, it could potentially go viral. This just doesn’t happen on platforms like Google or Bing.

One disadvantage of working with Facebook is that it’s getting more costly. If you want to get a lot of exposure and have your ads in prime locations, you’re going to pay for this privilege. It may or may not be worth it, depending on your industry. (Again, you’ll need to do some testing to determine pricing for your niche.)

4. Twitter Ads

Twitter is a much smaller platform than Facebook, as it has 330 million active users (with HootSuite saying that about half of those users are “monetizable”). This presents an opportunity for you, as you may be able to enjoy lower advertising costs as compared to larger platforms.

One advantage of using this platform is that you can narrowly target your audience. Twitter lets you target using common interests and keywords. You can also target by demographics, such as gender and location.

Twitter also has a cool feature where you target by “look alikes” – this means you can target an audience that’s roughly like people who follow a particular account.

One big disadvantage of working with Twitter is that their built-in tracking tools aren’t as robust or accurate as other platforms (especially Google and Facebook). You may need to bring in third-party tools to get a more accurate picture of how well your campaigns are performing.

Another disadvantage is that the platform as a whole isn’t as user-friendly, at least compared to other ad platforms. In addition, it takes longer to get your ad account approved (you may even wait up to two weeks), so you can’t set up your account today and get traffic immediately.

You’ll want to take note that Twitter tends to trend towards being slightly younger, more educated, and making more money than the US as a whole. The platform also tends to be a place where people gather for news (both current events and celebrity followings). If any of these fit into your business, then Twitter is definitely worth trying.

5. Third-Party (Blind) Ads

What I’m referring to here is when your ads appear across an ad’s content network, but you don’t have a whole lot of control over the process. One prime example is if you use Google AdWords, and you agree to display your ads across their networks – which means your ad will appear on other peoples’ website (those who’ve signed up for Google AdSense). These folks get paid every time someone clicks on your ad.

One advantage of this type of advertising is that you get a bigger reach – your ads may appear in front of audiences that you may not have been able to reach in other ways.

A second advantage of this type of advertising is that it can be less costly than other forms. But as always, that’s going to depend on your industry.

The disadvantage is that you lose some control over where your ad is going to appear. While you can narrowly target your audience, and you may have some control over where your ad appears, nonetheless it could end up being displayed on a site with which you’d rather not be associated.

6. Niche Site Ads

Here I’m referring to placing ads directly on targeted sites in your niche (no brokers or “middlemen”). These may be text ads, banner ads, or some other type of graphical ads.

This is a mixed bag, because the cost and your results are going to depend on the site on which you purchase advertising. So, while you may find a site that delivers GREAT results at a good price, it may take you some time to find these types of good sites, as you’ll need to first vet them and then later test them.

As such, while this can be profitable, it’s a good idea to have a healthy ad budget set aside if you plan to pursue this strategy. Once you find a site that works well for you, then you can up your investment in that specific campaign.

The Verdict: Which Platforms Should You Use?

To determine the best platforms for your ads, you’ll need to do some research, and then you’ll need to test and track your campaigns so you can compare performance across platforms.

For example, if your audience tends to trend older, then Twitter may not be at the top of your list since its members trend slightly younger.

Once you determine which platforms are likely to deliver the best results for you, then ideally, you’ll still want to place ads across multiple platforms.

For example, you may decide to place ads on Google and Facebook just to get the widest exposure. Then you may add Bing into the mix to diversify your strategy. If you grow your profits to where you have a budget that allows you to do some experimenting, then you may also check out placing ads directly on sites in your niche.

Want some more help with getting more traffic to your site? Then be sure to take a look at: Web Traffic Action Plan.

To Your Success!