Best Practices of Digital Advertising: Using Google and LinkedIn to Get Leads

When it comes to digital marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) is still an essential strategy that can deliver substantial results. However, while there is still value in developing organic SEO, search engines are leaning hard into pay-per-click (PPC) ads. In fact, on Google, paid ads rank higher than organic searches, meaning companies with an ad budget are capturing a larger share of the audience.

That said, digital advertising is not as simple as throwing money at a problem and expecting a generous return. While you do need a decent budget to compete, successful brands know how to leverage their PPC ads to make them as lean and efficient as possible. Overall, it doesn't make sense to have a huge budget if your ads fail to convert leads.

So, with that in mind, let's take a closer look at digital advertising and what it takes to be successful with it.

What is Digital Advertising?

Digital advertising is simply a digital version of traditional paid promotions. In the old days, a business would pay to show its ads in different mediums, including print (i.e., magazines and newspapers), radio, billboards, and TV. While these mediums are still viable, digital advertising has become the go-to option for many brands, both big and small.

Google is one of the largest purveyors of digital advertising, thanks to its massive market share of all online traffic (around 92 percent). While social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook also offer paid ads, most companies find success by working with Google's platform. Realistically, you should invest in digital advertising across multiple channels to ensure a broader market share and a better overall ROI.

How Digital Advertising Can Fit Into a Larger Inbound Marketing Strategy

For B2B companies, inbound marketing is often the best way to cultivate new leads. Most inbound marketing options involve making proprietary content, such as videos, blog posts, white papers, e-books, and more. However, digital advertising and PPC ads can fit neatly into an overall inbound marketing strategy if you know what you're doing. Here are a few advantages of leveraging paid ads alongside your marketing content:

• Drive More Traffic to Content Landing Pages - Typically, ads are seen as sales copy, meaning they're trying to sell a specific product or service. However, Google ads are usually centered around specific keywords, meaning you can rank for high-traffic keywords related to your business. This way, your "ad" doesn't look like a traditional promotion - just a top-ranking link to a landing page about a specific topic or query.
• Reinforce Your Marketing Message - One of the challenges of being a B2B brand is that clients will do a lot of research before reaching out to your sales team. When a prospect sees digital ads for your business alongside inbound content, they'll keep your brand in mind when they need your product.
• Diversify Your Messaging - Inbound content is usually designed to position your brand as a trusted authority within the industry. Advertising shows off the value of your products or services. Both messages are important, but they often have to stay separate to be effective. So, adding digital advertising allows you to sell your brand while also providing value to your leads.

Digital Advertising Best Practices

As we mentioned, digital advertising doesn't work just because you pump more cash into it. Instead, you have to be strategic to ensure you maximize the return for each dollar spent. So, here are some best practices to follow when developing an ad campaign:

Create Quantifiable Goals

One reason why companies don't see the results they want from PPC ads is that they're not paying attention to the right metrics. Yes, an ad may bring more traffic to your website and landing pages, but how well are those pages converting new leads? In many cases, digital advertising leads to a lower conversion rate because more people are looking at your site, but a smaller percentage of them become clients.

So, before you can run a new campaign, you need to know your goals, and you must put a quantifiable number behind them. For example, do you want to increase sales by a specific percentage? Or, perhaps you want to add more subscribers to your email list. Make sure your objectives are SMART - specific, measurable, achievable, reasonable, and time-sensitive.

Set a Realistic Budget

Google and other platforms tend to reward businesses that have the highest budget. More budget and higher bids will simply get you more clicks. So, if you're trying to rank for a competitive keyword, you will need to invest a lot of money to compete. Alternatively, you can set a more realistic budget and target less competitive keywords that can still move the needle. Then, as your campaigns yield more customers, you can increase your budget accordingly.

Understand Your Audience

If someone sees your ad, what will compel them to click on it? Are they looking for a good deal on a product, or are they trying to get more information about your brand? Knowing the user's intent ensures you can capture their attention more efficiently. Otherwise, there may be a discrepancy between what the user expects when clicking on the ad and what they see on the landing page. When that happens, your conversion rate dips and your bounce rate increases.

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Tailor Content for Specific Channels

Prospects seeing an ad on Google are likely expecting something different than those seeing your ads on LinkedIn or Facebook. So, don't run the same ad on each platform - make sure to customize the messaging and the call to action according to the channel. Again, understanding the user's intent will go a long way toward increasing your ROI. Overall, the key to success is delivering the right message at the right time to the right person.

Analyze Your Results

Fortunately, Google has one of the best analytical tools available, meaning you can get a granular view of your digital advertising campaign. An analysis is crucial because it allows you to focus your attention and resources on tactics that work while cutting anything that doesn't.

That said, you also have to give your ads time to breathe, so if something isn't moving the needle immediately, that doesn't mean you should abandon it. Historical data will be a much better indicator of what to change than looking at day-to-day analysis reports.

Get Better Results With Digitopia

Running a successful paid promotion is harder than it sounds because there are tons of details to get right. If you're not familiar with the strategies and tools available, it's easy to waste money on ads that don't convert leads. Fortunately, Digitopia can help you maximize your ad spend, so you're getting the best ROI possible.

Contact us today to find out how digital advertising can work for your brand.