Let’s jump straight in: What is Paid Media?

The term paid media refers to external marketing efforts that include paid advertising and placement such as display ads, branded content, and pay-per-click (PPC) marketing. To increase interest, awareness and action, paid media is utilised in outbound marketing campaigns as a ‘push’ activity.

It’s essential as part of a lead generation strategy, allowing your business to track performance and adjust your strategy as and when necessary, to generate quality leads quickly and cost-effectively. Without it, businesses would struggle to reach potential customers, and do so consistently. This is a gap that other types of media (owned, earned, and shared) just cannot bridge.

Paid media is far older than you might think. Paid media specialists have been around for centuries, just in different forms. The Ancient Egyptians published sales messages and posters on papyrus, while archaeologists discovered commercial messages in the ruins of Arabia and Pompeii. Historically, businesses have paid to promote their message, attract customers, and get ahead of the competition.

Let’s fast-forward to where we are today in the world of social media marketing, and what role a paid ad specialist holds within this industry.

Taking advantage of paid media effectively, in a consistent way (consistency is always key!) in today’s market can yield huge benefits. Benefits such as generating quality leads (over empty likes and shares), building brands, fostering communities, and having an edge over the competition. However, it’s really important to remember that paid media success goes way beyond throwing money at pay-per-click channels. It’s a niche role, and at DMN we take our paid social strategies seriously.

Paid Media: Know when it’s time to bring in the specialists!

So, what does a Paid Media Specialists do? They are responsible for the day-to-day management of paid digital marketing campaigns. These can include paid search, display and social advertising strategies across both B2B and B2C business models. They are responsible for creating and optimizing paid media channels to support the digital department in their growth goals. Basically, they are pretty important. Paid specialists are an integral part of an effective digital strategy. Here’s an outline of what you can expect a paid media superstar to do:

• Develop and execute cutting-edge digital campaigns from conception to launch
• Align campaign strategies and goals
• Provide ongoing insights into campaign performance
• Define and measure paid media KPI’s
• Maintaining knowledge of industry best practices and new technologies

Next question: Does your business have a need for paid media?

It all starts with a clear objective. What do you want to achieve? Create awareness, generate leads or sell more product? Once you know who your target audience is, and the results you want to achieve, you can build a highly-effective paid media strategy that will help you on the road to achieving results.

Some of these results can be in the form of the following:

• Gain more exposure: Paid media allows you to reach audiences that wouldn’t have found you via other online marketing methods. It’s a gateway to reaching a niche market, and being impactful while doing it.
• Increase customer retention: If you want to stay relevant, fresh and on the minds of your consumers, there’s no better way than achieving this but by ensuring you’re always present in the place your prospects and customers visit daily.
• Establish credibility: Paid advertising allows you to boost your name, gaining recognition and fostering important relationships. How? By giving your demographic exactly what they’re looking for.
• Generate more traffic: When you pay to reach out to new audiences, you’ll easily find more people willing to engage and learn more about what you do. These are people who care about your product.
• Reduce marketing costs: When you work all social media marketing methods together, it allows you to test strategies through paid media, then get more direct with what you’re creating through owned media. Ultimately, it will impact the way you rank with your earned media.

Get inspired. Spend some time visualising what your target audience wants. What do they do? Where do they go out to eat? How can you reach out to them? Mainly, in the context of social digital marketing: What channels do they spend the most time on?

As you dig deeper, you’ll discover the best way to reach out them, how to grab their attention and mainly, how to offer them something of value that they’ll love, and keep coming back for more.

We happen to be eager social media marketing strategists, who take great pride in perfecting the strategies, tailored for your business goals.