In any business it’s important to establish marketing priorities. It can be difficult to know which direction to pull towards when you’re on a budget. You don’t want to waste money. But you also need to ensure that you’re focussing on marketing strategies that are going to develop and grow your business at a sensible rate. It has to make sense financially while also providing the benefits you need. This article provides examples of digital marketing on a budget that will make sense for your business.
Facebook Ads
Facebook has more than two billion active monthly users and is the biggest social media platform in the world. It makes sense to use it. You probably already have a Facebook business page, so are using the platform to some degree. Facebook ads is a great form of social advertising and it has many benefits. As with all forms of digital marketing on a budget, it is vital that costs do not run away with you. Spending a little bit here, or a little bit there will add up. When running Facebook ads, you should make sure you are micro-targeting your ads so only the relevant audience is seeing it. Focussing on the quality of your audience is paramount. Facebook ads will work with you to ensure you are targeting the right demographic, with age, interests, location all taken into account.
Facebook will ask how much you’d like to spend on the ad, then they’ll strive to get you as many results as possible within the budget. Budgets range from £5-£10 a week to thousands. Facebook still recommends including a 20% text-to-image ratio. Be sure to use CTA buttons too in order to prompt your customer to take action. Whether it be to receive a discount, sign-up or watch visuals to understand the product.
Instagram Ads
Being part of the Facebook company, Instagram works in a very similar way. You’ll bid the amount you’re willing to pay. Automatic bidding will let Facebook choose the bid amount for the best engagement in line with your best price requirements. Your ad will also be scored based on how your target audience is reacting to the ad. If people are responding well, your score goes up and if it’s the opposite (‘hide this’), your score will simply decrease.
The algorithm as you would expect favours and shows higher scoring ads over lower scoring ones. Competition with other advertisers plays a part too and ads costs will reflect how much competition there is for that spot at the time. This is why target marketing is very important before you run any ad. You need to ensure the right people are seeing your ad so you can keep costs down when running digital marketing on a budget. Plus, ensuring you have the edge over competitor spots with positive reactions.
The average cost of image Instagram ads is between £0.35 and £0.75 and will increase if the competition inside your sector is fierce. Campaign objectives, audience size, the duration of the ad, click-through rates, and several other factors impact ad pricing. Ads also include many CTA buttons to support your ads, including ‘Book Now’, ‘Call Now’, ‘Contact Us’, ‘Learn more’ and ‘Download’. There’s also an option to opt for story ads too.
Instagram analytics will provide plenty of insight into your ad reactions, from click through rates, to how many people viewed and impressions. It’s a great affordable platform and 67 million of us use Instagram for more than 20 minutes a day so the audience is there is utilise.
Google Ads
Search engine marketing, known as SEM is aimed at increasing search engine visibility through paid strategies. Google Ads for example can provide good results on a small budget. A paid search will reach your target customer and develop awareness. With a Google Ad you’ll be able to build a landing page, begin with a low-risk campaign to test the waters. You will control your online advertising costs and pay no more than your monthly budget, stopping whenever you like. In terms of costs, average costs per clicks range from £0.48 to £1.95.
Search Ads
When creating search ads you will use platforms like Google Ads, Google Product Listing Ads, Google Shopping Ads, or Bing Ads. The main benefit of running a paid or sponsored campaign within these search engines is that your ad will be visible a lot quicker than it would if you were relying on appearing in organic search results which takes time. Pay per click advertising means you will only pay when a customer clicks on your ad, so it’s very cost efficient. Costs will be dependent on your maximum bid, your quality score and ad extensions.
The Google Ads system determines whether the extensions and other ad formats you use will improve your ad’s performance. By using highly relevant keywords, ads, and extensions, you can still win a higher position at a lower price even if your competition has a higher bid. Ad extensions include any additional information such as further internal links. When using keywords to aid search results for a keyword and clicks your ad (CPC), you decide how much you’re willing to pay. You can also use the maximum bid strategy. With this type of ad, you set a maximum CPC bid for your keyword but don’t specify individual bids. Instead, the Google Ads system automatically sets your maximum bid based on your budget and the amount of clicks possible within that. Perfect for digital marketing on a budget.
For more helpful articles on digital marketing, including mastering the fundamentals of search engine results pages, click here.
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