Be it better ad targeting, enhanced integration, or robust lead generation –paid advertising is the key element of your media mix. However, paid marketing strategies and SEM are rapidly changing, and if you can’t catch up with these fast-turning trends, you will soon be left in the dust by your competitors and the industry itself. In this blog, we will tell you about some of the fast-emerging paid media strategies that you should look out for in 2024.
Paid ads and PPC campaigns are great for increasing conversions and optimizing website traffic. However, as the business world integrates into the trends of 2024, paid media advertisers are realizing the impact of privacy expectations on ad targeting and delivery.
In addition to this, AI and machine learning have also drastically transformed the landscape of paid media strategies in 2024. With technology advancing to new heights, the industry will probably become even more automated in the coming years.
This means that paid media advertisers will experience a disruptive change in the industry during the back half of the year. If you are someone who wants to understand your media mix more closely, then keep on reading.
Here are some robust, efficient, and intelligent paid media strategies that will help you succeed in 2024.
Before you dive into the trends and strategies, let’s start from the basics. So, what is paid media and why is it so important?
Essentially there are three types of media: Paid, owned, and earned.
Owned media is a website, web entity, or blog that you control. On the other hand, earned media is the content that travels organically through your web due to its popularity and inherent value.
Paid media is a little different. It requires you to pay a third party to advertise your products. This is closer to a traditional concept of advertising, however, the lines between these three types are now blurring thanks to cross-channel marketing.
In simple words, paid media is external marketing efforts through (you guessed it right!) paid placements. These marketing strategies can include branded content, PPC advertising, and display ads. The reason why paid media marketing is so vital is because it is a great source of revenue generation and brand awareness for online businesses.
As the industry continues to grow and evolve, it is important to strategize your marketing approach ahead of time. In order to be on top of the trends, you need to know what strategies are effective in increasing traffic to your website, generating better quality leads, and integrating automated technologies into your marketing mix.
Here are some paid media strategies that will help you create brand awareness and optimize your marketing strategies.
Do you think that you could make paid placements on social media and your job is done? If yes, then you need to revise your marketing syllabus.
Gone are the days when you could run paid social media ads without creating organic growth for your business. Your paid social media is basically fueled by your organic social community.
So, the first step to optimizing your paid media strategy is to focus on organic growth. You should post quality content on your social media platforms and interact with your followers as much as possible. This will create brand awareness and consumer trust–which, by the way, are key elements to make any advertising campaign thrive.
Once you have gathered enough organic traffic for your page, you can fuel your organic growth with paid media strategies like PPC campaigns, paid display ads, and branding content.
As a consumer, have you ever visited a website and left the page after a bit of scrolling? Harmless right? Except now, you see their ads, reviews, and products literally everywhere on social media. This, ladies and gentlemen, is called retargeting ads.
You may not realize it, but retargeting ads is a great marketing strategy. These ads will help you target customers who have already shown interest in your brand services. Through targeting ads, you can ensure better lead generation and conversion for your business.
How targeting ads work is very simple: all you have to do is place a tracking pixel on your website. This tracking pixel will allow you to rerun ads that target people who have already visited your site.
Over time, your consumer journey will become complex. This is why it is very important to set goals while creating a paid media campaign. As an advertiser, you need to measure the relative value of your marketing channels, and this cannot be done without proper measurement.
For robust measurement, set some Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your paid media campaign. These KPIs will help you understand the reach, numbers, and outcomes of your marketing campaign. It will also help you optimize your strategy and drive better results.
Let us give you an example, what if your main objective from paid media is to expand your reach? What will be your goals? Probably increasing your followers, post interactions, and website impression. Based on these goals you can track your KPIs such as shares, likes, clicks, and mentions.
However, if you are running a conversion campaign, you should track metrics like downloads, conversion rate, and bounce rate. At the end of the day, what matters is that you have the right analytical tools to make the most out of your measurement efforts.
This is why AI and machine learning have efficiently entered the industry. With the help of automated AI tracking, you can measure KPIs and track all necessary metrics to optimize your paid media strategy.
Other than KPIs, there are a number of other metrics you should watch:
By paying attention to these metrics, you can evaluate if your paid media strategies are actually succeeding or not. If you don’t track these, you will never know if your efforts are being fruitful or simply going in vain.
For paid media content to actually succeed, you need your posts and ads to be geared toward the right audience. It is imperative to know your audience in order to reach your targeted customers, and that too, very specifically and personally.
Knowing your target audience will help you in the long run since it tells you a lot about what your customers need. It will also paint a clearer picture for you to understand what type of customers your product is attracting. If you want to make your ads more inclusive and expand your reach, you can do it easily by changing your advertising tactics.
However, to do all of this, you will first need statistics on how your ads are performing. This brings us back to measurement and tracking. In addition to tracking your shares, likes, and clicks, you can also segment your audience into different types with the help of the right analytical tools.
Whether you want to introduce your customers to new products or target a different segment of the audience that you are currently dealing with, it is very important to allocate a larger budget for paid searches. In today’s world, mobile and voice searches are becoming increasingly popular and handy for consumers, and this is exactly why paid searches are a golden tactic to achieve all your marketing goals.
In addition to this, it is essential to be smart with your budget allocation. We know that it is tempting to put all your money towards one thing, but it is really not the best choice. In order to improve conversions and generate better leads, you will have to efficiently allocate budget throughout your paid media marketing funnel.
Allocate more budget for strategies that you know will generate better revenue, but don’t ignore the other important parts of your media mix.
For your ads to work, you will have to focus on creativity. Paid media isn’t only about ad targeting and using machine learning algorithms to create copy ads. There is more to it, and the obvious essential for creating a greater impact with your ads is ensuring creativity.
Your ads are not going to work in 2024 if they are boring and dull, it is that simple. Thankfully, advertisers now have plenty of tools to lean into performance creativity. Here are a few ways you can improve your ads across the board.
With social media quickly evolving and new updates being launched every other day, it is important to stay on top of your game and experiment with new ad formats. There is always something new to try and who knows, it might work for you.
Trying out new ad formats such as shorts, stories, and music reels will keep you up to date with whatever is popular. It will also allow you to reach your audience faster. In simple words, don’t stick to one cookie-cutter format. Being an advertiser, it is your job to keep evolving with ever-changing trends and ad formats. You need to mold your paid media strategies according to what your audience is watching, liking, and interacting with.
For instance, people love short videos nowadays. Gone are the days, when the audience used to watch a five-minute ad filled with specifications and details. Customers don’t have enough time for this anymore, they want a short 1-minute reel that could impress them. Your goal is to create ads that are engaging and will lead traffic to your website.
The biggest hindrance in paid media marketing is triggering the algorithm. While in theory, your algorithms should show your ads to consumers who are most likely to convert, it is almost never how it should be.
Presenting your ads in the right way is a tricky business that can take a lot of effort and efficient planning. However, the easiest way to make the algorithm work for you is by giving it some time to learn. You will have to be a little patient and give it some time before you see any results. Most advertisers and paid media experts advise holding your breath for at least 10 days after making a change to your profile. It will take some time for Meta, TikTok, and Google algorithms to trigger and learn.
Paid media is an important part of any marketing strategy and for your paid social campaigns to work, you need to know about the fast-emerging paid media trends. By following these effective strategies, you can make your paid social media ads thrive and reach the right audience.
Make sure that you are efficiently allocating your budget, tracking the right metrics, and experimenting with different ad formats. Another important thing is to be creative with your ads. Embrace user-generated content and AI-automated tools to create engaging ads that will generate leads, increase conversions, and improve website traffic.