Paid Media involves purchasing ad space to promote products, services, or a brand to a target audience. For B2B companies, paid media helps with lead generation because it allows advertisers to get the audience’s attention and convince them it’s worth learning more about their product or service.
Since lead generation is a key factor for successful businesses, it is important that you understand how paid media works for lead generation. Read on for our beginner’s guide to using paid media for lead generation.
Advantages of Using Paid Media for Lead Generation
Why should you invest in paid media for lead generation? What does it offer that other channels don’t? Paid media comes with many data-collection capabilities. Advertisers also get results quickly and can make unlimited optimizations. Most importantly, paid media helps advertisers reach their target audience when they need their services/solutions the most.
Different Types of Paid Media for Lead Generation
Here are some of the top ways to generate leads through paid media advertising. Let’s learn about them before we discuss how paid media lead generation works.
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Search Engine Ads
Search engine ads include Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads. These are paid media ads that appear on publishers’ sites and search engine result pages (SERPs). The advertiser is charged when a user clicks on the ads. Search advertising is estimated to be worth $137 billion by 2022!
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Social Media Ads
Social media ads are paid media advertisements that run on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Linkedin, Pinterest, etc. Most social media platforms offer advertisers the ability to create ads based on their target audience’s interests, behavior, demographics, location, and other characteristics.
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Banner Ads
Banner ads, display ads, or web ads are usually image-based ads run on websites for a limited period of time. Clicking on such ads leads the user to the advertiser’s site or a landing page. A good way to check on the performance of banner ads is by looking at their click-through ratio.
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Native Ads
Native ads are one of the most in-demand paid media ads as they match the typeface design, look and feel of the website or application they are run on. You might find them as in-feed, sponsored/recommended content, search and promoted listings, promoted stories, and more.
How Does Paid Media for Lead Generation Work?
Now that we know what paid media is and how to use it for lead generation, let’s figure out how it works. Here are the seven steps you must take to create a high-quality and converting paid media campaign for lead generation.
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Figure Out the Business Needs and Goals
What interests you about paid media? Do you want to boost brand awareness, launch a special product, offer special deals or discounts, generate traffic, or boost sales? You should make your objective crystal clear. In this case, we are trying to generate leads. Finally, your business/marketing goal should align with the entire paid media advertising campaign.
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Know Your Audience
The next step in the process is to define your target audience. Who do you want to see the ads? Do you have an ideal buyer persona? If not, you should spend time researching and creating buyer personas, as it helps determine the ad type and ad channel suitable for your paid media campaign. It can even help you design quality ad creatives and landing pages.
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Calculate Campaign Budget
Although you cannot estimate how much the paid campaign will cost at the end, you can still calculate Cost-Per-Lead (CPL) to keep the campaign cost-effective. CPL can help evaluate the approximate campaign budget and find whether or not you can afford it.
CPL = CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) * Conversion Rate
Once you start running the campaign, you will have enough data to adjust your goal CPL.
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Pick the Right Paid Advertising Channel
The advertising platform will depend on your calculated CPL, campaign budget, and target audience. Paid advertising channels can be (and should be) different for different brands. While some brands are looking to put their ads in front of the largest audience, others want to niche down and bid for ads in a less competitive environment.
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Develop Lead Magnets
Lead magnets are content that encourages potential customers to share their contact details. We suggest creating lead magnets like ebooks, reports, case studies, templates, or conducting virtual events.
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Design Landing Pages and Ad Creatives
As the name suggests, landing pages are pages where users will land after clicking on an ad. We recommend you follow these proven best practices to create landing pages that convert. The landing page design will depend entirely on your buyer persona. You will also have to pay attention to your ad creatives as these will be the prospects’ first point of contact with your brand.
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Track and Optimize Paid Campaigns
Lastly, you will have to keep optimizing the ad campaign to meet the desired CPL goal. The ad campaign might cost you more than you expected on the first run. However, the more you review and put insights into action, the more cost-effective your paid advertising campaign will become.
Have you used paid media to generate leads for your business? Let us know in the comments section below!
Kaitlin Wichmann
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