A Complete Guide to Paid Online Promotions

18/06/2021

Choose language:

Small and medium businesses mostly rely on traditional forms of advertising such as print ads, hoardings, pamphlets distribution, and word of mouth marketing. Although these formats are useful to a certain extent, paid online promotions are far more effective in trying to boost sales and increasing chances of profitability for small businesses.

This is because you can start an online promotion without having to invest too much and still reach a huge segment of your prospective customers. Latest reports suggest that India is expected to grow to 639 million active internet users by the end of 2020.

If you are thinking how this will help your small business in reaching its specific target audience, online paid promotions offer you all the tools to choose your target audience. This lets you plan and execute a campaign that is entirely focused on engaging your prospective customers and potentially benefit from a higher return on investment.

Let us take a detailed look at the types of online advertisements or promotions you can consider to try and increase the sales of your products or services.

1. Display ads

Display ads are contextual banner ads that are used in a search engine’s collection of network websites.

How does this work? Take the example of Google Ads, an ad platform developed by Google. If you sign up with Google Ads as an advertiser and run a campaign, your ad will be displayed on Google’s wide network of websites that have registered with them. So as an advertiser, you pay Google and not the network websites as they get paid by Google.

Display ads are visually appealing and therefore generate more visibility. Don’t forget to place your company’s logo in a prominent place alongside text and images. Moreover, display ads support audio-visual content as well. So, consider including product videos and demonstrations as part of your display advertising campaign. Over the years, advertisers have heavily relied on display ads to increase brand awareness and sales. These interactive ads also provide analytics to measure campaign performance and allow you to retarget customers.

2. Search engine marketing (SEM)

Search engine marketing is another type of online paid promotion that increases visibility of your content. SEM follows a pay-per-click (PPC) model where, instead of paying for the actual ad, you just pay for each time a user clicks on the ad. PPC is one of the most popular forms of paid promotion which you must consider for its cost effective and results-oriented model.

3. Inorganic social media marketing

Investing in paid social promotions is more likely to give you a higher return on your investment. Placing paid ads, promoted posts or sponsored stories are popular ways to reach your target audience across the wide user base of social media platforms. Among the popular ones, Facebook and Twitter lead the pack, followed by LinkedIn for B2B sales.

Click here for a complete guide on social media paid promotions.

4. Native advertising

Native advertising is a form of paid advertising that is more like editorial content, but is intended to promote a product or a service. So, why opt for native advertising? Native ads cannot be stopped by ad-blockers, allowing you to reach your target audience more effectively. Furthermore, internet users are more likely to view an ad as part of the content, thus providing you more leads and conversions.

Native ads are more commonly used as in-feed ads on social media platforms and appear on your feed as you scroll down. The purpose of these ads is to divert traffic from the various content platforms to your digital assets – be it your website or your online store. In addition, native ads ensure that your advertising appears only on relevant pages. This makes them more engaging than other forms of paid online advertisements. In comparison to banner ads, native ads generate more clicks, which in turn, bring you higher leads and conversions.

5. Remarketing

Remarketing is a popular e-commerce marketing tactic. It involves targeting those customers who have shown interest in your online store. As per reports, on an average, as many as 96% of shoppers exit a store without buying anything. You must, therefore, take advantage of their interest and re-engage them using the remarketing tactic.

Here’s how you can start your remarketing campaign: track the cart page of your store and create a list of people who abandoned their shopping carts. Once you have identified the targets, you can display specialized ads to promote the products they have shown interest in. These ads are, therefore, highly personalized and potentially effective in boosting sales. There are different types of remarketing tools available for your consideration. These are:

Display ads – for people who visited your website or online store
Email remarketing – for people who have opened your email but not taken a purchase action
Search retargeting – for customers who have searched products similar to what you offer
Video remarketing – for people who have viewed your videos. These users can be targeted elsewhere on the internet when they browse the Google display network.

As part of your remarketing strategy, consider these vital tips to acquire more leads and conversions:

Determine which pages of your online store you want to tag
Define the duration for retargeting your customers
Retarget existing customers
Use ad copies that are mapped with keywords in your retargeting campaign

6. Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing tactic where an online store rewards a website with a commission for each customer referred through the website’s referral link. Since this is a performance-based model, you only pay the affiliate when their promotion results in a transaction.

So, why is affiliate marketing important for you? Well, affiliate marketing gives you the opportunity to try and increase your store’s sales by using an affiliate’s popularity. It not only increases the reach of your campaign, but also helps create brand awareness amongst consumers that otherwise would not have known about your store.

But to ensure that an affiliate’s promotional activity has resulted in a sales transaction you must use tracking software solutions to attribute sales. These software solutions are designed to track the users visiting your store. When a shopper clicks on an affiliate link, the software records the source and helps accurately attribute sales transactions to your affiliates.

To get started with affiliate marketing, you should list your affiliate programs on popular affiliate networks. Once you have registered with these networks, interested affiliates will find your program and sign up with you. When signing up, determine the rate of commission and other terms with your affiliate as per your business requirement.

7. Influencer marketing

When you see a celebrity using a product in a video or an image on a social media platform, it is most likely a case of influencer marketing.

As an online seller, you can connect your store with online influencers, who can market your business to their followers. Typically, these online influencers are people with a big social media following and work better when they are in the same market or business as yours.

To find the right online influencer for your business, you must make note of the following steps:

Think small but effective - Do not look for influencers who have a huge following but very seldom engage with their followers. Instead narrow down your search to micro influencers who have a good following.
Build rapport with your target influencers – Follow and subscribe to your target influencers’ content and share it with your community. Build a rapport by commenting on your target influencers’ content.
Engage your target influencers – Reach out to them and seek their advice, request them to review your products, and offer to sponsor their initiatives.
Signing up with influencers – Once your target influencers are open to the idea of promoting your products, sign up with them for a well-defined marketing program. You may want to use their network to promote a new product launch or simply recommend your store as a go-to destination.

8. Video ads

If you are a retailer selling products that require demonstrations, you must include video ads in your online marketing plan. With the advent of high-speed internet, video ads are growing in popularity among businesses across industries. Among social platforms for video ads, YouTube tops the list given its popularity, and customizable and easy to run ads, just like Google.

To get started, you need to create a Google Ads account and link it with your YouTube channel. Then just like a display campaign, set your target audience, choose a video ad type, create the ad and publish it.

There are various types of YouTube ads you can consider for your promotion. These are:

Pre-roll video ads - These ads are shown before a video starts and runs for about 30 seconds. They are charged per click, which means you only pay for the total number of clicks generated, and not as per the total number of views. Since these ads are charged per click, they are usually the most cost-effective for campaigns focused on conversions.
TrueView ads - If you have selected TrueView ads to form the basis of your campaign, your video will be shown to the users before they view a normal video. You will be charged per view for these ads. However, there is a challenge to overcome for advertisers when running TrueView ads: viewers can skip your ad after 5 seconds. This means that many users will not watch the video in its entirety. TrueView ads are often used to drive brand awareness.
Bumper ads – If you don’t want to create long videos, don’t worry. Use the bumper ad format to show a six-second non-skippable ad before a regular video starts.
In-display ads – If you do not want to advertise within the video itself, then in-display ads are your best bet. Charged on a per-click basis, in-display ads are shown on the right-hand side of a user’s screen. If a user has clicked on your in-display ad, he or she has done that by choice, which means they are already interested and therefore are potentially easier to convert. These ads are often used to drive conversions.

9. Email marketing

If email marketing is not part of your paid promotion plan, you are missing out the opportunity to build an authentic connection with people that keep businesses alive. An effective email campaign may boost conversions and revenue by providing valuable information to help them fulfil their needs.

Boost brand awareness – Keep your customers informed about your latest offerings.
Retarget customers – Send cart reminders to customers who left without completing the transaction on the cart page of your store.
Generate loyalty – This can be done by sending your customers new personalized offers.
Boost engagement - Create interesting content which interests your customers; offer tips and advice through newsletters.
Target new customers – Create a list of prospective customers and send them personalized emails with information about your store, products and services you offer, ongoing offers, etc.

Conclusion

There are many benefits of using paid promotions as explained above. Remember, it’s a long-term investment if you want to see the best results. Use the right mix of the above ad formats keeping your business goals and marketing strategy in mind and you will eventually succeed.

Disclaimer: Whilst Amazon Seller Services Private Limited ("Amazon") has used reasonable endeavours in compiling the information provided, Amazon provides no assurance as to its accuracy, completeness or usefulness or that such information is error-free. In certain cases, the blog is provided by a third-party seller and is made available on an "as-is" basis. Amazon hereby disclaims any and all liability and assumes no responsibility whatsoever for consequences resulting from use of such information. Information provided may be changed or updated at any time, without any prior notice. You agree to use the information, at your own risk and expressly waive any and all claims, rights of action and/or remedies (under law or otherwise) that you may have against Amazon arising out of or in connection with the use of such information. Any copying, redistribution or republication of the information, or any portion thereof, without prior written consent of Amazon is strictly prohibited.