Am I ready for digital paid advertising?

What does PPC mean again???

You've gotten your website in order and starting to feel good about the work you've put into your digital presence. All of a sudden, you start getting emails and phone calls from companies offering you services to for paid advertisement. In theory, the sales pitch is enticing right? Get some digital paid ads up and running and start the money printing machine! Unfortunately, no so fast there. Digital paid advertising could definitely help you grow your business, but it could also be a money pit if not used appropriately.

So when should I start dabbling in digital paid advertising?

The question you should first ask yourself is whether you have exhausted all other free advertising channels? Some examples of free advertising channels include setting up a business profile on Google, creating a Facebook business page, getting reviews and testimonials from existing customers to put on your business pages, making sure your physical location is visible to foot and car traffic with signs, partnering with other related business for cross referrals. Also make sure to get referrals from family, friends, and previous customers. The point here is why spend money before you utilize all of your free options.

I'm ready, let's go!

Great! Digital advertising and the platforms that serve these ads have made great progress and many of them are quite user friendly. One of the most popular ad platforms is Adwords by Google (https://ads.google.com/home/). You can usually find some kind of starter deal where Adwords will give you an ad credit to get started. You will typically pay for each engagement such as when a searcher clicks on your ad, hence the name Pay-Per-Click or PPC.

Adwords along with other platforms can also be overwhelming so we advise you to keep things very simple when you get started.

Here are some things to keep in mind:

1. Set an initial comfortable daily budget and keep in mind that you may not see results right away on the first day.
2. Make sure you set the right filters so you are only advertising to your geographical region (unless you have a nationwide business) and to the right age group.
3. Start with simple text search ads and make sure your headline and business description includes keywords that a normal person would use to find a business like yours.

How do I know my digital paid advertising is working?

 Let's just keep this to simple math. You will need to keep track of how many new customers were the result of your digital paid advertising so you should start getting in the habit of asking "How did you find us?". You will also need to to figure out your average profit per customer. If your average profit per customer is greater than the cost of acquiring that customer through digital paid advertising and you are happy with the difference, then you are in good shape. Obviously if the cost is higher than the profit, then some changes are needed.

Need some help assessing whether paid advertising is right for you? Feel free to contact our experts at openforbusiness@monumentbuild.com and we'll be happy to give you our recommendation.