Paid Advertising: A Basic Guide

Let’s start with a definition of paid advertising: paid advertising is an online advertising model where advertisers bid to participate in real-time auctions to show their ads within slots on a specific platform or network.

A term that is often associated with paid advertising is Pay-per-Click (PPC) – this does exactly what it says on the tin - a user clicks on your campaign; you pay for it. These costs vary depending on which platform is being advertised on and which market you are targeting, for example a highly competitive clothing industry, the costs would be higher. Below are some examples of the average costs of some popular platforms:

Average Costs

Google - £1.80 PPC

Instagram - £2.80 PPC

Facebook - £1.80 PPC

Twitter - £0.30 PPC

LinkedIn – £4.20 PPC

The benefits of online advertising

Online advertising has many positives and one of the most notable is the flexibility you have in designing and customising your creativity. Whether it be an image, a GIF or a video, the variability allows for the needs of your target audience to be met and efficiently at that. A second positive comes in the form of flexible minimum ad spend budgets and daily budget control. This minimum spend varies platform on platform but not to worry, all the platforms have parameters that they will not breach… When compared to traditional forms of advertising, the useability of online advertising is unparalleled. The ability to target and measure the performance of your advertising makes the risk of running a campaign much lower and therefore more manageable. Thus, we have seen a significant rise in the number of businesses using paid advertising to promote their businesses. This rise in online advertising has also coincided with the rise in social media.

Construction and Online Advertising

If I was to pose the idea of online paid advertising to construction professionals five years ago, I would have been laughed out of the room. However, fast forward to the present day and paid advertising should be at the front of the queue in your marketing campaigns. The foundations of your digital marketing campaigns should be your multi-channel strategy, that’s the staple, but paid advertising can prove to be the cherry on top. With the number of users on social media and the reach that Google has as a search engine, the possibilities are endless and in terms of lead generation, paid advertising is one of construction’s best bets for growth.