Once upon a time, “paid advertising” meant that you splashed your company name across a billboard, filmed a television commercial featuring your product, or plastered posters all over town. Of course, these platforms still exist, but today, the terrain of paid advertising is quite different—and highly digitized. Online advertisements appear in your prospective clients’ search engines, social media feeds, and more. They can be targeted to pinpoint your prospects, are generally more cost-effective, and suit the way we shop today. Concentric Management’s growth-based strategies combine a wide variety of complementary techniques to give your business the greatest benefits. Alongside copy writing, reputation management, and more, paid advertising is an absolutely invaluable tool. Read on to learn more about Concentric Management’s advanced, multi-pronged, customized approach to this form of modern marketing.

Online Paid Advertising By the Numbers

Marketing is very much a numbers game, but if you look for basic statistics on paid online advertising, you’re likely to be dizzied by dozens of data points. Below, we present a few key figures to help you understand the importance and value of this marketing medium:

• EMarketer predicted that “digital ad spending worldwide [would] hit $137.53 billion in 2014,” and this field has grown even more since then. EMarketer adds: “spending on digital ads will make up around one-quarter of total media ad spending around the world.” Paid advertising wouldn’t be a major player in international spending if it wasn’t successful.  
• In a recent article on 2016 content marketing statistics, Forbes contributor, Jayson DeMers, reported: “the most effective paid advertising method for B2C [Business to Consumer] marketers is search engine marketing (SEM), with 64 percent reporting that it’s effective.”
• Lest you believe that only B2C businesses make use of online paid advertising, DeMers also notes: “55 percent of B2B [Business to Business] marketers report that search engine marketing (SEM) is their most effective paid advertising method.”
• Adobe Insight’s CMO reports: “Overall search spend in the U.S. grew by 9 percent year-over-year.” Online paid advertising is already a force to be reckoned with in modern marketing, but it is poised to expand even further.
• For just one example of the power of paid advertising in practice, Google’s Adwords Blog recently told the story of Yankee Candle Company, who “used remarketing [a paid advertising technique] to re-engage shoppers and increased conversation rates by 600 percent while cutting cost-per-conversion in half.” That is certainly a growth-based strategy!

These statistics are but a sample of what paid online advertising can do for your business.

Cracking the Keyword Code

“Keywords” are aptly named. If properly chosen, these powerful words and phrases can unlock outstanding conversions and great success for your business. You’ve probably heard this term used, but what exactly are keywords? Simply put, these are the words you want people to search for to bring up your ads. As CMO reports, “ninety-three percent of online experiences begin with a search engine.” To capture the attention of your prospective clients online, you need to show up in their searches, which means you need to understand and target the specific keywords they’re using to find what they want.

For example, if you’re selling bedazzled dog collars, the keywords you want to focus on might be “best dog collars” or “sparkly dog collars.” Having your advertisement show up for someone searching for an unrelated phrase like “home remodeling services” wouldn’t exactly be the key to conversions.

At Concentric Management, we can help you harness the power of keywords by finding the right fit between your business and the words your potential customers tend to type into their search engines. It may seem like you need to acquire psychic powers to determine the perfect keywords for your business, but fortunately, we can use the magic of match types to help with this. Our team of paid advertising experts will use a few different techniques to align your advertisements with your prospective clients’ keywords:

• Broad match – This is the default match type that all your keywords will be assigned. This means that your advertisements may show on searches that include misspellings (“sparkly dawg collars”), synonyms (“glittery canine neckbands”), related searches (“sparkly dog bowls” or “buy bedazzled dog collars”), and other relevant variations.
• Broad match modifier – With this tool, your advertisements may show on searches that contain the modified term (or close variations, but not synonyms) in any order. For example, “sparkly collars for dogs” or “dogs sparkly collars” might bring up your advertisement.
• Phrase match – This turns on advertisements for searches that are a phrase, as well as close variations of that phrase. For example, “where can I buy sparkly dog collars,” is a keyword phrase you might use to sell that type of shimmery pooch product. Phrase matching targets these, plus related phrases, such as “I need to buy a shiny dog collar“ or “how can I buy sparkly dog collars.” This tool can help you reach audiences simpler keywords might not.
• Exact match – While somewhat rare, a highly specific, precisely targeted matching system may sometimes be appropriate. In this case, your ads will appear only for the Holy Grail of keywords, the word or phrase you have chosen and close variations of that exact term. With exact match, your advertisements targeted to “sparkly dog collars” would only appear for that exact search. “Dog collars sparkly”? Nope. “Shiny dog collars?” Nope. “Super fly pooch collars?” Nope. This technique is useful if you have a very niche product or want to test particular keywords against each other.  

One critical, but common, mistake amateur advertisers tend to make is sticking to just one matching system. Broad match is the default, but it may not be the wisest choice for each and every one of your advertisements. The wisest approach is to utilize a variety of match types in your ad groups and pay particular attention to which perform the best. Concentric Management can help you devise an astute matching strategy for your keywords.

Another aspect of keyword targeting to consider is negative keywords. These are specific terms you might want to exclude from your paid advertising to ensure that the traffic you gain is as worthwhile as possible. Negative keywords allow you to prevent your ads from showing for irrelevant searches that waste your budget without the potential of getting new business. We recommend having dozens of these and monitoring the searches your ads appear on in order to weed out any keywords to appear to be squandering your paid advertising investments. For example, you might designate “free” as a negative keyword if you’re only interested in potential paying customers, and you might name “cat” as a negative keyword for your sparkly dog collars if you don’t sell any feline accessories.  

By thoroughly evaluating the search queries in our clients’ accounts and adding new negative keywords accordingly, we’ve been able to save many of our clients hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars every month while improving their ads’ conversion rates.

Settings to Suit Your Needs

One of the main benefits of paid advertising is that it is so customizable. There is a wealth of options and adjustments available. However, many so-called “expert” marketing companies fail to properly adjust these settings for your company’s campaigns. In the midst of churning out thousands of campaigns, they lack the personalized attention to detail required for a successful, growth-based promotional strategy.

Fortunately, Concentric Management’s paid advertising team has cultivated an in-depth understanding of these parameters, and we take the time to implement this information to your advantage. We will monitor and constantly update your settings for scheduling, geographic targeting, mobile devices, and more. In the fast-paced world of online marketing, paying particular attention to these paid advertising settings could have a major impact.

Placing Paid Ads Everywhere

As they say in real estate, “location, location, location.” Where will your paid ads go? With our extensive expertise, your options are virtually limitless. The most classic form of online paid advertisement is a PPC (Pay-Per-Click) ad on Google’s Adwords network, but in this twenty-first century of marketing, you have many other options, as well.

By using the Google Display Network (the web of sites Google has partnered with to place advertisements), we can place your ads on a variety of news sites, blogs, and other niche sites across the Internet to reach more potential customers. We can also use social media targeting to make your ads appear on your prospective clients’ Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, and other feeds. This is yet another aspect of your paid advertising we can individualize and optimize based on your preferences and your ads’ performance. To learn more about social media advertising, check out our blog on how to use social media to boom your business.

Advanced Lead Tracking

Let’s say you’ve begun publishing paid ads on search engines, social media, and the Display Network. To your great delight, leads being pouring in! Score! However, to truly tell what’s working and boost your business even further, you need to know where these valuable customers are coming from.

Since Concentric Management is focused on constantly honing your paid advertising strategy, we offer state-of-the-art lead tracking. Our platform allows us to track forms filled out on your site, as well as calls to your phone number coming in via advertisements and your website. With this instrument, we will report your ROI (Return on Invesment) each month and calibrate your paid advertising strategy based off of your statistics. This way, you can enhance what is working and minimize what isn’t. Lead tracking is just another facet of our fine-tuned paid advertising systems.

Budgeting for Growth  

Paid advertising is such a varied field that costs can differ dramatically depending on which platforms you use, which marketing companies you choose, and many other factors. You could test out a few basic ads for a couple hundred dollars per month or launch a more comprehensive program for thousands.

At Concentric Management, we recommend that you have a minimum monthly budget of at least $500. Under this threshold, it is difficult to ascertain how well your advertisements are working and the benefits are likely to be negligible. We recognize that paid advertising can be a significant investment for many companies, which is why we go above and beyond to make it as valuable as possible. Our customized approach and sophisticated skills in this industry help provide an outstanding ROI for our clientele.

Our Offerings

Concentric Management is proud to provide a wide array of paid advertising options for our clients. Our versatility allows us to work closely with our clients to determine which combination of platforms would be ideal. We currently offer paid advertising services for:

• Adwords – this includes Google’s search engine, the Google Display Network, and YouTube.  Concentric Management  has earned the honor of being named a Google Partner. Only those who pass rigorous certification exams and meet high qualifications are granted this status by Google. As Google explains, “the [Partner] badge shows that [a company has] demonstrated AdWords skill and expertise, met AdWords spend requirements, delivered agency and client revenue growth, and sustained and grown [its] client base.” This esteemed title gives Concentric Management greater access to advanced Google training resources, as well as special “AdWords promotional offers” for our clients. We are delighted to extend these numerous advantages to you when designing your PPC advertising campaigns.
• Facebook – social media advertisements on both Facebook and Instagram.
• Twitter – these advertisements can be targeted to users’ particular profiles, follows, favorites, and beyond.
• LinkedIn – this professional social media platform is an excellent space to place paid ads for B2B companies.
• AdRoll – this innovative tool brings Google and Facebook remarketing (online paid advertisements targeted specifically at users who have previously visited your online pages and are thus more likely to convert) together on one platform.
• Amazon – we can place paid advertisements for your business’ products on this popular online shopping platform.
• Bing – this includes placement of ads on the Bing and Yahoo! search engines, as well as throughout AOL.

We will coordinate with your company to determine which combination of platforms will suit your needs and preferences.

Contact Concentric Management Today

Are you ready to bring your marketing into the twenty-first century with online paid advertising? Do you want to work with a marketing company that truly cares about your success and works tirelessly to perfect your campaigns? Look no further! Contact Concentric Management today to schedule a consultation.