Cooking Up the Right Paid Digital Marketing Mix to Achieve Your Business Goals
By: Matt Martin, CEO & Founder, RocketBarn
Famously, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson once shouted to his excited audience:
Can you smell what The Rock is cooking!?
This became his common catchphrase. Some people attribute this statement to his humble beginnings in his rise to fame.
Are you ready to take on this catchphrase and get cooking with your own great paid digital marketing mix? Like The Rock, we can strive to elevate our game and achieve excellent results with a strategic, focused local marketing program.
Let’s start with a review of the most impactful paid digital marketing platforms, and what they can mean for you and your franchise brand.
Google Ads Search
Google Ads fits within the pay-per-click marketing channel. As an advertiser, you pay per click or impression on an ad.
This platform helps you to drive qualified traffic to your business. Your ads will show up on the search engine results page (SERP) when your ideal customers search keywords related to your services on Google. Google Ads will ensure you achieve your marketing goal of appearing for the right people, in the right place, at the right time.
Google receives over 5 billion search queries daily (see the current count here). Businesses like yours are using Google Ads to acquire new customers and grow their revenue every day.
Some unique features of Google Ads Search include:
- Ability to target people with specific interests, devices, by demographics, by time of day … the list goes on! This is a highly customizable platform.
- Option to control costs. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad.
- Clear insight on your success. If someone clicks on your ad and takes action valuable to your business (like calling you), you have insight on this activity. This continual feedback will help improve the return on your marketing investment over time.
Google Ads Display
Google Display campaigns are image-based. They are shown on web pages within the Google Display Network. This Network is made up of over 2 million websites, videos, and apps (e.g. Gmail and Youtube).
Brand awareness is the goal you will reach when advertising with Google Display campaigns. Display ads ensure that you are front-of-mind for customers in the awareness stage of the funnel. Nurturing these customers with continual touch points ensures that when they need you, they know who to look for.
As you can see, Google Search and Google Display campaigns are complementary campaign types for your marketing mix!
The better you speak to where your audiences are at in their purchase journey with your Display ads, the better your results. A great feature of Display ads is the ability to segment audience types by their stage in the customer journey.
Local Service Ads
The focus of Local Service Ads (also known as ‘Google Guarantee’) is putting customers in touch with certified local businesses. Local Service Ads helps home service providers build a trusted reputation online.
Some key differences between Google Ads Search campaigns and Local Service Ads:
- Local Service Ads appear at the top of the results page. You are only charged when a customer contacts you via the ad (that is, you pay per lead). This lead will cost you more than a click on your Google Search campaigns.
- Google Ads is pay-per-click. You pay each time that someone clicks on your ad, even if they do not contact you. You are able to reach a larger audience and you can customize your ad text and control which keywords (search terms) you want to target.
These differences make it important to run both Local Service Ads and Google Search Ads so that you do not limit your exposure to potential customers.
Facebook Ads
There are 1.6 billion people connected to a small business on Facebook (reference). Many of your potential customers spend time engaging with friends, family, and other businesses on Facebook.
It is an excellent platform to showcase your best photographs and videos as ads to create a seamless in-thread experience. Running Facebook Ads also leverages any existing social media marketing engagement strategy you may be running.
Facebook Ads help you to reach your preferred audience. When setting up your Facebook Ads, you will be able to set clear goals and objectives, outline the characteristics of your audience (e.g. age), and set ad placement, format, budget, and more.
A unique feature of Facebook Ads is the option to set up Lead Ads. These ad types allow users to stay on the Facebook platform while completing and submitting your lead form. It removes the friction for your audiences of having to navigate to a landing page.
This is one example of a seamless experience for your audiences, and a great way for you to collect their contact information to convert them into paying customers.
Network Education
These are just a few of the many platforms you can leverage online to target your audience. Hopefully, most of these opportunities aren’t new to you and you already have one or two as part of your marketing strategy. However, when it comes to local marketing, can your franchisees say the same?
As a marketer, or with a marketing background, we often forget how much we’ve learned. Franchisees come from all walks of life, and have their own unique strengths and talents. For many of them, all of these digital platforms and strategies are brand new. That fear, confusion and sense of overwhelm can cause them to FREEZE!
Think about ways to help bridge that gap:
- Running educational webinars to walk through advertising account setups & management.
- Developing network wide benchmarks and case studies to help build the groundwork for what to expect & how to measure success.
- Bring in a Digital Marketing vendor that, beyond campaign management, offers education, guidance & franchise experience.
Of course, choosing the right mix of platforms from the list above to run your paid digital ads is only the first step.
It’s important that you create a seamless experience and consistent messaging for potential customers throughout their customer journey.
Like Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, you can cook up an excellent marketing mix for your paid digital ads. Be sure to consider all the different platforms and how they interact to create a positive experience for your potential customers.
Let’s ask the question now:
Can they smell what your Brand is cooking!?
Tagged in: Articles