Purchasing paid ads should be part of your overall traffic strategy, because it can often deliver high-quality traffic to your site fairly quickly. (Providing you optimize your campaigns and choose high-quality venues.) So, with that in mind, check out these five places you can place a paid advertisement…
Google Ads
This pay per click platform lets you narrow by audience demographics as well as targeting the keywords your market is typing into the search engine. For best results, choose narrow (highly targeted) keywords, which are typically the longtail keywords.
For example, a word like “weight loss” is not only too expensive, it’s too broad because you’re not sure who’s typing that keyword into Google and for what reason. Instead, choose something like “weight loss tips for men over 60” or “low-carb dieting tips for women.” This will get a more highly targeted audience in front of your ad, which will boost response and keep your ad costs down.
Facebook Ads
Facebook has wonderful tools for narrowing your audience by both their demographics and their interests. For example, if you’re selling dog-training information, you can choose an audience who’s already shown an interest in dogs and dog training (e.g., perhaps they’ve liked certain dog-related pages).
Other Social Media Sites
You’ll want to look into other social media sites, such as YouTube advertising, Reddit advertising and similar to see if they’re a good fit for what you’re selling. As always, place ads in a way that gets them in front of a targeted audience as possible. E.G., if you’re placing ads on Reddit, then choose a narrowly targeted sub-Reddit that matches your audience as closely as possible.
Niche Sites
Another really good place to advertise is on popular niche sites that get plenty of high-quality traffic. This is particularly true if these sites have “sticky” features that keep visitors on the site longer and bring them back repeatedly, such as a popular blog or forum/group.
Before you place an ad, be sure to gather information about how much traffic the site gets and where this traffic is coming from. Then start with a small ad buy, gauge your response, and purchase more ads on those sites that deliver the best response.
Local Venues
Finally, keep in mind that there are local places for you to purchase ads. These may include:
· On local websites (e.g., if you have a city-related website that lets you place ads).
· In local newspapers, including the free ones that are given away in places like the entrances to grocery stores.
· In other venues, such as radio ads.
As always, look for opportunities to get in front of a targeted audience (rather than using “mass advertising” that gets your ad in front of a large but untargeted audience, like billboards).
Conclusion
Highly targeted paid advertising can be really effective. This is especially true once you’ve optimized your campaign to create a good response. You can start small, and then reinvest your profits as your campaigns start bringing in sales and cash.