The Pros and Cons of Paid Advertising in Digital Marketing

Are you thinking of taking the next step to help grow your brand?

Paid advertising may be the way to go. Let’s cover some of the pros and cons of paid advertising in digital marketing.

Paid advertising is when marketers buy media space to promote their business. 

The key ingredient for a successful paid ad is to make sure you’re promoting your message where your audience is. 

Social media platforms are a good starting point for paid ads and could be a more cost-effective plan than paid advertising on search pages.

Let’s dive into the positives of paid advertising.  Two that come right to mind…speed and scale.

Paid ads drive traffic and revenue faster than search engine optimization (SEO). 

SEO can take a bit longer for companies to see positive results, where paid ads offer real-time views of what the audience is doing and where they’re clicking. Don’t put SEO on the back burner, though.  Look as SEO and paid advertising as partners who complement each other.

Another positive for paid advertising: the ads help reach more targeted audiences. How? Through keywords and custom messaging that can be tweaked as you learn more about what your consumer is clicking on. 

Now let’s talk about some of the negatives of paid marketing. 

Cost can be quite high when purchasing paid ads, especially if you’re looking to pop up in top competitive search results like Google. 

Google data shows that the average return on ad spend (ROAS) for paid search is 200 percent.

That’s $2 earned for every $1 spent. While this may sound great, the ad comes at a cost.

Another negative when using paid advertising is that you could find yourself buried in clutter.

Like Google, companies pay to appear at the top of search results.  But so does your competition.  So, where you put your money and place your ads could be a game changer…but a costly one.

So, it makes sense that the more you spend, the higher the search results you could appear.  Kind of like a bidding war, right?

Overall, planning accordingly on where to buy your ad will help give you the best bang for your buck.

Like any other marketing plan, it’s important to consider the cons and work with the pros.