Paid Advertising
Timing is everything. You have to be in front of the right people at the exact moment they’re looking for services like yours. That’s what paid advertising can do. It takes every other kind of advertising and skyrockets it to the next level. Paid advertising helps to create brand awareness and leads through search, display, video, and social advertising channels.
In the digital marketing landscape, you need to have a strategy that consists of a perfectly balanced ecosystem. This includes a solid SEO strategy, content marketing, social media—and paid advertising. Each of these branches fulfills a different purpose, and when you put them together? They become a powerful team that engages with your target market.
Paid advertising holds a special place in this ecosystem. It increases your exposure and helps you compete in an increasingly tough market. At Avid, we’re proud to have earned Google Partner status. You can feel more confident knowing we have access to the latest Google program features and make every effort to continuously upgrade your campaigns. In addition to being Google Ads certified for many types of Google Ads, we also have agency-level relationships as we are Facebook Marketing Partners, official Yelp Agency Partner, Certified Yext Agency Partner, and more.
What does this mean? That you’ll be working with an agency that has people certified to bring you the newest features, programs, and additional offerings beyond what you can get as a business owner. Having this level of access is a pretty big deal for our clients and the performance of their marketing programs.
What Is Paid Advertising?
Back in the day, paid advertising was simply pay per click (PPC). It’s just what it sounds like. You paid every time someone clicked on your ad. These ads were usually tied to specific keywords. However, today’s paid advertising is an umbrella term that might include PPC along with search ads, display ads, video ads, social ads, geofencing ads, and lead gen ads. That’s a lot of different types of ads!
Paid advertising gives you the opportunity to reach people who are looking for businesses just like yours but haven’t quite connected with you yet. We understand the value of a fully integrated marketing program, which is why paid advertising can be part of the Avid’ services. And we always stay up to date on the types of ads we offer our clients so that you stay ahead of your competition.
Our Partners
We partner with companies that excel in marketing automation, lead generation, and creating results for our clients.
Avid
Paid Advertising Programs
Paid advertising is a great fit for a well-made website, SEO program, and ongoing content marketing program. These three programs are necessary to build your organic rankings, and to provide a solid framework for paid advertising success.
You can’t just have paid advertising and reap the benefits. When someone clicks on your ad, they need to be taken to an engaging website or social media page. Instead, paid programming is a fantastic supplement that can help increase your exposure and rankings. That’s why with every paid advertising program, we put an emphasis on a solid landing page, engaging content, unique contact forms, and call-tracking phone numbers.
At Avid, we partner with Call Rail to create a premium call tracking system that uses a sophisticated method to dynamically replace phone numbers for searchers who come from a paid advertising campaign. That way, you’ll know exactly how calls were generated and how many came from paid advertising. When you know the full journey of your searcher, from their ad click to their conversion to a customer, you have a solid understanding of where your campaigns are working.
A Well Composed Paid Advertising Program
Paid advertising complements any search marketing program by allowing you to be found on the first page of search results. We invite you to learn more about highly effective paid advertising opportunities that create fantastic results for our clients.
Why Search Ads Are Important
Contrary to popular belief, search ads are the most common form of paid advertising. Unsurprisingly, Google is the dominant search ad platform, although you can find search ads on Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines, too. It’s a good thing we at Avid are a certified Google Partner. You only get that status through long-term, ongoing campaign development and effective account management. Since 92-96 percent of our clients’ website traffic comes through Google, Google search ads are a very powerful tool for our clients.
Searcher Intent
Search ads are created to meet the needs of people using Google in real-time. Much like vying for organic rankings, paid advertising is all about “searcher intent.” Search ads are displayed based on what someone is Googling at any given moment. They are designed based on a set of keywords and can appear in a number of locations on Google’s search page. If someone Googles “chemical peels Phoenix” and that happens to be a special you’re offering this month, a search ad can display your business prominently where it will be seen before the regular search results.
At Avid, we work with you to understand your current organic rankings through our SEO program, then build a paid search program to increase the odds that a searcher will know your business exists and choose to learn more. This can include search ads and other paid advertising.
Search Ad Features
Ultimately, search ads are pretty simple on the surface. They don’t have images or videos, which can make them tough to stand out. That’s why we add “upgrades” to your search ads whenever possible. This can include promotions, text messaging options, featuring your location on a map, and “call only” ads that force customers to call you directly. When we use “responsive ads,” they are always a/b tested with a variety of title lines and descriptions so that Google only dishes up the most effective combinations.
Even though search ads might look simple, don’t let that fool you. There is a lot of competition in this realm, and some search ads can be costly depending on their competitive value. We’ll work with you and your budget to see if search ads are right for you.
Display ads allow you to go all out with powerful visuals. Searchers can get used to seeing them in search results no matter where they might be placed. This means it’s very important to stand out.
Display Ads Target Competitor URLs and Keywords
Display ads are more of a “branding” style of paid advertising, whereas their counterparts—search ads—are focused on real-time conversions. Display ad visuals have evolved throughout the years, and when creating them for Google, we can target your competitor URLs. By adding specific keywords and demographic information, the experience is vastly enhanced for the user.
Display vs. Search Ads: Similarities and Differences
Using display ads means you’re inserting yourself into someone’s conversation. The people who click on these ads aren’t always specifically looking for your business, but they have searched for similar keywords or even visited one of your competitor’s websites. That means they have expressed interested and we are dropping you into their field of view. Display ads “follow” a particular user based on their established interests and we retarget these specific users. Display advertising isn’t as competitive as search ads, which means the cost per click is lower. Plus, you can enjoy a rich variety of text and imagery combinations. It’s a budget-friendly option that really works.
We at Avid enhance display advertising with enhanced targeting. You’ll see a big spike in web traffic as people click on your ads and get directed to your landing page. This traffic isn’t quite as high quality as search ad traffic since people are clicking based on visuals, not because they’re actively searching for businesses like yours. Still, display ads can be a very effective tool.
Geofencing is an exciting new mobile location-based marketing program where a virtual fence is drawn around a specific geographic area. When people visit these fenced areas, they then become part of your growing “audience” and will receive targeted ads. This allows you to promote your business where customers are, not where you want them to be.
How Geofencing Works
The user is first brought into the audience through interactions on their mobile phone. However, the power of geofencing continues to expand when the user goes home and reconnect that same phone to their home Wi-Fi. Our geofencing technology will recognize it’s the same user and serve ads in various apps downloaded on their phone (CNN app, USA Today, Weather Channel App, Words with Friends, NFL app, etc.), as well as through their desktop or laptop internet browsers. If you have a professional video of 15 or 30 seconds in length, we can draw a fence around specific addresses and serve video ads directly to cord-cutter devices such as Apple TV, Roku, Smart TV, Chromecast, Xbox, Amazon Fire and more. These ads will appear for up to 30 days after a new audience member enters the virtual fence area. This is why people see ads for places they’ve recently visited or been near.
Benefits of Geofencing:
The benefits of geofencing advertising is tremendous for business owners. Check out a few examples of the power of geofencing:
- Geofence your own business and promote your loyalty program
- Geofence your competitor offices and serve ads to their customers
- Host an open house or event and promote specials and services to your audience later
- Upload a list of your customers’ physical addresses and serve ads around their homes
- Create a “conversion zone” so you can track people who saw your geofencing ads and came to your physical location as a direct result
- Build awareness of your business by creating a fence around a nearby intersection or point of interest
- Serve ads to people that share interests in what you offer in places they visit such as apps on a phone, web browser, or desktop
- Precise targeting of users down to a 1 foot accuracy makes it much more accurate than other marketing programs which can only target down to a 1 mile radius
The Difference Between Geofencing and Geotargeting
Geofencing is far more precise than geotargeting in many ways. Geofencing works by drawing a perimeter around a house, office building, restaurant, stadium, car dealership, etc. and then serving ads to people who enter your “fence”. Geotargeting is much broader where a pinpoint is dropped at a building and the minimum radius is 1 km (or 0.6 miles) around that pinpoint. Additionally, geotargeting targets customers at their location (or specific locations they frequent), but Geofencing targets customers around your specific location. See the difference? True geofence technology draws a perimeter within a foot or two of your intended boundary. Additionally, geofencing allows us to draw custom shapes and sizes for hyper-granular focus in contrast to a simple radius.
YouTube and Google: A Partnership For Video
Studies have shown that people are increasingly preferring video content over any other kind of content. Since Google owns YouTube, it’s worth giving YouTube video advertising a try. Video ads are a fantastic way to take a professionally created video and let it tell your story.
Types of Video Ads
Video ads can be inserted directly into YouTube, and there are a variety of ad types available. Choose from skippable in-stream ads, discoverable ads, and non-skippable pre-roll ads. Bumper ads are the shortest type of video ad option. Video ads are targeted differently than search and display ads, because they’re based solely on the audience and their interests. They are somewhat similar to display ads, but the cost per click and competition are lower. This makes video ads a great choice if you have quality videos and want to share your story.
Meet Your New Favorite Marketing Ad
Social ads have become wildly popular, with the biggest platforms being Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Of course, Facebook owns Instagram, but the two platforms cater to very different demographics.
Facebook and Instagram Offer Extreme Targeting Options
Facebook innately has audience targeting, which can be based on interests like medispa, Nike, dog collars, sun damage, and more. However, what really makes Facebook unique is the custom intent audiences. We can leverage data compiled from a “pixel” that tracking your web traffic, then target a number of ads to people who have taken a specific action. Popular actions that we turn into a custom audience include viewing your website or a particular webpage within a certain number of days, engaged with your Facebook or Instagram pages, or even interacted with a previous Facebook ad. We can even upload a list of email addresses to our agency account and find matches to send Facebook or Instagram ads to people who would be interested in your latest special or new services. To add another popular layer on top of all these great features, we can then target people who “look like” any of the above audiences but have otherwise never interacted with your business. It’s pretty amazing.
There are plenty of options for customization, including geographic targeting just like with search, display, and video ads. However, these custom audiences are solely on Facebook or Instagram, making the search unique. At Avid, we can even use a list of your business customers and compare it with Facebook results to retarget new social ads to them. Facebook is home to a powerful “lead gen” ad that’s similar to search ads and lets users complete a contact form that’s sent directly to you. However, unlike search ads, Facebook ads don’t lead to your website. Instead, users are directed to a Facebook form and an alert is sent to your team that a “hot lead” just came in.
Types of Social Ads
There are some big differences between Facebook and Instagram ad types, and we’ve found tremendous success by experimentation. Most of our clients love single-image ads, carousel ads that rotate images, Facebook and Instagram stories, lead gen ads, video ads, and other types that are displayed on the content of their network of partners. Facebook’s sponsored posts can also be used to promote interesting articles that are shareable to help your channel grow or drum up interest in a new special, Facebook Live event, and more.
The Benefits Of Working With A Google Agency Partner
Google Maps advertising is a type of Google PPC, but with a limited and very powerful purpose. You may not have heard of it before, but it’s been around for almost a decade. As a Google Agency Partner, we’re always taking advantage of the many Google marketing activities available so that you can stand out from the competition.
Enhance Your Appearance On Maps
When someone is using Google to look for a business, a Google Map often appears at the top of the search results. You’ve probably found that you click on this first. It pops up before organic rankings, and inside those maps there are sponsored businesses. You can tell they’re sponsored because of the green icon next to the name of the business, but you may not have noticed—that’s kind of the idea.
When someone clicks on that map, they see a variety of sponsored businesses at the very top. It’s a great paid ad option and very affordable at just $300 – $700 per month. Clients report an immediate increase in calls when Google Maps advertising is part of their Google Ads program.
Certified Agency Partner Brings Tremendous Benefits To Clients
Yelp is the undeniable leader in third-party reviews, and at Avid we’re a Yelp Certified Agency Partner. There are approximately 300 such partners in the US. It’s new to Yelp and works differently than the traditional “Yelp ads” that you can manage in any average account.
Ad-Driven Leads Reported Separately
Only agency accounts like ours have access to this special program, which allows us to track our clients’ conversion rates broken down by ad-driven and organic clicks and calls – separately. Think about it – with Yelp Agency Partner, you can know your ad clicks produced results beyond “regular Yelp” usage. Yelp ads are generating calls, clicks, and contact form fills like nobody’s business (except yours if you choose this option).
Call Tracking Numbers That Don’t Create NAP Inconsistencies
Only Yelp Agency Partners can give their clients the enhanced tools necessary to optimize Yelp usage. Yelp is a database that feeds a number of other digital platforms, so you always want your correct phone number listed. Call tracking numbers aren’t typically featured, but with the Agency Partner Program, call tracking numbers can be added to the back-end of Yelp. Customers will think they’re calling your local number, but it’s actually being routed through your unique call tracking number. This is how you can track phone calls, record them through a call tracking company like Call Rail, listen to recordings for “training opportunities” and know your paid advertising budget is well worth the expense.
Integration with Google Analytics with UTM Codes
Another huge perk of being a Yelp Agency Partner is that we can append your destination URL with tracking code to follow the user from Yelp to your website. When they fill out your contact form, it’s reported to Google Analytics in the same column as the rest of your goals so you know that a Yelp Ad created a number of contact form fills and phone calls – and you’re as happy as can be.
There are a myriad of benefits to being a Yelp Agency Partner, but a favorite of our clients is the ability to know exactly which clicks came from Yelp Ads. You’re not paying for people to stumble across your profile on Yelp. You’re paying to know that someone actually saw your PPC Yelp Ad, clicked on it, and either called you or filled out a form. Knowing how your ad-driven experience is performing is critical to gauging how well Yelp is doing in your marketing arsenal.
Paid advertising complements any search marketing program by allowing you to be found on the first page of search results. We invite you to learn more about highly effective paid advertising opportunities that create fantastic results for our clients.
Why Search Ads Are Important
Contrary to popular belief, search ads are the most common form of paid advertising. Unsurprisingly, Google is the dominant search ad platform, although you can find search ads on Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines, too. It’s a good thing we at Avid are a certified Google Partner. You only get that status through long-term, ongoing campaign development and effective account management. Since 92-96 percent of our clients’ website traffic comes through Google, Google search ads are a very powerful tool for our clients.
Searcher Intent
Search ads are created to meet the needs of people using Google in real-time. Much like vying for organic rankings, paid advertising is all about “searcher intent.” Search ads are displayed based on what someone is Googling at any given moment. They are designed based on a set of keywords and can appear in a number of locations on Google’s search page. If someone Googles “chemical peels Phoenix” and that happens to be a special you’re offering this month, a search ad can display your business prominently where it will be seen before the regular search results.
At Avid, we work with you to understand your current organic rankings through our SEO program, then build a paid search program to increase the odds that a searcher will know your business exists and choose to learn more. This can include search ads and other paid advertising.
Search Ad Features
Ultimately, search ads are pretty simple on the surface. They don’t have images or videos, which can make them tough to stand out. That’s why we add “upgrades” to your search ads whenever possible. This can include promotions, text messaging options, featuring your location on a map, and “call only” ads that force customers to call you directly. When we use “responsive ads,” they are always a/b tested with a variety of title lines and descriptions so that Google only dishes up the most effective combinations.
Even though search ads might look simple, don’t let that fool you. There is a lot of competition in this realm, and some search ads can be costly depending on their competitive value. We’ll work with you and your budget to see if search ads are right for you.
Display ads allow you to go all out with powerful visuals. Searchers can get used to seeing them in search results no matter where they might be placed. This means it’s very important to stand out.
Display Ads Target Competitor URLs and Keywords
Display ads are more of a “branding” style of paid advertising, whereas their counterparts—search ads—are focused on real-time conversions. Display ad visuals have evolved throughout the years, and when creating them for Google, we can target your competitor URLs. By adding specific keywords and demographic information, the experience is vastly enhanced for the user.
Display vs. Search Ads: Similarities and Differences
Using display ads means you’re inserting yourself into someone’s conversation. The people who click on these ads aren’t always specifically looking for your business, but they have searched for similar keywords or even visited one of your competitor’s websites. That means they have expressed interested and we are dropping you into their field of view. Display ads “follow” a particular user based on their established interests and we retarget these specific users. Display advertising isn’t as competitive as search ads, which means the cost per click is lower. Plus, you can enjoy a rich variety of text and imagery combinations. It’s a budget-friendly option that really works.
We at Avid enhance display advertising with enhanced targeting. You’ll see a big spike in web traffic as people click on your ads and get directed to your landing page. This traffic isn’t quite as high quality as search ad traffic since people are clicking based on visuals, not because they’re actively searching for businesses like yours. Still, display ads can be a very effective tool.
Geofencing is an exciting new mobile location-based marketing program where a virtual fence is drawn around a specific geographic area. When people visit these fenced areas, they then become part of your growing “audience” and will receive targeted ads. This allows you to promote your business where customers are, not where you want them to be.
How Geofencing Works
The user is first brought into the audience through interactions on their mobile phone. However, the power of geofencing continues to expand when the user goes home and reconnect that same phone to their home Wi-Fi. Our geofencing technology will recognize it’s the same user and serve ads in various apps downloaded on their phone (CNN app, USA Today, Weather Channel App, Words with Friends, NFL app, etc.), as well as through their desktop or laptop internet browsers. If you have a professional video of 15 or 30 seconds in length, we can draw a fence around specific addresses and serve video ads directly to cord-cutter devices such as Apple TV, Roku, Smart TV, Chromecast, Xbox, Amazon Fire and more. These ads will appear for up to 30 days after a new audience member enters the virtual fence area. This is why people see ads for places they’ve recently visited or been near.
Benefits of Geofencing:
The benefits of geofencing advertising is tremendous for business owners. Check out a few examples of the power of geofencing:
- Geofence your own business and promote your loyalty program
- Geofence your competitor offices and serve ads to their customers
- Host an open house or event and promote specials and services to your audience later
- Upload a list of your customers’ physical addresses and serve ads around their homes
- Create a “conversion zone” so you can track people who saw your geofencing ads and came to your physical location as a direct result
- Build awareness of your business by creating a fence around a nearby intersection or point of interest
- Serve ads to people that share interests in what you offer in places they visit such as apps on a phone, web browser, or desktop
- Precise targeting of users down to a 1 foot accuracy makes it much more accurate than other marketing programs which can only target down to a 1 mile radius
The Difference Between Geofencing and Geotargeting
Geofencing is far more precise than geotargeting in many ways. Geofencing works by drawing a perimeter around a house, office building, restaurant, stadium, car dealership, etc. and then serving ads to people who enter your “fence”. Geotargeting is much broader where a pinpoint is dropped at a building and the minimum radius is 1 km (or 0.6 miles) around that pinpoint. Additionally, geotargeting targets customers at their location (or specific locations they frequent), but Geofencing targets customers around your specific location. See the difference? True geofence technology draws a perimeter within a foot or two of your intended boundary. Additionally, geofencing allows us to draw custom shapes and sizes for hyper-granular focus in contrast to a simple radius.
YouTube and Google: A Partnership For Video
Studies have shown that people are increasingly preferring video content over any other kind of content. Since Google owns YouTube, it’s worth giving YouTube video advertising a try. Video ads are a fantastic way to take a professionally created video and let it tell your story.
Types of Video Ads
Video ads can be inserted directly into YouTube, and there are a variety of ad types available. Choose from skippable in-stream ads, discoverable ads, and non-skippable pre-roll ads. Bumper ads are the shortest type of video ad option. Video ads are targeted differently than search and display ads, because they’re based solely on the audience and their interests. They are somewhat similar to display ads, but the cost per click and competition are lower. This makes video ads a great choice if you have quality videos and want to share your story.
Meet Your New Favorite Marketing Ad
Social ads have become wildly popular, with the biggest platforms being Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Of course, Facebook owns Instagram, but the two platforms cater to very different demographics.
Facebook and Instagram Offer Extreme Targeting Options
Facebook innately has audience targeting, which can be based on interests like medispa, Nike, dog collars, sun damage, and more. However, what really makes Facebook unique is the custom intent audiences. We can leverage data compiled from a “pixel” that tracking your web traffic, then target a number of ads to people who have taken a specific action. Popular actions that we turn into a custom audience include viewing your website or a particular webpage within a certain number of days, engaged with your Facebook or Instagram pages, or even interacted with a previous Facebook ad. We can even upload a list of email addresses to our agency account and find matches to send Facebook or Instagram ads to people who would be interested in your latest special or new services. To add another popular layer on top of all these great features, we can then target people who “look like” any of the above audiences but have otherwise never interacted with your business. It’s pretty amazing.
There are plenty of options for customization, including geographic targeting just like with search, display, and video ads. However, these custom audiences are solely on Facebook or Instagram, making the search unique. At Avid, we can even use a list of your business customers and compare it with Facebook results to retarget new social ads to them. Facebook is home to a powerful “lead gen” ad that’s similar to search ads and lets users complete a contact form that’s sent directly to you. However, unlike search ads, Facebook ads don’t lead to your website. Instead, users are directed to a Facebook form and an alert is sent to your team that a “hot lead” just came in.
Types of Social Ads
There are some big differences between Facebook and Instagram ad types, and we’ve found tremendous success by experimentation. Most of our clients love single-image ads, carousel ads that rotate images, Facebook and Instagram stories, lead gen ads, video ads, and other types that are displayed on the content of their network of partners. Facebook’s sponsored posts can also be used to promote interesting articles that are shareable to help your channel grow or drum up interest in a new special, Facebook Live event, and more.
The Benefits Of Working With A Google Agency Partner
Google Maps advertising is a type of Google PPC, but with a limited and very powerful purpose. You may not have heard of it before, but it’s been around for almost a decade. As a Google Agency Partner, we’re always taking advantage of the many Google marketing activities available so that you can stand out from the competition.
Enhance Your Appearance On Maps
When someone is using Google to look for a business, a Google Map often appears at the top of the search results. You’ve probably found that you click on this first. It pops up before organic rankings, and inside those maps there are sponsored businesses. You can tell they’re sponsored because of the green icon next to the name of the business, but you may not have noticed—that’s kind of the idea.
When someone clicks on that map, they see a variety of sponsored businesses at the very top. It’s a great paid ad option and very affordable at just $300 – $700 per month. Clients report an immediate increase in calls when Google Maps advertising is part of their Google Ads program.
Certified Agency Partner Brings Tremendous Benefits To Clients
Yelp is the undeniable leader in third-party reviews, and at Avid we’re a Yelp Certified Agency Partner. There are approximately 300 such partners in the US. It’s new to Yelp and works differently than the traditional “Yelp ads” that you can manage in any average account.
Ad-Driven Leads Reported Separately
Only agency accounts like ours have access to this special program, which allows us to track our clients’ conversion rates broken down by ad-driven and organic clicks and calls – separately. Think about it – with Yelp Agency Partner, you can know your ad clicks produced results beyond “regular Yelp” usage. Yelp ads are generating calls, clicks, and contact form fills like nobody’s business (except yours if you choose this option).
Call Tracking Numbers That Don’t Create NAP Inconsistencies
Only Yelp Agency Partners can give their clients the enhanced tools necessary to optimize Yelp usage. Yelp is a database that feeds a number of other digital platforms, so you always want your correct phone number listed. Call tracking numbers aren’t typically featured, but with the Agency Partner Program, call tracking numbers can be added to the back-end of Yelp. Customers will think they’re calling your local number, but it’s actually being routed through your unique call tracking number. This is how you can track phone calls, record them through a call tracking company like Call Rail, listen to recordings for “training opportunities” and know your paid advertising budget is well worth the expense.
Integration with Google Analytics with UTM Codes
Another huge perk of being a Yelp Agency Partner is that we can append your destination URL with tracking code to follow the user from Yelp to your website. When they fill out your contact form, it’s reported to Google Analytics in the same column as the rest of your goals so you know that a Yelp Ad created a number of contact form fills and phone calls – and you’re as happy as can be.
There are a myriad of benefits to being a Yelp Agency Partner, but a favorite of our clients is the ability to know exactly which clicks came from Yelp Ads. You’re not paying for people to stumble across your profile on Yelp. You’re paying to know that someone actually saw your PPC Yelp Ad, clicked on it, and either called you or filled out a form. Knowing how your ad-driven experience is performing is critical to gauging how well Yelp is doing in your marketing arsenal.
Avid Paid Advertising Performance
Client Results
Paid advertising builds on your other marketing efforts and can increase email subscribers, call volume, and mobile sessions. Take a peek at some key statistics from some of our clients and see how paid advertising can help your business:
269%
Increase in monthly call volume,
in 9 months
361%
Increase in overall web visits, in 2.5 years
2,085%
Increase in mobile visits, in 3.5 years
1,010
New digital items ranked by Google, in 4 years
