Paid Web Traffic Sources

In our previous lesson, we looked at how to generate website traffic using both free and paid methods. However, we didn’t go in-depth. In this lesson, we are going to show you in more detail, the different paid traffic sources as well as tips and strategies to use them.

What Is Paid Traffic?

Paid traffic refers to the website visits you get through your paid advertising efforts. Paid advertising is any type of internet advertising that a marketer/company pays for. Paid ad networks allow advertisers to rent a space on their platform to reach their audience and advertise their offers.

Most search engines and big-time social networks all offer channels where anyone can run ads on their platform. For instance, Google has Google Ads, Bing has Bing Ads, AOL has Microsoft Ads. Facebook has Facebook ads, Twitter has Twitter ads, LinkedIn has LinkedIn Ads, Pinterest has Pinterest Ads, Quora has Quora ads and so much more.

Before choosing any one of the traffic sources to run ads on, you need to check if the network has the kind of audience your offer needs. For instance, if you are into B2B or B2C, LinkedIn and Google will be good places.

Forms Of Ad Networks

Ad networks can be grouped into 3 forms:

• Search Engines
• Social Media
• PPC Networks
• Mobile Advertising
• Influencer Advertising

  1.  Search Engine Advertising:

As noted before now, most search engines like Google run their own ad network. In fact, with Google, you can run ads to cover the Google search results where your ads appear amongst the search results. But not only that, you can also run display ads (mostly images ads) on all sites that have partnered with Google using the Adsense program; and you can run video ads on YouTube too within the Google Ads Network. That’s how powerful it is.

2. Social Media Advertising

Social media ad networks include all social media that run an advertising program such as FaceBook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter. This also includes social forums like Quora. To run ads on social networks, you must know that different social networks cater to a different audience. For instance, if you want to run a fashion ad, it would be best to do it on Instagram than on LinkedIn.

3.  Other PPC Ad Networks

Aside from the major players like search engines and social networks, there are other Ad networks with the PPC model. These ad networks offer other ad formats like native advertising and display ad formats (image and gifs), as well as videos. An example of such PPC network s Taboola and OutBrain.

4.  Mobile Ad Networks

There are also other ad networks that cater to the mobile market. Over 50% of internet users access the internet with their mobile phones. As such advertisers look for means to reach the mobile user market.  Although Google and social media ad networks show ads on mobile phones, their are some ad formats that they don’t support and you can only get those ad formats from the Mobile ad networks. These ad formats include:

Push notifications: These are ads that pop up like a message on a mobile phone.

Pop-up ads: These are ads that pop up on a user’s phone. There are different from push notifications because they can appear as an image or video.

Pop-Under ads: These are ads that open in a different tab when you click on a link. They don’t disturb your current work but are open in the background.

5.  Influencer Ads

Influencer marketing, which is fundamentally a form of social media marketing, uses product mentions and endorsements from influencers. These are individuals who have a large social following and are considered experts in their field. Influencer marketing is a result of the trust social influencers have with their followers. Their recommendations serve as social proof for your brand’s potential clients.

Advantages Of Using Paid Traffic Sources

1.  Fast Results

Unpaid social media marketing, or content marketing, can take time. Some businesses cannot afford to wait that long for their marketing strategy to pay off.

Traffic can be paid for to allow a product or service to be noticed immediately, which is crucial in certain fast-growing industries.

2. Narrowed Targeting

One of the major selling points of paid traffic sources or advertising is the ability to really narrow down your audience which in turn will lead to a better ROI. For instance, if you a selling Zara Foundation for ladies, you can target women. then select a particular age range, location, you can also target ladies that are interested in cosmetics, and more so you can target only ladies interested in Zara brands. Without paid traffic, you can’t niche down on an audience like this.

3.  Analytics

A paid campaign is easier to measure ROI. Because the tools available to measure organic traffic are often better than those offered for campaigns that cost money, it’s easier to measure the result.

All of the channels that allow for paid ad creation offer good analytics interfaces. This allows the user to examine the campaign results and decide if they need to change the target audience, bid on different keywords, or do anything else that might boost the ad.

4. Continuous improvement

Most advertising networks are constantly updating their tools. The manager of a campaign can use many targeting options, including age, gender, or location. There are many techniques that can be used to better reach a customer.

Retargeting is a great way to reach customers. You can communicate your company’s value to customers by learning more about them and their interests.

Digital marketing is expected to follow technological advances which will give weight to traffic and paid campaigns.

How to get the best from paid traffic sources

Step 1: Define your campaign goal

What are your goals with your ads and what do you want to achieve? Do you want to increase traffic, visibility, and engagement? Lead generation or sales? Although all of these are important goals, your ads should focus on one at a time.

Understanding your goals will help you gauge the success of your paid advertising strategy. If you are trying to generate leads, but only see increased traffic, then you will need to modify your strategy to convert that traffic into leads.

Step 2: Select the best platform

Each ad network caters more to a certain kind of audience. Instagram ads will fit into the fashion audience, whereas LinkedIn ads will cater to B2B/B2C audiences. Find the platform that has an audience that will like your offer.

Step 3: Define your metrics

Your objectives will determine the metrics you use. Click-through rate, conversion rates, new leads, or new subscribers can all be measured. It is possible to also track cost per subscriber or cost per lead. This will help you determine your overall ROI.

Step 4: Focus on your goal

Ads targeting takes some trial and error. To reach the most interested audience for your ad, you need to identify the right combination of behaviors, interests, and demographics. It is not as simple as it sounds. Most times, you will need to leave the ad to run for a few days before analyzing the data and cutting out those that are not performing well.

Targeting can be done based on location, age, profession, interests, and purchasing habits. This can seem overwhelming at first, but you’ll get the hang of it with time.

Step 5: Design Your Funnel

Whatever ad you run make sure that where you are sending the traffic you will get is well optimized. A/B test your landing pages and see which one will perform best. All in all, have a strong back-end strategy.

In Conclusion

Thanks for following through with this lesson on various paid traffic sources you can use to drive traffic to your website. In our next lesson, we will also go into more detail on the different paid traffic sources you can use to drive traffic to any web page.