Do You Need Paid Media For Successful Marketing?
Do you need paid media for successful marketing? After all, why buy the cow when the milk is free? But what happens when nobody is drinking your free milk because it is on the bottom shelf? Top web development companies everywhere have noticed that paid media is changing the way we need to consider and approach digital marketing.
Let’s face it, when you can do something business related for free that is fantastic. At the end of the year every dollar not going to a cost on your profit and loss ends up as a gain. Digital marketing has been one of those areas where you can excel through hard work rather than just throwing money at it, but that appears to be changing.
Is Organic Social Reach dying?
Organic reach has been diminished. It started when Facebook added paid advertising and there was a shift last year within Instagram as well for how they showcase posts. As these are two very large social media platforms people relied on for organic social reach, it seems apparent that this method for getting noticed is on a downward swing.
Of course down does not always mean out, but in marketing you don’t always have time to wait for a trend to resurface; you have to ride the current you are on.
If you primarily use Facebook and Instagram for organic reach then you will need to consider if that is effective enough compared to paid ads. For those using other social media platforms keep an eye on what they plan on doing as well in regards to paid ads because they need to generate revenue too.
But aren’t Paid Ads very annoying?
If you are then considering paid ads, what about the annoyance factor? Many people are tired of ads from large pop-ups that interrupt them to slow loading pages because of the number of them. Heck, about 20% of people dislike remarketing ads because they either bought the item in question or simply aren’t interested in buying it.
For many viewers, certain sites get avoided simply because the content is not good enough to overcome the annoyance factor of the ads. Sites like The Daily Buzz, which post compelling headlines on Facebook to get clicks, but then disappoint with a tremendous amount of on page ads and videos along with often requiring multiple page changes to finish the content.
Is this the best way to gain exposure?
Is there a Smart Way to do Paid Media?
Or perhaps that heading should ask, is there a smarter way to do paid media? If you personally feel that paid ads are annoying and intrusive then why would you want that associated with you and your brand?
If you are a more socially conscious brand that wants to be relevant and helpful to users then it stands to reason that you should approach paid media from that perspective:
- Create high quality content each and every time
- Use paid media to promote that content in an engaging rather than intrusive way
- Invest in paid search that helps increase visibility to ensure your great content earns links and captures traffic
- Use Facebook ads not to sell a product but to promote that content
The bottom line is that you do need paid media for successful marketing because otherwise there are companies and brands that will jump ahead of you for user attention. People who aren’t already coming to your site or are subscribed to what you have to offer need to be drawn in and if you want to do that as effectively as possible at least some use of paid media is in order to stay competitive.
Be sure to check back every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for great new Lounge Lizard blog articles.
