Your guide to paid advertising in 2022

Your guide to paid advertising in 2022

With almost 60 million eCommerce businesses in the UK alone, it is no surprise that PPC is something you cannot afford to miss out on! 24 million of those were started in the last year alone in answer to consumers' desire for easy, online shopping. You may not know this, but Kopa Marketing was created as a way to help businesses in North Wales succeed in migrating from the high street to successfully operating online. Our founders, Osian and Dylan, wanted to support the companies that they grew up around and believe that no matter the size of the company, you can compete with the big players if your digital strategies are spot on!

Paid advertising is a method of bringing consumers to your online store by bidding on keywords and using in-platform audience segmentation tools to refine who is being sent specific messaging. If you don’t know what you are doing, this can be a costly exercise, but if you get it spot on, the rewards are plentiful.

As well as keyword bidding, through platforms such as Google Ads, you can also make the most of sponsored social posts and influencer marketing to create a strong paid advertising strategy. With 4.62 billion social media users and 2.65 billion people using Google, missing out on this marketing tool will leave you in the dust of your competitors.

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Why do I need to consider paid advertising?

Of course, all companies dream of having a viral product, resulting in an influx of customers. It is, however, hard to achieve this without giving your products or service the boost it deserves to compete with heavy online traffic. 

Social algorithms and ever-advancing SEO tricks mean that your intended audience may not see your content without a paid component to your strategy. Organic content is essential to your marketing work, but it requires some initial interaction from highly engaged audiences to start bringing in traffic. Therefore, paid and organic goes hand in hand by way of building your strategy and according to Business Wales, also allows you to build trust with the consumer. 

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What are some of the biggest trends in 2022 for paid advertising?

Voice search integrated within PPC campaigns is being favoured as increasingly, people are relying on the likes of Alexa and Siri to support their busy lives. This is also essential for users who rely on voice-controlled devices due to a disability.

Taking it back to basics by understanding your existing and target audience is also being adopted by many companies as they figure out how to stand out within saturated markets. Knowing your consumer is critical for the demographics and keyword side of things and getting your marketing copy and visual assets spot on.

Video content is still essential, and thanks to the rise in popularity of TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube shorts, consumers now expect to be privy to this type of content. A video is a great way to ensure engagement when you only have a few precious seconds to grab attention. This is perfect for sponsored social ads and also influencer collaboration content.

It would be best to consider how you integrate automation into your campaigns, as reactively monitoring will cost you both time and money. This goes hand-in-hand with knowing your audience and being able to predict their onward activity.

Building your own customer database is the primary way you can expand your consumer horizons using paid advertising, as it provides you with a solid foundation to grow upon. Engaging with a CMS that allows you to collect contacts is a crucial call to action that needs to be apparent across your platforms.

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Where should you be spending money on paid advertising?

For B2B needs, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are brilliant platforms to adopt.

LinkedIn has over 630 million users who use the platform for business networking as its primary function. Letting you target 14.6% of the population and with 80% of users being influencer decision makers, the site is a must-have for business marketing strategies. The site allows paid advertising and posts to promote to target demographics and audiences, meaning you can cleverly use your budget if you know your audience.

Twitter is favoured by 82% of content marketers thanks to its reputation as a news-based platform. The site also allows simple reactive posting and clear click-through calls to action. Facebook also allows the use of paid ads and boosted posts which 71% of marketers favour for B2B advertising.

Google is ideal for B2B and B2C consumers, with the AdWords feature allowing advertising to be scaled down detail-wise.

TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube are where you will find influencer communities and shoppers making the most of reactive content to influence their buying habits. Each platform allows paid ads and is set up for influencer collaborations and other eCommerce plug-ins. TikTok saw an increase in associated consumer spending of 77% in 2021, representing the power it has to convert brand consumers into paying customers. 

These trends are always vital to know about your target audience as it helps you assign a budget to suitable platforms. There is also a trend for consumers heading to social media to find new brands and products, which is why both paid and organic content is important to get right. With 50% of people stating they have headed to instead to find a brand, it is an important site to include within your paid strategies! Finally, the power of video advertising is represented best on YouTube, which is 84% more likely to grab consumer attention than TV adverts.

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How should you set your paid advertising budgets?

You should always set aside a realistic number of campaigns if this is your chosen marketing technique. Without enough money, a campaign can quickly suck up the budget with little or no investment return.

We think that no two businesses are the same, which is why we would never recommend a specific figure. Instead, it's all relative to your goals and your brand's current exposure and engagement.

Paid advertising does, however, need a consistent investment to build up the momentum needed to provide that engagement that you are looking for.

Whether you are a local business in Wales or anywhere else in the world, we are ready to help you. Get in touch with us today if you want to find out more.