Developing a Winning Paid Media Strategy on a Budget

In a world in which digital advertising has become a vital element of your overall marketing strategy, it’s key to ensure that you’re making the most of your paid strategy across all of your paid media channels. Top-level, ill-informed strategy decisions, misallocation of client budget and a misunderstanding of platform fundamentals can all have notable consequences when it comes to your ability to convert leads and sales, and ultimately, hit your business goals. 

Not only that, but it’s the small actions that matter. Day-to-day management and the best practice basics are the difference between hitting your cost-per-acquisition (CPA) target and having a campaign running at a serious loss. Depending on the objective of the campaign, of course. 

From pay-per-click campaigns to paid social campaigns and everything in between, here are our top tips and tricks to create a winning paid media campaign strategy to set your business up for success. 

Setting Clear Goals and KPIs

Before you begin, it’s incredibly important, regardless of whether you are agency-side or in-house, that your key performance indicators (KPIs) are decided upon, well before the launch date of the campaign.

Why are KPIs important?

Without having these clear and concise targets, as an advertiser you have nothing to work and optimise towards. Providing direction and focus, KPIs such as a target click-through rate (CTR), cost-per-acquisition (CPA) or a return on investment (ROI) figure ensures that you are clear from the outset in your vision of success for a campaign. 

Not only are KPIs invaluable in providing easily measurable benchmarks to guide wider strategy updates and day-to-day actions, but these metrics ensure that all decisions are data-driven, providing a strong foundation to ensure each action is driving us one step closer to achieving advertising goals that are efficient and in line with business goals and values. 

Examples of clear goals and KPIs include: 

• “Aim to increase website traffic +20% year-on-year (YoY)”
• “Reduce bounce rate on site by -15% within the next quarter”
• “Increase email click-through-rate (CTR) by +15% within the next 5 campaigns”

When creating a KPI, it’s important to follow the SMART Framework, ensuring goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. Ensure not to just set KPIs for the sake of it, though. If you’re running a brand awareness campaign, there’s little point setting a target ROI, as you might find yourself optimising a campaign for revenue that is actually doing a really great job at driving link clicks to the site. Context is key. 

Knowing Your Audience

Now you’ve cemented your KPIs ahead of the creation of your digital marketing strategy, next it is important to consider your target market. Your audience is the driving factor behind sales, leads and ultimately, business success: so it’s incredibly important to ensure your paid social strategy is designed with your audience front of mind. 

Analyse your existing data, such as through your customer lists, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) reports and valuable feedback received from clients and customers. Do you have an existing buyer persona profile? Have you got any results from previous marketing campaigns of which can be delved into? All of these have depths of valuable knowledge to help shape your target audience, ensuring you get your advertisement in front of the right people at the right time. 

Selecting The Right Platforms 

When it comes to selecting the correct platforms, it’s pretty simple. Go where your audience is. Whether that be Google or Bing, Meta or LinkedIn, the list goes on. 

Whilst the vast choice of digital platforms available can make it tempting to go after them all, make sure your decisions are data and consumer driven. Yes, these platforms may be uber-popular and the blanket advice you’re stumbling across on the internet may be urging you to launch A.S.A.P, claiming the latest platform launch to be ‘the next big thing’, but hold fire. That doesn’t mean your ideal, ready-to-invest private pension clientele suddenly scrolls TikTok in their spare time. Put down the trending sounds and get behind your audience. No matter just how good your idea for that viral video may be. 

Nailing Your Budget Allocation 

So you’ve navigated getting budget sign off. Phew. We’re getting ever much closer to launching your campaigns, but this next step is a crucial one. Whilst budgets on the smaller side and those on the large end of the spectrum present different challenges, one thing never changes: it’s crucial to ensure you’re spending your money wisely. 

Depending on your campaign objective, the manner in which budgets are allocated at platform, account and campaign level can vary vastly. Whether you’re splitting across prospecting audiences or targeting those that have already interacted with your business; whether that be a previous lead or those that have visited your site and not converted, it’s not a one-size-fits-all strategy, we’re sorry to say.

On the bright side, there are a couple of ways you can approach this pretty daunting task: 

• An objective-based approach to paid media budget allocation
• A channel-based approach to paid media budget allocation
• An audience-based approach to paid media budget allocation 

For some blanket tips, though, start small and scale, ensure to constantly track and analyse your paid marketing campaigns, and absolutely leave room for flexibility.

Once you’ve decided on a strategy for your paid media campaigns, performance may show you in time that it is time to pivot and switch it up. Always put a budget where performance is working, and be ready to make quick (but still strategised) decisions whenever you need to. It’s all about staying proactive of course, but don’t underestimate the impact of a reactive decision based on comp set movements and seasonal shifts. Sometimes the best results are made by being intuitive within your digital landscape and acting accordingly. 

Consider Your Landing Pages

You may be thinking: what does a landing page have to do with what campaigns I run and where I allocate my budget? Well, you’d be surprised. Landing pages are arguably one of the most important elements of a paid media campaign. After all, it’s all well and good sending quality traffic to your site, but if they’re not landing on a relevant page, you’re going to see your bounce rate skyrocket, and essentially, your precious budget wasted.

What makes a quality landing page? 

• A strong focus, tailored control and seamless user experience 

Paid media campaigns are highly specific and tailored to ensure they’re reaching the right audience at the right time, and as a result, your landing pages should follow suit. If your paid campaign is targeting customers looking for blue roll and you’re sending them to a general cleaning product category page over a product-specific one, which one do you think is more likely to convert the sale? 

• Conversion rate optimisation 

Your landing page should be designed with a clear goal: conversion. Whether that conversion is a resource download, a lead form completion, a phone call or a purchase, make that clear. Make sure your call-to-actions (CTAs) are forefronted, and not below the fold of your page. Don’t forget to consider the mobile experience, too.

Don’t Forget To Test 

The absolute worst thing you can do is take all this precious time to craft your winning paid social strategy, launch, and then leave it up to the universe to decide. 

All too often, the team here at Talking Stick Digital audit prospective client ad accounts to discover that campaigns have been set up and left to run, with little to no evidence of any optimisations or change history in the account. 

Always ensure to A/B test, utilise test-and-learn strategies, and don’t be afraid to think outside of the box when it comes to testing. Switch out your creative, get experimental with ad copy and audiences, and don’t forget to add bid and location modifiers if and where appropriate. 

If you’re interested in working with us to put together a winning paid social strategy, either to launch your brand or nurture your existing marketing activity, you’ve landed in the right place. Get in touch with our team today and claim your free digital audit.