marketing posts • RekaVeszeli

Paid media 101

12th July 20248th July 2024 by Reka Veszeli

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How to use paid media in digital marketing

paid media 101

BiteSize Marketing is back! In the first season you learned about the basics of marketing like the customer journey, lead nurturing, buyer personas, SEO and SEM. In the second season we’ll take a deeper dive.

I’ve spent years running campaigns like these and co-created a similar series to educate sales on the topic. I’ve poured all this experience into these pieces. If you follow along the way you can learn a lot about paid media in digital marketing: understand its purpose, the advantages and limitations of different channels, and read some pro tips.

Are you interested in more? Scroll down to the end of the post for the video (coming soon) or go to the BiteSize Marketing page and check out season 1.

Disclaimer: This article contains affiliate links.

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WHAT IS PAID MEDIA?

While some models add a 4th type “Shared media” I prefer the traditional model, that incorporates it into the Earned media bucket. Diagram made by Reka Veszeli, using Canva

When working on a well-balanced, scalable, and measurable strategy, marketers must leverage the following three media types: paid, owned, and earned. Even if you specialize in campaigns related to only one of these – which is often the case at big corporations – you must understand how these work together and support you in achieving your business goals.

Paid media

Paid media is any marketing effort that involves paying for your content to be promoted. It can include both online channels (e.g. LinkedIn or Google ads, or ads via paid influencers) and offline mediums (e.g. radio or magazine ads).

The key advantage of paid media lies in its scalability and predictability. If you spend money, you’ll gain exposure. More money means more exposure. It also allows for a more predictable outcome. Depending on the chosen channel, you can estimate the number of leads you can expect for your budget. Additionally, paid media offers a significant advantage in speed. Compared to other tactics, depending on the complexity of the campaign, it can be launched almost immediately.

Keep in mind though, that the same predictability can be a double-edged sword, as ads disappear once the funding stops. Another downside of paid ads is their perceived lack of authenticity compared to organic recommendations or user research. Just think about your experience – how well you trust an ad?

Earned media

Earned media is any content about your business that you haven’t paid for. This type of media is always published by a third party (i.e., not you or your business). However, through efforts like public relations (PR) and creating educational content (e.g., blog posts, infographics, videos), companies can position themselves for earned media opportunities.

Earned media is an extremely powerful tool for marketers. According to HubSpot Research, 57% of people in the U.S. trust what they hear from friends and family the most when they discover a new product. When a company earns exposure this way, they are vouched for by a third party, making it more credible and reliable. Most of these efforts also offer long-term benefits, because past mentions, reviews, or media placements will benefit your brand and traffic long after they were published.

At first glance, this type of media can look low-cost, but you need to be aware that while there is a chance your content will go viral on its own, it’s more likely that you’ll have to allocate considerable resources into creating share-worthy content or maintaining a PR agency/person. Scalability is also a challenge of earned media – creating more content won’t automatically generate more shares and exposure. The biggest disadvantage of this media type is the lack of control. You can never guarantee your efforts will be rewarded by shares, likes, and media mentions. In addition, you can’t control what they will say about you. No matter how hard you try, there’s always a chance someone will leave a negative review on Google or post a rude comment about your business.

Organic traffic sits somewhat between earned and owned media. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) itself is the process you carry out on your own website, but as a result you earn a organic traffic and a higher rank on search engines.

Owned media

Finally, owned media is any content or channel that you create and control yourself – your blog, website, eBook, or webinar, etc.

This control is the biggest advantage of this media type. Owning these channels means you decide what content they exhibit. You have the ability to edit, delete, or repurpose them as you wish. In addition, policy changes barely affect this type of media. A social media account can be shut down any day, making you lose the content published by an influencer or your ability to advertise there. On the other hand, your website is under your control, you own your email list, and you control the content you create yourself.

Owned media is essential for every organization, but creating content and hoping people will find it hardly works or can take forever. To gain customers, you need to use the other two media types to support this one.

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Purpose and objective of paid media in digital marketing

Now that you’re familiar with the three media types and understand the pros and cons of paid media, let’s see how this translates into digital marketing campaigns. To do this, we’ll look at the sales funnel. (To learn more about the sales funnel and the lead journey read this blog post or watch Ep 2 and Ep 3 of BiteSize Marketing.)

In order to generate sales, you need marketing leads to enter your sales funnel by finding and engaging with you. Once they’re added to your database, you can target them with dedicated messages, but first, you need to recruit them. For most modern businesses, one of the most effective ways to attract net new leads to your database is via paid digital media campaigns.

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Sales funnel = the visual representation of the customer journey from being added to your system to purchasing your product or service.

Marketing lead = A contact with someone interested in your product or service, so a person who might be your next customer.

Net new lead = A lead who is added to your database the first time ever.

Why paid media and why digital?

Paid media campaigns can reach new audiences (people who aren’t familiar with you yet), increase brand awareness, and help you position your brand.

With the development of technology, targeting on digital channels like Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram has become extremely sophisticated. This allows you to go after the exact buyer personas your product or service was designed for. Additionally, the detailed statistics most of these platforms offer provide valuable feedback on how your content is performing with your target audience, giving you insights to adjust your strategy, ads, or content.

Certain strategies, like retargeting, also offer a cost-efficient way to reach leads who might be aware of your brand, but are stuck at the top of the funnel withouth further engagement.

How paid media works with other types of media

As we established at the begining neither of these media types work on their own. Paid media is most effective when it’s supporting it’s two siblings – earned and owned media.

How? By acting as an amplifier. Your business invests valuable resources creating owned media – eBooks, webinars, blog posts, videos, etc. Select the most popular ones and use them for your next paid campaign. Drive awareness to your webite. Identify influencers in your area of business to run a campaign – that will hopefully spread on social media organically then. You were mentioned on a credible 3rd party blog? Run a paid awareness campaign celebrating it!

While paid media is ideal for generating top-of-the-funnel leads, once they are in your system you can use a variety of earned media and a significant amount of owned media to help them move down the funnel.

Today’s digital scene offers dozens of ways to promote your content. The best media mix always depends on your company’s business goals, target audience, product, services and budget. Since covering all of them would be impossible, in the upcoming episodes and posts I’ll be focusing on a selected few. Given my experience in B2B marketing, in the tech industry, I’ll be focusing on the following channels: LinkedIn, Paid Search, Content Syndication, and Webinars.

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SEO vs SEM: The difference between search engine optimisation and search engine marketing

25th April 202410th April 2021 by Reka Veszeli

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SEO vs SEM

definition, difference, how to use them

SEO and SEM are two abbreviations that you often hear when it comes to websites and advertising, but do you know what they mean? Don’t worry if you don’t – yet.

I promise, after this post you’ll feel confident to talk about them. We’ll also learn the components of SEO and the most important rules of PPC advertising.

You’d rather watch a video or listen to a podcast? Scroll down to the end of the post or go to the BiteSize Marketing page and check out Ep 6.

Disclaimer: This article contains affiliate links.

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Definitions

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation focuses on the visibility of your website. It’s the process of optimising your website to gain traffic from organic search results.

SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing. It’s an umbrella term that covers both organic and paid search tactics in order to drive traffic to your page or offer.

Components of SEO

Technical SEO

You apply Technical SEO to your website to make it easier for search engines to find you and validate you well. You can help it for example by using HTTPS or improving site speed.

Off-site SEO

Off-site SEO is about building a network. Search engines like to prioritize websites that seem credible and have a strong reputation – or related to pages with a strong reputation. By linking your website to other relevant websites and getting others to refer your page you are building a network, that’ll encourage search engines.

On-site SEO

On-site SEO means the things going on your site. Like including the right keywords to your title or image alt texts or improving the readability of the page or blog.

Paid search

Paid search is where search engines – like Google, Bing or Yandex – allow you to show ads on their search results pages. It works on a pay-per-click model, meaning you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. It means, that relevant keywords play an essential role in paid search tactics.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels

Search Engine Marketing is an umbrella term that covers both organic and paid tactics in order to drive traffic to your page or offer. Paid search is also included in SEM tactics.

PPC - pay per click

As mentioned above, paid search works on a pay-per-click model. It means you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. Sounds great, right? Well…mostly. It means that if nobody clicks on your ad you won’t pay – but that means nobody is interested in your ad.

When you set up a PPC campaign you need to find the ideal keyword, that is relevant and popular. If at the same time the competition is low you found a jolly joker.

A/B testing

I’d like to mention A/B testing, which is a tactic often used in SEM. It means, that you run two different versions of an ad simultaneously at the beginning of a campaign to figure out which one performs better. Once you have clear results, you only go on with that one, that performed the best. You can – and should – test image, title and copy variants.

Some WordPress builders, like Divi also allows A/B testing, so you can use this method to optimise your website.

Image by Reka Veszeli. Made with Canva.

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Hi, I’m Reka,

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Master the customer journey – Understand the concept of a lead and learn how to make your sales funnel convert better

25th April 202417th December 2020 by Reka Veszeli

vásárlói életút. értékesítési tölcsér, marketing lead

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Master the customer journey

Master the customer journey - understand the concept of a lead and learn how to make your sales funnel convert better

Understand the concept of a lead and learn how to make your sales funnel convert better

Have you ever wondered how a sales funnel works? If you’ve never done that before, I’m here to explain the customer journey to you and to share all the little tricks you should know to convert leads to buyers.

You’d rather watch a video or listen a podcast? Scroll down to the end of the post or jump to BiteSize Marketing for Ep 2 and Ep 3.

Image source: Pexels.com

What is a sales funnel and a marketing lead?

A marketing lead is a contact with someone interested in your product or service, so a person who might be your next customer IF they go through the complete sales funnel.

To understand the concept of a sales funnel you can imagine a real-life funnel. What goes in at the top are the visitors that are aware of your business and what come out at the bottom are those, who are ready to hit the purchase button.

However in your kitchen, if you pour something to a funnel it will come out at the other end for sure, while in case of a sales funnel you’ll lose some of the leads in the process. That’s why you constantly optimise it – to minimise this number.

Time to understand better and optimise the sales funnel

Note: This is a simplified version of a sales funnel, where I only use the 3 main stages. It is to make the concept easy to understand. If you dive deeper into the topic you’ll find that most funnels have more stages. The most common is Awareness – Interest – Decision -Action, but some have more stages. None of it is right or wrong. I’d say it mostly depends on your business what describe the customer’s journey the best.

Top of the funnel

Before someone enters your funnel, they need to find you. It can happen through online search, thanks to your Google ads or social media campaigns, or via the recommendation of an existing customer. Top of the funnel leads has just started their customer journey with you. The more you know about how your visitors find you, the more efficiently you can adjust your strategy.

The most common top of the funnel strategies are SEO (search engine optimisation), social or display ads, retargeting and PR.

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Middle of the funnel

The middle of the funnel leads are already interested in your company, but they still need to learn more about what you can offer them and how it can solve their problems. They are looking for content relevant to their problems and are open for more in-depth conversations.

Because they are gathering information, they’ll appreciate your informative free resources. Offer them a relevant eBook, product datasheets and informative blog posts. Don’t be shy to make the most valuable pieces gated*. You can also shine your interactive assets, like product videos or webinars.

*Gated content is content, that’s only available after a visitor provides certain data; usually name, email address, company name and country.

Middle of the funnel leads will appreciate your informative free resources. Offer them a relevant eBook, product datasheets and informative blog posts.

Bottom of the funnel

And finally, the bottom of the funnel leads are almost ready to purchase. They are aware of your offer and are only evaluating if your solution is the best fit for them. Here, your main goal is to convince these leads to choose your solution.

Your best friends here are customer testimonials, free demos and case studies.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

MQL and SQL

It’s important to see, that not all leads are equal. Some of them are better quality, and more likely to turn into a customer. Most companies label these stages to make the progress and reporting easier. The two most important are MQL and SQL. Although these definitions can vary, the following works well in general.

An MQL or Marketing Qualified Lead is one, who engaged with one or more of your marketing campaigns (downloaded a freebie, subscribed to your newsletter or attended a webinar) and could become a customer if they are nurtured properly. If they are mature enough they can turn into an SQL or Sales Qualified Lead, a person who is ready to have a conversation with the sales team. Most companies use a scoring system based on their behaviour and their interactions with your brand to help determine this point.

Go beyond purchase

The customer journey doesn’t stop at purchase. Don’t make the mistake of forgetting someone you’ve spent valuable time and money on to acquire. Caring for your existing customers build trust with your brand, or increases the chance of up-selling or getting recommended to others.
Offer loyalty programs, special promotions and curate a customer-only newsletter. It’ll pay off in the longer term.

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Hi, I’m Reka,

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What’s the difference between inbound and outbound marketing?

25th April 202421st November 2020 by Reka Veszeli

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What's the difference between inbound and outbound marketing?

and which one to choose to win customers

Inbound and Outbound (or traditional) are two main strategies in marketing. They define your relationship with your customers and the marketing tools you’re using. I’ll help you understand the difference between Inbound and Outbound Marketing and why most modern companies focus on inbound strategies.

You’d rather watch a video or listen to a podcast? Scroll down to the end of the post or go to the BiteSize Marketing page and check out Ep 1.

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Outbound marketng

Outbound or traditional marketing is a tactic when companies push their messages through various channels for a large number of people to make them buy their product or service.

How outbound marketing works

It works kind of like a speaker: it’s a non-interactive, one-way communication, that interrupts the content you are consuming. It pushes the same messaging to everyone and the sole purpose of this message is to sell.

Where you can see it

It usually appears in a form of TV ads, billboards, online pop-up ads, telemarketing, trade shows, magazine or newspaper ads.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

Inbound marketng

On the other hand, inbound marketing is a technique for drawing customers to your offers via content marketing, social media efforts, search engine optimisation and branding.

Inbound marketing in action

It is similar to a magnet. Ideally, it pulls potential customers in and it requires interaction between the two parties. The concept behind it is that by providing educational content, your business become known and trusted and potential customers will come to you in their own will, interested in you.

the forms of inbound marketing

Most commonly you see it in a form of a blog, educational video content – either on your website or on YouTube – a webinar or helpful downloadables. Opt-in emails also considered as inbound strategy as subscription is voluntary. Your social media efforts, search engine optimisation and pay per click ads are part of this category too.

Infographic by Reka Veszeli

The final countdown: Outbound vs Inbound

As I mentioned in the intro most brands nowadays focus on inbound strategies. (It is probably not a surprising statement if you follow my blog , video or podcast series.)There are several reasons for that, but I highlighted the main three.

It is cheaper than traditional marketing
It provides you with better quality leads
It is designed for long-term growth as it helps you build brand loyalty that will fuel future purchases too

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Hi, I’m Reka,

Welcome to my website. Explore, find inspiration, motivation, and resources.

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How to set SMART marketing goals (with free template)

3rd August 20239th January 2019 by Reka Veszeli

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How to set SMART marketing goals

with free template

The year has already started, but it’s still not too late to plan your marketing strategy. A fundamental element of it is to set your goals. I’m not talking about something like GROWTH or ENGAGEMENT. These are just headlines, what you really need are real goals. SMART goals.

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Why?

Goal setting is the backbone of every successful marketing planning. If they are not clear how do you know you’ve reached them? Furthermore, well-defined goals will help you to define the concrete action steps you need to take.

SMART goals help to focus your efforts, maximise your productivity and achieve all you want this year.

Are you ready to get started?

Evaluate your current position

Investigate where you’ve come from to define where you’re going. Analyse your current activities and ask yourself:

What marketing activities I had last year? How much time they required and were they worth the effort or not?
Where my website visitors are coming from? From Google search, paid ads or social media?
Which platform performed the best in terms of ROI (Return on Investment)?
How many sales did I close?
Do I have the same focus as last year?

Use this information as a benchmark when moving on to the next step.

Use the “Social media goals” section of the free Social Media Content Planning Guide as a template

Set SMART goals

Let’s start with an example:
I’m going to increase my blog traffic from 7000 page views/month to 10000 by the end of June to get more affiliate income.

S = Specific

A specific goal will help you to see clearly and grant you a bigger chance of success. This is where the 5Ws can help you. These are the questions considered as basic in problem-solving or in gathering information.

WHO – Who is responsible for achieving the goal?
I’m going to increase my blog traffic from 7000 page views month to 10000 until the end of June to get more affiliate income.

WHAT – What do you want to achieve?
I’m going to increase my blog traffic from 7000 page views/month to 10000 until the end of June to get more affiliate income.

WHERE – In which are of your business? In which platform?
I’m going to increase my blog traffic from 7000 page views/month to 10000 until the end of June to get more affiliate income.

WHEN – What is the deadline? When it will occur?
I’m going to increase my blog traffic from 7000 page views/month to 10000 until the end of June to get more affiliate income.

WHY – What is your motivation? What you will gain from completing the goal?
I’m going to increase my blog traffic from 7000 page views/month to 10 000 until the end of June to get more affiliate income.

Don’t forget, the more specific, the better, so you can always add more information.

M = Measurable

Your goals need to be measured, so you need to break down each goal into elements that you can actually track.

For example, instead of saying “I want to increase customer satisfaction” you should think about factors that contribute to customer satisfaction and form statements, like:

I want to get 25% more five-star reviews from my customers.

I want to decrease the number of negative comments on Facebook by 25%.

I want 75% of my new customers to became repeat customers.”

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A = Achievable

Last year the number of your Instagram followers has grown from 2500 to 4000. Then expecting that this year it will grow from 4000 to 25K might be a bit unrealistic. At the same time to set a goal to reach 4500 don’t seem to be challenging.

Don’t be too shy but try to stay realistic and doable. Use the results of your evaluation or check your competitors for further insights.

R = Relevant

There is no need for goals that have nothing to do with your mission. Choose business objectives that matter. If your main objective is growth for Q1, then setting up goals on how to increase engagement might be not the best choice.

Timing is also crucial. Let’s say you have a wedding stationery business. Then more likely most of your sales occur in the first half of the year. (In summer when most of the wedding are held and in spring when invitations are sent out.) Therefore, don’t set goals expecting the highest number of sales for Autumn.

T = Time-bound

Have a clear time frame for your goals. It can be a deadline (by the end of June) or an interval (in Q3). This will keep you stay focused and helps to set priorities. To set attainable goals you can use the results of your evaluation again.

Hi, I’m Reka,

Welcome to my website. Explore, find inspiration, motivation, and resources.

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How well do you know your customers? Here’s how to create and use buyer personas. (with free template)

25th April 202427th September 2018 by Reka Veszeli

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do you know your customers? Here’s how to create and use buyer personas

with free template

Rachel, the mompreneur, Phoebe, the freelancer or Chandler, the data specialist. Buyer personas are semi-fictional, generalised representations of your ideal customers. By giving one personality to these groups you can understand your customers and will be able to provide content that is truly valuable for them. Creating these marketing personas can be time-consuming, but also extremely fun and useful.

Why I need buyer personas?

Well-created buyer personas can help you to reach your goals by focusing your energies on creating value to the right people instead of making content for “everyone”. Also, if you think of your target groups as one person it helps to relate more to its problems and motivations – why is she looking for a new solution or what he wants to avoid – so you can offer them the best solution and help them through the process.

Well-created buyer personas can help you to reach your goals by focusing your energies on creating value to the right people.

Okay, I get the idea. But how do I make one?

First, I suggest you download my free guide Let’s create buyer personas, that contains a template that guides you through the process.

How to get started

To get started with the actual work examine your existing customers and think about other audience segments you can work with. Try to focus on your ideal customers and don’t waste on groups who might want to buy your services/products at one point in their life.

If you have no customers yet, you can make a focus group and should start stalking a bit… Think about people who can represent your ideal customers and ask them about their goals, fears and everything you want to include into your document. Furthermore, check out what your competitors do, and how their follower base looks like.

Image source: Pexels by Ksenia Chernaya

Think about people who can represent your ideal customers and ask them about their goals, fears and everything you want to include into your document.

What to include

When creating your personas, consider including the following: a short introduction, demographics and income, social media usage – especially if your goal is to build a strong online presence – goals and challenges. The more information you have and the more detailed you are the better the results you can achieve. So, feel free to be creative and add any fields that helps your work. For example, you can add the mother language of your persona. If you’re making custom earrings, the favourite colour of your persona can be an important addition.

“When should I use these personas?”

Sort answer

Constantly.

long answer

Use them for campaign planning. Now, that you know the main challenges of your target audience you can provide solutions to them. Create content (blog posts, guides, e-books, social media posts) that they find helpful, so you can build better relationships.

Use this document when you’re thinking about product development or new service packages.

Buyer personas are also a great help when you’re planning a paid campaign – eg. on social media. Most networks offer you amazingly detailed targeting options and with all info in hand you can target like a pro.

Image source: Unsplash by Austin Distel

The NeverEnding Story

No, I’m not speaking about the book…

You need to understand, that you’re never really finished creating your buyer personas – and you should never stop updating and re-evaluating them. As you grow and gather more data you can add further information to your existing ones. Your business may change its’ original direction therefore your ideal customer will change too, or you add new solutions to your portfolio, that is aimed for different people. No matter what’s the reason don’t forget to refresh your buyer personas in regular intervals.

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