Grow Your Business: Top 3 Paid Search Advertising Platforms 2016

In today's day and time, there are tons of opportunities for Small Business Owners to advertise their Business Online, even without the same astronomical budgets that most large Corporations have to allocate towards advertising.

Having so many different ways, and and advertising platforms to utilize for Brand Awareness and Lead Generation is undoubtedly a huge benefit to living in the time of the Internet, however this can also be overwhelming for new Companies starting off, as you'll find yourself wondering what form of Advertising should you start with, in terms of getting more awareness to your Product, Services, Brand, etc.

In this article, I share one of my favorite ways to advertise Businesses Online, and let you know the exact 3 Platforms that I personally use for 90% of the Campaigns that I launch for myself or others (My Clients). 

It was just 8 - 10 years ago, when there where only a handful of efficient ways to advertise a Business successfully online, and most Internet Marketers utilized each strategy as their primary means of generating traffic to their website.

These where the main ways most Internet Marketers generated traffic and exposure to their websites and brands.

Now, do to the expansion of Global Internet Users, advancement in technology such as Social Media and Mobile Phones, and the paradigm shift of Consumers switching from traditional shopping to now making a high percentage of their purchases online, we are in a time where Online Advertising is almost a "Must Do" for 99% of Businesses.

This is why we've also seen an increase in more and more ways to advertise online, and if you have a decent amount of monthly advertising dollars ($200 - $3000/Mo.), getting traffic to your website/marketing funnel shouldn't be a challenge at all. 

The real challenge these days, is finding out which Traffic Source/Advertising Platform will work the best for your Business Model. 

Also, your ability to generate quality traffic, and converting the traffic into leads/sales,  is possibly even more important, than knowing which Advertising Platform to use. 

For instance, if you find out that Social Media Advertising is the best for your Business, let's say a Social Site such as Pinterest, because they have primary a Women Demographic who has an interest in Online Shopping, just having that much insight about your Business is a luxury and one step closer to advertising your business successfully online.

However, if you were to run an Ad on Pinterest (Once they open up their Ad Platform to the general public), but you haven't figured out how to spend $1 and make at least $1 or more back (Hence at the very least break even) then just knowing the best place to advertise your Business, wouldn't serve you well.

So in a nutshell, in today's day and time, with hundreds of ways to advertise a Business, the goal is to first figure out which means of Advertising will most likely work the very best for your Business Model, and secondly, finding out how to invest $1 into an Ad Campaign and get at least $1 back to break even.

Of course in perfect World, for every dollar you spend, you'd want to make $2, $3, $4 or even $5 back, which could lead to a highly successful advertising campaign. Once you get to the point, the next thing you'd want to do is manage your Campaigns for consistent performance, and then move on to other forms of advertising to scale your Business further.

OK let's move on, I'm getting a bit side tracked lol....

Note: I just published a great article on my blog the shares 5 Efficient ways to Increase Brand Awareness in 2016

Premium Video Marketing - Purchasing Premium in-stream Ads or Video Ad Space on YouTube, Facebook and Yahoo Gemini - there could be more platforms that provide Premium Video Marketing services, but these are the main platforms that I'm familiar with.

Live Video Stream Marketing - Blab.im, Periscope, Facebook live, Google Hangouts, etc.

Paid Social Media Advertising - Facebook Contextual Ads (Facebook Dark Posts, Twitter Promoted Tweets and Lead Generation Cards, Local Event Promotional Strategies/Classified Ads - Meetup.com, Eventbrite, Kijiji, Craigslist, etc.

Magazine Advertising - Purchasing ad space in popular magazines that has readership that's relevant to your target market. This could also be considered a Media Buy.

Direct Mail - Sending out direct mail/post cards to households within your target market/demographic - this could be strategically utilize as a lead generation tool, to drive more phone calls to your business also, traffic to your website. This could also compliment your SEO efforts, as there is talks within the SEO Community of Google utilizing "Brand Searches" as a Ranking Factor. Brand searches would be when someone utilize the Google Search bar to type in the brand of a website or the website itself. i.e www.yourwebsitebrand.com.

As you can see, there is a plethora of ways to advertise a Business in today's current time, and this is a great thing in my opinion. I'd say the most important part of advertise these days, is to find what means of advertising could bring the most value to your Business. 

You can do this by pretty much finding out where your target market commonly hang out at (What platforms are they using the most) - and positing your Content/Ad Campaigns on these particular platforms, starting off with a small advertising budget at maybe $5/day. 

Now that I've listed several different ways you can advertise your Business online, I now would like to bring awareness to my favorite way of advertising. While I personally like the majority of modern ways to advertise a business, and believe in utilizing anything that would lead to results and yield increased in quality exposure, my overall favorite ways to advertise is through Paid Search (i.e Google Adwords, Bing Ads, Yahoo Gemini, PPC, etc.).

The reason I like Paid Search, is because you could literally start generating traffic right away, and typically within 30 - 60 days or less, you can optimize a campaign to become profitable, and start scaling as you see fit.

Another key benefit to Paid Search, is the fact that you'll know if your Campaign is going to be successfully usually within running an add 1 - 5 days. This should give you enough time to generate enough clicks, and to see if they clicks will convert into leads and potentially Sales.

Listed below are the top 3 Paid Search Advertising Platforms that I personally use for lead generation purposes everyday. These are my favorite ways to advertise 90% of the Campaigns that I launch, for lead generation purposes. 

Yahoo Gemini is fairly new in the World of Paid Search Advertising. It's a really great way to promote your Business, if you do not want to risk paying for expensive clicks on Google Adwords, as clicks on Yahoo Gemini are far more cheaper than both Google Adwords and Bing Ads (At least in my experience so far). In some markets, I've been able to generate clicks as low as .15 Per Click on Yahoo Gemini, and the traffic is very targeted, hence it converts very well.

If there is anything that I'm not to fond of in regards to Yahoo Gemini, it would be their conversion tracking system. Sometimes when I place code on my landing pages, the code doesn't seem to always work properly, which makes it challenging to know what aspects of my Yahoo Gemini campaigns are performing well, and which aspects aren't performing well. This isn't so great, mainly because optimization is a very essentially aspect of turning a campaign profitable.

On the bright side, Yahoo continues to improve certain aspects of their Product every month, and they have took huge leaps in terms of the quality of their product since they first initially introduced Yahoo Gemini to the World. 

I think Yahoo Gemini is a gold mine, and it's a platform that's kind of under the radar, so if you're currently not advertising on Yahoo, perhaps seting up a test campaign could be a great idea and possibly help you take your Business to the next level.

You can also get a free advertising credit with Yahoo by entering "YAHOOADS" when signing up. It's a $50 Free Advertising Credit, but you'll have to spend $25 before you'll get to use the additional $50.

Also, if I may add, Yahoo have several training videos on YouTube that show's advertisers how to build, optimize and track campaigns successfully, and grow their Business with Yahoo Paid Search and Yahoo Native which is another great way of Advertisng. I'll create some content around Yahoo Native Ads in the future. :)

I started out using Bing Ads back in 2011 for one of my first high paying clients within the Automotive Industry. Back then, Bing Ads and Yahoo were in their beginning stages of their merger, which means Advertisers could access both Bing's and Yahoo's search inventory all from one platform.

Bing Ads is one of my favorite platforms for Lead Generation, however they do not have as much Search Volume as Google Adwords, but you can get cheap clicks in even competitive markets on Bing, and experience significant returns usually within your first month. 

What's very fascinating, is the fact that Bing Ads is not under the radar anymore, as far more Marketers are "In the Know", when it comes to using Bing Ads to run Paid Search Campaigns, however it's still no where near as competitive as Google Adwords and Facebook. 

Just as Google Adwords, Bing Ads work in a Pay Per Click format. Bing Ads also utilize the Quality Score aspect to determine how they'll prioritize websites that utilize their platforms, in terms of Bids and the ranking/displaying of your Ad.

If you could accomplish a high quality score (Quality Scores range from 1 - 10 with 10 being the highest/best), you could pay less for a click, and rank higher for your targeted keywords on Bing, than other advertisers, if they do not have a high quality score. 

So in other words, the higher your Quality Score, typically the higher your Ads will appear on Bing Search Engine and the less you'll pay per click. I plan on creating some new videos on Bing Ads very soon, and if you visit my blog to join my list, you'll get instant access to these videos once I create them.

You can join my email list by opting in to this page, http://leadgenerationstrategies.instapage.com/

Google Adwords is awesome!

Contrary to popular belief, Google Adwords isn't as expensive as most Marketers may think. Actually, since most marketers think Adwords is expensive, it kinds of leave things wide open for other Marketers to generate cheaper clicks, due to less Advertisers within their market.

For instance, in one Network Marketing Company that I'm promoting, we're generating clicks at .15 Per Click on Google Adwords, this is because there isn't any other Marketers (With the Exception of 1 Distributor) currently advertising for that keyword. I just gave you a golden nugget here, hopefully those of you that are currently in a MLM, take huge note of this. :)

If you understand the science of Building, Optimizing and Managing Paid Search Campaigns, then you'll understand that in the beginning of launching a Campaign, you just might lose money, however as you begin to acquire data, you can actually optimize your campaign, to get your cost per click down, increase your quality score, pause text ads that isn't converting and increase the display of Ads that is converting into leads. 

Essentially, this is basically trimming the fat. Whatever aspects of your Adwords Campaign that is performing well, you want to figure out how to scale it (Improve it further) and whatever aspect of your Campaign that is not performing well, you want to eliminate it (Pause it, Delete it, etc.). 

Optimizing a Campaign on Adwords could be as simple as pausing keywords that isn't converting "Clicks" into "Conversions" (i.e Leads/Opt-ins, Phone Calls, App Installs, etc.), decreasing your cost per click on Desktop or Mobile Devices or increasing your bids on both, Split testing Ads to increase your Click Through Rates, and utilizing Google Adwords features that allow marketers to pick a "Cost Per Lead" - meaning you could let Google Adwords know, how much you desire to pay for  leads/conversions and Google system will automatically help you accomplish your lead cost. (Not easy to explain, but I hope that make sense)

To sum this up, Google Adwords is a great advertising platform, and while it can be expensive in the beginning, as you begin to optimize your campaign, you'll be surprise at how well your campaign can perform, and how affordable Google Adwords can be.

In some markets, I've actually seen a significantly lower Cost Per Lead/Conversion on Google Adwords, than I have on Bing Ads and Facebook. Yeah, I was very surprise to see this, but when I found out you could actually generate leads cheaper on Google Adwords than some other platforms, it really opened my mind up to real possibilities in the World of Online Marketing.

I love it :) 

The huge takeaway from this part of the Article, should be "Always test things yourself" don't just listen to what others tell you. Test, test, test. :)

If you enjoyed reading this article and got some great valuable information out of this content, you may want to consider a article that I just published on my blog InternetIncomeIsIncredible.com that shares 5 Efficient ways to Increase Brand Awareness in 2016.

Also, next Month in April 2016, I plan on launching a new free training video course that shares more insight on Paid Search Advertising and Landing Page Creation. You can join my list to get instant access to this freebie, once I launch it by clicking here.