Paid Advertising 101: Pros and Cons
For CRE businesses, it’s a known fact that paid advertising drives results — when you get it right. Whether it’s Google Ads or LinkedIn campaigns, paid advertising can drive traffic to your business. However, it’s very easy to overspend on paid advertising. We’ve heard many stories of companies starting paid ad campaigns without preparation or proper understanding, resulting in thousands of dollars spent very quickly.
In Biscred’s eBook “Paid Advertising 101: Pros and Cons of Different Channels and How to Create the Perfect Mix,” we talk about the most commonly used paid ad channels and what you can potentially get out of them in a CRE context. This book also covers how to create paid advertising strategies that drive results for your business.
Pros of Popular Paid Ad Channels
We’ve included the benefits of popular paid advertising channels like Google search, LinkedIn Ads, industry-specific websites, social media ads, and Biscred’s programmatic advertising. Here are some examples:
Pros of Google Search ads
We discuss the advantages of using one of the most well-known paid advertising channels: Google Search Ads. Google Ads takes advantage of organic searches that people make and displays your CRE business in the results. Google Ads are integrated into all of Google's services, including Google Maps.
Pros of LinkedIn advertising
Ads on the business-friendly social networking site LinkedIn are useful for advertising targeted toward individuals specific to your business. For B2B, this is especially important. We talk about some of the best parts of the different ad formats that LinkedIn offers.
Cons of Popular Paid Ad Channels
But no single ad channel is a silver bullet solution for every business. These popular paid ad channels will each have specific use cases and weaknesses. Here’s some examples of potential cons:
Pay-Per-Click expenses
Pay-per-click campaigns can eat up a lot of ad budgets, especially for CRE terms that have high competition. These campaigns need constant monitoring and a complete understanding of the potential costs. While the leads may be higher value with pay-per-click campaigns, this will come with a high cost.
Non-CRE targeting
Advertising channels may be too general in their intended purpose, resulting in your ads being displayed to users not relevant to CRE. CRE ads on social networking platforms, for example, may compete against personal content or even real estate content that’s not necessarily commercial.
Choosing the Correct Advertising Channel for CRE That Drives Results
Defining Advertising Goal
Understand your business’s realistic advertising goals for a campaign. Potential examples are:
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Generating leads
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Increasing awareness about your brand
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Additional sales
Each advertising channel our eBook suggests will have a specialty or specific use case related to business goals. You won’t be able to achieve every goal on a single platform, so knowing which goals is a priority directly relates to knowing which advertising channel that your CRE business needs to emphasize.
Determine Audience
Simply put: Who are you advertising toward? Is it other businesses? Key decision makers? Property owners? Understanding your audience and where they are likely to organically see your advertisements will save your marketing team both time and money.
If you don’t immediately know the answer to “Who decides if this firm will do business with my CRE firm,” that’s ok! CRE-specific databases like Biscred are incredibly helpful not only for smart prospecting but also pinpointing key decision makers at other firms.
Allocating Budget
Your paid advertisements are like an investment portfolio. Some channels are likely to drive more immediate growth and leads, while others may only boost the overall awareness of your brand. Research and planning how you allocate your budget will help ensure that your advertising costs don’t balloon out of control.
