Paid acquisition means buying attention instead of earning it. Typical channels are search ads, paid social, display and video, podcast and newsletter sponsorships, and review-site placements. They are fast and controllable, and they stop the moment the budget does.
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How to choose
Match the channel to where your buyers already look. Search ads capture people who are actively searching, while social and sponsorships create demand among people who are not. Start with one or two and learn what a lead and a customer cost before adding more.
Working alongside SEO
Paid search shows which queries convert before you commit to months of content. Search terms that produce customers are good candidates for organic pages. Organic pages in turn lower the cost of retargeting by giving visitors something worth coming back to.
Common mistakes
Scaling before tracking
Without conversion tracking to customers, more spend only buys more uncertainty.
Treating paid and organic as rivals
They answer different questions, and each makes the other cheaper to evaluate.
Frequently Asked Questions
Most companies use both. Paid gives quick learning and organic compounds over time. The balance depends on budget and sales cycle.
Keep reading
- Cost Per Click: Cost per click is what you pay, on average, for each click on an ad: total ad cost divided by the number of clicks it received.
- Cost Per Lead (CPL): Cost per lead is the money spent on a channel or campaign divided by the number of leads it produced in the same period.
- Cost Per Acquisition: Cost per acquisition is the ad spend needed to produce one conversion, such as a trial, demo request or purchase, for a given campaign or channel.
- Podcast Advertising: Podcast advertising is paying for ad spots in podcast episodes, often read by the host, to reach a niche audience that trusts the show.
- Ad Assets: Ad assets, formerly called ad extensions, add extra links, text, images or contact options to search ads, making them larger and more useful.
- Ad extensions: Ad extensions, now called assets in Google Ads, add extra information to a search ad such as links, calls and callouts.
- Ad group: An ad group is a set of ads and keywords inside a campaign that share a theme and a landing page.
- Ad scheduling: Ad scheduling controls the days and hours your ads run, or adjusts bids for certain times.
