How to scale with paid marketing - Sumit Ghosh, Socioboard

Whether you are a startup or an MNC, you are likely to acknowledge the use of marketing as a tool to scale up. Though a fraction of it is organic, the majority of the marketing in today’s time is paid. To help us understand the nuances of the burgeoning market of social media, Sumit Ghosh from Socioboard shared some insights at the 7^th edition of YourStory TechSparks.

During his hour-long workshop, Sumit elaborated on the need for an effective paid marketing strategy to a room flooded with upcoming entrepreneurs, social media activists and some aspiring product managers who were keen on learning the intricacies involved in scaling their products.

 Paid marketing implies good conversion most of the time, says Sumit.

While conversion varies from product to product, you always have the ability to analyse your efforts.

Profit is subjective

In paid marketing, profit is subjective. For some companies, every click counts, and for others, the conversion does. While we are constantly finding ways to sow less and reap more, there are some key factors that need to be kept in mind before creating an advertisement:

1. Low CPC– At an early stage, it is very important to consider your ‘cost per click’. In an internet advertising model, which is used to direct traffic to websites, low CPC is a plus point.
2. High CTR ad copy- In an email campaign, a high CTR (Click-through rate) implies a higher ratio of users clicking on a specific link to the number of total users who view a page, email or advertisement.
3. High CTR images- Images are the life of an advertisement. Better images imply better conversion rates.
4. Click baity ad headlines are a necessity.

If you wish to measure an advertisement’s success, look at the returns. The image and the ad headline are two key value additions in any advertisement, says Sumit.

Especially on a wide platform like Facebook, you can bring back the customer with an incomplete transaction history by ‘Integrating your app SDK’. Post this, keep a track of your user behaviour.

According to him, one can test-run any ad for about three days to track its user behaviour, at the end of which, Facebook shares an ad-score which will helps in understanding the future potential of that particular advertisement.

Success ratio

Since user behaviour varies, one can consider ROI and CPC for evaluating the success of any ad. On a wide platform like Facebook, failed billing implies an increase in the ad cost. Sumit shares an experience of how an incomplete billing led to sky-rocketing prices the next day. He advises all social media managers to keep their transactions complete for that day.

Judging an advertisement

Not all startup entrepreneurs are creative, says Sumit.

But there are enough features on analytics platforms like Facebook that analyse the advertisements across other platforms and help improve your understanding on what works and what doesn’t. For instance, if you are an early-stage startup, use online analysers like AdSpike, an ad intelligence tool that ensures the optimisation and customisation of your ad.

The session was indeed thought-provoking and saw a good many people scribbling notes throughout the talk and asking relevant, insightful questions at the end.

A big shoutout to all our sponsors - Zendesk, Axis Bank, Sequoia Capital India Advisors , Digital Ocean, Microsoft, AWS, Akamai, Target, Verisign, Kerala Startup Mission, Brand Launch Centre, Tork and Blink.