Do you see a lot of website traffic, but you aren’t getting as many conversions as you would like? Investing in paid ads can deliver many positive results, especially for small and medium-sized businesses, including leveraging your current website traffic to drive more on-site conversions.

A few of our favorite ways to drive a “warmer” or “lower funnel” audience to your site is through retargeting customers who visit your website, by using ads to promote lead magnets, and by advertising limited-time offers. All of these strategies will help you push customers through the marketing funnel.

Retargeted Paid Ads

Higher in the marketing funnel (awareness & consideration stages), customers may visit your website briefly, learning more about your business, but leave because they aren’t ready to make a decision. Retargeted paid ads help you remind your audience that they are interested in your product or service and get them back to your website.

In order to implement retargeting ads, you will need to place a snippet of code called a pixel on your website. A pixel will track essential data from website visitors, including the pages they visit. With that data, you can re-target them with ads, enticing them back to your site to move further down the marketing funnel.

The most known example of retargeting is related to cart abandonment. This is when you are served an ad based on something you’ve left in your cart on an e-commerce site. These ads typically remind you that you left something behind, offer discounts and/or free shipping to incentivize the sale, or show similar or complementary products to the one you left in your cart. Retargeting ads can also feature products that complement what the user purchased to upsell or cross-sell to purchasers.

Example: Redballoon Australia wants its website visitors to finish their shopping experience by returning to their cart and completing purchase. To that end, the experience gifting company retargeted visitors with an ad for $15 off orders of at least $69. Source: Mayple (https://www.mayple.com/blog/retargeting-ads-examples)

Retargeting Tips

Retargeting ads are a cost-effective way for small and medium-sized businesses to effectively keep themselves top of mind for their audiences and increase conversions.

In order to see the highest return on investment for retargeting ads, you should:

Set frequency caps to avoid the same person seeing your add too much, resulting in ad fatigue
Using messaging that incentivizes the audience to come back and convert
A/B test different offers and incentives
Set up parameters to stop retargeting ads from serving once the customer has converted

Lead Magnet Paid Ads

A lead magnet is a piece of content or an offer that is valuable to the target audience and given away for free in exchange for contact information. SMBs can leverage them by offering free trials or samples, free consultations, mini-courses, interactive tools, checklists 0r, guides, and other helpful information.

The benefits of lead magnets are their ability to help you capture the contact information of potential customers who are higher in the marketing funnel. Then, using other forms of marketing, such as email outreach, phone calls, or lead nurture funnels, you can move prospects toward conversion.

Example: The Corporate Financial Institute offers access to Excel shortcuts. By sharing their contact information, visitors can access useful information and expand their skills. CFI is providing valuable information, addressing a pain point of many of its customers. Source: Corporate Finance Institute (https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/excel/excel-shortcuts-pc-mac/)

Lead Magnet Tips

Some suggestions for successful lead magnet campaigns are:

Create valuable content that your audience will want by addressing your target audience's pain points or filling a need
Develop a compelling landing page for the offer
Promote the lead magnet through other marketing channels alongside paid ads
Set up an automated email sequence to nurture leads or follow up with personalized offers or additional value

Special Offer Promotions

While SMBs cannot afford to steeply discount their products, they can offer special promotions to help boost awareness and drive sales.

You can offer limited-time discounts, buy-one-get-one (BOGO) deals, loyalty or referral programs, sign-up bonuses, new customer specials, upsell offers, and more. When you use retargeted paid ads for special offers, you can increase customer loyalty and generate new sales.

Example: Papa Johns offers a Two for Tuesdays BOGO Deal on large pizzas for a limited time. The pizza chain has an established brand but still benefits from the urgency and great value of its special promotion ad. Source: WordStream (https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2020/10/13/sales-promotion-examples)

Offer Tips

Here are some tips for running special offer paid ads:

Have a compelling or valuable offer
Utilize special targeting to reach past purchasers
Have a time-sensitive call-to-action (CTA) to encourage immediate action
A/B test different ad offers to learn and optimize
Ensure landing pages make it easy to redeem the offer

The TLDR

Using paid ads, small and medium-sized businesses can retarget website visitors, create tailored lead magnet campaigns, and promote special limited-time offers to drive sales and increase online conversion rates.

The flexibility these ad types offer through budgeting, targeting, and the length of the campaign means SMBs can effectively grow their ROI and see improvements in conversion and customer loyalty, no matter the budget size.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What type of ad works best for lead generation?

A. The following types of paid ads typically work well for driving a lower funnel audience – paid search ads (PPC/SEM), retargeted display or native ads, and retargeted paid social or lead form ads. Which one works best for you will depend on your audience, their media habits, the product or service you are offering, and what you want the audience to do.

Q. How long does it take to see results?

A. While you’ll typically see an increase in website traffic in the first week, it may take three to six months or longer to see the best results from paid ads. For digital ads to perform their best, you need to allow enough time for platforms to gather enough data to maximize data-driven optimizations.

Q. How can special offer promotions increase lead generation and sales?

A. While it can be sometimes difficult to offer special pricing and discounts, they can drive short-term results and brand loyalty. However, use this tactic wisely—overusing offers can devalue your brand over time. It’s best to use them strategically to lower barriers for new customers, reengage past customers, or clear inventory.

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3 Proven Ways Paid Ads Can Drive More Leads and Sales