Marketing

Where to Spend Your Ad Dollars in 2023

Alice Tavernese
By Alice Tavernese
By Alice Tavernese,
Jan 19, 2023

The new year is here and you and your business are ready to jumpstart your revenue to new heights! New Year – New Attitude, right? But where do you spend your ad dollars? What strategies and platforms can you use to your advantage that fit your specific business needs? 

While it is difficult to predict exactly where your business should spend their marketing ad dollars in 2023, we can identify some current trends that can help make the choice a lot easier!

What kinds of media will see the most growth in 2023?

Corporate logos

Over the past few years, digital advertising has seen the largest growth in just North America alone. Since most of our time is now spent online (in one form or another) more and more companies choose digital advertising over traditional marketing. By 2026, spending on digital advertising is set to surpass 360 billion, with the United States being the main driver of growth. (Statista, 2023).

As we look ahead to 2023, it's important for companies to keep investing in digital advertising. Even with the ever-changing digital landscape, including things like new privacy updates from Apple, companies can remain competitive by allocating budget for contingencies and adjusting their ad spend across different platforms as needed.

Budget graph

One form of media type to see the highest growth this year is Video content. Ad spending in the Video Advertising segment is projected to reach $100 Billion USD in 2023 alone. (Statista, 2022) If you are not creating and advertising your business with some form of video content, you should consider adding it to your roster. With more and more platforms adopting video content into their services, it’s a no-brainer to be producing more of the content to showcase your brand, products, and services.

Search ad set up

Another type of ad space your business needs to be a part of is Search. Ad spending on search and keywords is set to reach over $140+ Billion USD this year. (Statista, 2022) Whether that be Google, Microsoft Bing, or even Amazon, you should be investing in paid search for your business. Most companies focus on specific business related keywords, and while that’s one part of paid search, you have to remember to think like your audience. What would they type into a search engine, and what kinds of questions are they looking to solve? By bidding on “Phrase Match” keywords, you can target strings of keywords, which can contain questions you think someone looking for your brand would type into a search engine. 

Which platforms are best suited for different types of businesses? 

The best advertising platform for any business will depend on the type of business and its target audience. There are a multitude of factors that can affect what will be successful, especially if your brand and products serve a very niche audience. That being said, we can make the following recommendations:

Digital media advertising choices

For B2C businesses:

  • Facebook and Instagram are great for reaching a large, diverse audience and targeting specific demographics, interests, and behaviors.
  • Google Ads are good for reaching customers who are actively searching for products or services, even more so for niche audiences. 
  • Twitter and LinkedIn are useful for targeting specific industries and job titles.

For B2B businesses:

  • LinkedIn is the most effective platform, as it has a professional audience and allows for targeted advertising based on job title, industry, and company size.
  • Google Ads and Twitter can also be effective for reaching B2B audiences for their specific demographics.

For E-commerce businesses:

  • Google Shopping Ads is the best platform, as it allows businesses to advertise products directly on Google's search results pages, and can also be used to drive traffic to their own website.
  • Facebook and Instagram are also good options as they allow businesses to showcase their products in a visually appealing way.
  • If you are also selling your products on Amazon, we definitely recommend running Amazon ads. When advertising directly on Amazon, you catch buyers exactly at the right time because the customers that are browsing on Amazon already have the intent to purchase and once they find the right product, they are an easy click away from purchase. 

It's important to keep in mind that different platforms have different ad formats and targeting options. Therefore, businesses should experiment and find the one that works best for their specific needs.

How should you divide your marketing budget?

Marketing dollars graph

When it comes to ad spend for the year, it’s so important to keep conversion rates, CPC, CPP and engagement in general in mind before increasing spend on any platform. No one has a crystal ball, but by using your past data you can determine exactly where to keep your focus this year.

60 - 70% of your budget should be spent on the platforms and methods that have worked well for you before. 

20% - 30% of the budget can be allocated to new strategies or endeavors that will help your business to grow.

10% - 20% of the budget can be left over for both highly experimental ideas and/or to allow for room to allocate to the other budgets and platforms that are performing well.

For more specific information on determining what kinds of strategies you can implement for your business, you can refer to our previous blog article on marketing strategies, where we outline several basic strategies you can implement quickly into your 2023 planning.

In Conclusion… 

It's important to note that all these are trends and it would be best to conduct a proper research and analysis for your specific industry and target audience. Take time to consider your target audience and where they spend most of their time online when deciding where to spend your ad dollars. It's also a good idea to test different platforms and strategies to see which ones work best for your business before investing a large amount of money.

At Shoelace, our Growth Partners work alongside their clients to determine the absolute best strategies for the coming year. If you want to know more about how we can help elevate your marketing strategies in 2023, contact us today! 

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We’re looking to partner with brands that understand that true growth takes time and a strong foundation. We’ll help you build that foundation, and use it to grow your business. You won’t always love what we have to say, but you’ll love the end results.

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