Now we are on the online ads lesson of this profitable skills module.
Online ads are where my expertise lies.
I love them because I get to have a direct impact on a business bottom line.
I get to help them make more money when I set up effective ad campaigns.
And since I like the analytical side of things, I like looking at building campaigns that work and
having numbers to prove for that it works really well.
Based on my skill set and the beauty of today's marketplace is that there are so many different platforms
and most of them run off of advertisements.
And what I mean by that is that they make most of their money by running ads.
So what you can do is use all of Amazon's data, use all of Facebook and Google and Instagram's data
and target users on their platform.
That is how they make money.
And if you think it's free to use any of these platforms, it's not because the price is you're paying
with your information.
So online ads are a powerful way to reach potential buyers and help businesses make more money.
And it's one of the most profitable freelance skills that you can do.
The first platform I'd like to go over with you is the Google Ads platform.
Google Ads is one of the top platforms to provide online advertising because they've been around for
so long.
And they all started with ads just like these on the Google search network.
So let's say you go and you search office supplies on Google.
The top links that show up are all ads.
And you can see that with a little headline that says AD.
And through Google ads, you can set up advertisements to help businesses reach their customers online
and where they are shopping.
And Google ads has grown over the years exponentially to not just include the search network.
And it's all about being able to set up campaigns that help the client get the results that matter to
them.
And a lot of times that's either driving people to their website so they can either make a sale, book,
something, sign up for something, or it's to have them call in to get more phone calls or it's to
increase physical store visits.
So it really depends on what type of business the client you are working for is in.
But based on that, you can use Google ads to help drive the actions that actually matter to that business
and that is all tracked in the platform.
And just with every other platform that we are going to be going over, you are the one that is in control
of the budget.
So you can set a monthly budget cap, a daily budget cap, and you can be in full control over where
the budget is going to be spent.
And this is a big part about online advertising, is a client is going to come to you with a set budget
and it is up to you to be able to use that budget in the best way possible, to get the best results
for them and the most conversions for their money.
And as you scroll down on the Google Ads page, you're going to see that there are a lot of resources
for you to learn Google ads for free, as well as other paid resources.
If you want to get even more in-depth with it and you can click on one of these links, learn how Google
ads works, or you can actually see some case studies in real time and watch this on YouTube.
I do want to go over one more thing that Google ads is not just the Google search network like we spoke
about.
So this is the search network right here, but it's also the Google Shopping Network, so similar to
search.
But instead of a website link popping up in actual product, link can pop up.
In addition, Google also serves ads on the display network, and the display network is on a lot of
different websites all across the Internet.
So I'm sure you've seen this before where if you're looking at a product or something on a website,
then you go on a different website, let's say a blog or a news article, and you see an ad for the
product you just looked at.
Those are all display ads and that is also set up through Google ads.
In addition, Google also owns Gmail, of course.
So you can also set up and run ads on the Gmail platform when people are looking in their emails.
In addition, Google also owns YouTube, and YouTube is growing exponentially every single year.
More and more people are on YouTube.
It's one of the biggest search engines in the world, biggest social media websites in the world.
And it is replacing a lot of investment that people were investing into traditional TV and television.
A lot of that's moving to YouTube because it is extremely affordable to get targeted views on the platform.
And it's a great way for you to offer services to different clients as a freelancer and specialize in
multiple networks on the Google Ads platform.
In addition to YouTube, they also own the Google Discover tab, which is on mobile devices, and that
is just for people that are looking at browsing new products, new services, etc..
And lastly, you have Google Maps, which are also very good for driving in-store visits as well as
let's say you are advertising for a restaurant.
You can make sure that if someone searches that specific kind of food, let's say Thai food, you can
run specific location based Google Map ads to help your client show up when it matters most so you can
add more value to each business that you work with.
So to recap, Google Ads is a very powerful platform to serve online ads on, and there are a handful
of different sub platforms that you can also specialize in to help make more money as a freelancer.
Next is Microsoft advertising.
Microsoft ads are very similar to Google ads, and they actually have a very powerful feature where
you can import your Google campaigns directly into your Microsoft advertising account.
And that may sound like it's too good to be true, but it really is that simple.
You log in to a microsoft advertising account and you can import your campaigns exactly how they are
into Microsoft ads.
So that is a great way for you to, number one, maybe expand the amount of services you're offering
a specific client.
And what that does is you can charge more money and you can also help add more value to the client.
So just like with Google, there are some different networks on the Microsoft ad platform.
They have their search engine marketing, which is similar to the search network on Google.
But this is anyone that is searching on Microsoft, Bing, you can show ads.
They're on that platform.
They also have native advertising.
So everything that Microsoft ads owns and Microsoft owns, you can also serve ads natively on those
platforms as well as display advertising.
So in addition to Google just having display ads, Microsoft also has display ads.
And there is a way for you to remarket to users as well as target cold users using the Microsoft Ads
Network.
And once again, there are a lot of different stats for you here that you can dive into, as well as
more ways for you to learn about Microsoft Search Network and Audience Network and really dive into
all of this because they also have a way for you to reach relevant audiences similar to like you can
on Google and you can start to dig into all of the different resources that they provide, such as webcasts
and videos, success stories and training and certifications as well.
And then even here you can see this is where you can learn how to import from Google ads.
So Microsoft ads is very similar to Google ads.
It does have less volume because it is smaller.
However, it is a great way for you to expand on the different online advertising services you are offering
as a freelancer, as well as if you're already running ads on Google.
It's a great way for you to bundle multiple services together and also become proficient in Microsoft
advertising.
Next, let's discuss Amazon ads.
Amazon ads are very great to work with eCommerce brands, people that are selling physical products
online and as a freelancer.
If you specialize in Amazon ads, you can help different clients bring their brand to the world.
There are a few different kind of ads you can run on Amazon.
There's the product ads, which is ads that show up when someone searches for a product.
You also have brand shopping experiences.
This is where you can bring a brand to life and build a whole store on Amazon for a brand and have all
of their different collections laid out properly so they can drive more sales as well as all of the
ad technology.
So all of the tools behind the scenes is there for you to plan, manage, measure and optimize digital
marketing on Amazon.
And Amazon once again has a lot of different inspiring stories for you to see how people have had success
with Amazon advertising.
And since Amazon is so big, there are so many different articles and videos and different tutorials
on how you can get started creating all of these different types of ads.
And the great part about Amazon is because it's such a big platform in so many people use it.
There are a lot of advertisers and clients that want to have a freelancer help them with Amazon ads.
But as opposed to Google and Microsoft, there is actually a little bit of a shortage, in my opinion,
in freelancers offering Amazon ads as a service.
A lot of people know Google, a lot of people know Microsoft, a lot of people know Facebook and Instagram
and all of that.
But not every freelancer out there that does online ads specializes in Amazon ads.
So this is a great way if you do have interest in the platform, let's say you use Amazon a lot.
You're already pretty familiar with how things work on there.
Maybe you can go ahead and start to brush up on some Amazon ad knowledge, see if you like it, and
add that to the skill set that you offer clients.
Then we have linked in marketing solutions a.k.a linked in ads.
This is a way for you to reach over 830 million professionals on the world's largest professional network.
So just to get started right off the bat.
LinkedIn is very powerful for B to be type marketing.
So business to business, not saying that you can't run a business to consumer A, B to C style campaign
on this platform.
But primarily in my experience, I've seen that LinkedIn ads are great for businesses trying to reach
other businesses.
It's also a very simple process for you to get started on the platform.
They have their entire campaign manager where you can build, manage, optimize everything all in the
LinkedIn campaign manager.
And they also have different types of ads.
So they have the sponsored content, which are native ads that appear in the LinkedIn feed.
These are more of the natural style ad that just shows up as people are scrolling.
They also have sponsored messaging.
So I'm sure if you have LinkedIn, you probably already been hit with some of these sponsored messages.
It's a numbers game, so not every single person is going to respond to a sponsored message.
But if you are working with a client that wants to reach a particular type of profession, then they
can use sponsored messaging to blast out a lot of different targeted messages to try to get in front
of the right people.
On top of that, they have dynamic ads which are cool because they're automatically personalized based
on the audience you are targeting.
And lastly, they have text ads which are the more simple PPC or CPM desktop style ads.
PPC stands for pay per click, and then CPM is the cost per thousand ad impressions.
So those are two different models.
You can either pay for each click or pay for 1000 impressions.
But to look at this just from a higher perspective, LinkedIn is a great platform.
If you are working with a client that wants to reach other businesses or working professionals, and
a lot of that data is all in LinkedIn because people are offering that data, they are talking about
their accomplishments.
They have it linked to what company they're working at, what industry they're in.
All of that is great for you to be able to build a targeted campaign to reach the user that you want
to reach to help your client make more money.
I want to show you another way you can dig a little bit deeper into Facebook ads.
This is the Facebook ads library.
And you can get there by just going to Facebook.com, slash ads, slash library.
And the reason that Facebook came out with this is because they are aiming to provide transparency by
offering a comprehensive, searchable collection of all ads that are currently running from across Facebook
products, including Instagram.
Anyone can explore the library with or without a Facebook or Instagram account.
You can access all active ads, even ones that may not have been shown to you because you weren't part
of an advertiser's intended audience.
On top of that, you can also see data for all ads about social issues, elections or politics.
In addition, you can explore and download the Add Library Report, so they provide snapshots and data
for different ads about social issues and elections, and you can download certain versions of them.
So Facebook, I'm sure you've heard, had a big part in the election because this was the first time
that Facebook advertising was used to the fullest potential.
And because of that, they have a lot of new regulations on them and one of them is just transparency.
So they need to be more transparent and they need to show what kind of ads are running.
This is so powerful because you can literally look up what type of ads companies are running.
So if we go with our company that we've been modeling our skills after.
As you start to type, you can see it'll pop up whatever Facebook page name there is and you can literally
pull up.
Profile of the company.
And you can see every single ad that is running.
So you see that guerrilla ad we spoke about in our email marketing and copywriting section.
You can see they're also running an ad on that.
And this is public knowledge.
This is all free and available to anyone because these ad platforms need to provide transparency.
So this is a tool not a lot of people know about.
Keep this a secret, because this is just for you guys and this is how you can get ahead of the competition.
Again, you can see what your competitors are running, what your clients competitors are running.
You can get ideas for ads and you can literally get a behind the scenes view of what a successful ad
looks like.
You can see when the ad started running and you can even look at the different variations.
And it's just a very powerful way you can start to see what other companies are running.
And as you can see, they have multiple ads right here and they all look the same.
But what it's doing is they're targeting different demographics with the ad.
So you can see this ID number here as you scroll through.
So this is a powerful tool I suggest you use if you want to run any Facebook or Instagram ads for clients.
Here you can see another version of that ad with a different photo.
And what they're doing is they're just testing to see which ones perform best.
In conclusion, this is just to get your feet wet in the online advertising world.
My suggestion is to pick one or two platforms that you already use the most.
Maybe you already spend time on one or two of these platforms.
That's a great way for you to get a head start because you're going to be more familiar with that platform.
So once you start to look at it from the other side of the token, so instead of being a user of the
platform, now you're being a producer, a creator of advertisements, a creator of content to help
your clients reach the customers they want and to drive the different actions that add value.
That's where you can start to make some progress on your journey when you're thinking about what profitable
skill that you want to offer.
And you can also start to use all of the free education content that is out there that each of these
platforms released to you for free.
They have case studies, of course, because they want you to advertise on their platform.
So they are going to provide you not only tutorials on how to set things up, but also success stories.
So you can start to see, let's say you have a client, what platform would be the best for them, and
you can also get certified on these different platforms.
A lot of them offer free certifications where you do the studying, you take a test that they offer,
and then you have a certification that you can use on your upward profile in your proposals, and that
can help build a lot of credibility.
So overall, online ads are a great way for you to make money as a freelancer because it's a skill set
that is in massive demand.
Every single business out there, even if they are already pretty optimized in the organic sense, if
they want more customers, they are always going to turn to paid advertising.
And that is why I believe this is one of the skills that will continue to grow in demand for years and
years to come.
Now, of course, there is competition, but you never want to let competition hold you back.
Once you find a platform that you feel comfortable with, you start to gain experience in.
Then you land a client or two.
You build case studies around that.
You can quickly become a specialist on one of these platforms to build a profitable freelance business.
I'll see you in the next lesson.