Reaching an audience and getting traffic can be a hard and long process when you only use organic SEO traffic. So if you want faster results, you need to invest in online advertising. But what online advertising strategies work, and how to advertise online?
The Benefits of advertising online
No matter what type of business, if it is large or small, to sell products and services and promote your business, you need to reach many people to create an income. And online advertising can help you, even with a smaller budget than traditional ads, reach a bigger and more targeted audience.
Internet advertising is way more accessible for every business and makes it easier, more quickly, efficiently, and affordably to reach the right people.
Having a blog, shop, or landing page is fundamental and having a social media presence is useful. But without the right online marketing strategy, you won’t get traffic. This makes online advertising also an essential solution.
You get access to reach an audience all over the world and at every time possible. And you don’t need a big budget to get more visibility and boost your sales and revenue.
In 2016 Internet advertising spending already surpassed TV ad spending. In 2020 Digital ad spending reached $341 Billion compared to all traditional ads with $379 Billion.
What makes online advertising so effective, it is simple, flexible, easily measurable, and relatively cheap. You also can see in real-time results how your campaigns are performing. It is also way more customer-oriented because it isn’t one-way communication but rather a two-way one.
You can increase your brand awareness by showing your content to individuals in and outside your networks. Ads also help you better understand your audience by using targeting and the analytics of the ad platform. It is possible to see what content performs better and helps you archive your business goals.
What are the most effective online advertising methods?
There are many types of online campaigns you can create.
1. Search engine advertising
With search engine advertising on Google Ads or Bing Ads from Microsoft, you can improve your website positioning. It helps you advertise your products, services, or content through advertising services. Users can find you more easily because your advertisement will be shown in the relevant search results of a used keyword.
Usually, the type of advertising is pay per click (PPC), which means you only pay for each click you get on your advertising campaign. Like CPM (Cost Per Thousand), there are some other ways where you pay for every 1000 Impressions or Video views your ad gets.
It is a highly personable method to get a lot of traffic if you choose relevant keywords and reach a good search engine position. But your position also depends on what you want to pay for a certain keyword and if you use keyword research to find the right keyword.
Search engine ads are most used by users who have the goal of getting web traffic and conversions. It is one of the simpler and more efficient advertising techniques.
2. Social Media Advertising
Social Media platforms offer effective ad methods to reach a very target audience. You can choose between all types of demographics like gender, age, region, interests, and much more.
The most common ad is promoted posts to reach leads, website visits, or app installs. Similar to search engine ads, you can choose between Pay per Click or Cost per Thousand. There are also some other choices like Pay per Video view or App install.
With this type of ad, you can maximize your social media channels and create brand awareness. Choosing the right Social Media network depends on the audience you want to reach and your budget.
3. Banner and Pop-Ups
Both banners and Pop-Ups are one of the first online advertising forms. Banners are strategically placed in different formats, sizes, and designs within a website. When the users click on the advertising banner, they will be taken to the site they choose.
Nowadays, we are oversaturated with website banner ads, so most people barely pay any attention to them.
The same goes for Pop-Up ads, where a window pops up and takes you to a different website. While this method was efficient years ago, it is now a waste of money unless you only want to have cheap clicks.
It is better to insert a Pop-Up on your own website to invite users to do a call to action, like subscribing to your email list.
4. Advertising on blogs
It isn’t the banner on websites but rather a type of indirect advertising that is usually done through storytelling and branded content. It’s a form of collaborative advertising where you need to search for websites and blogs with a larger audience in your niche.
And pay them to review or write an article about your product or service. While depending on how much traffic the website gets, you either pay them with money or give them your offer for free.
Similarly, you can also hire journalists to get press releases on relevant news sites. Share about your business and the new offers you provide.
Another option would be to guest blog on a fitting niche site. There you write your own article and include your product or service. It doesn’t need to be reviewed; it can also be a related article where you can link your offer. This advertising form is a good option to get new potential customers and traffic.
5. Mobile advertising
More people than ever use their phones to search online. Advertising on mobile is a good opportunity to reach these people. You can both can use Google AdWords and social media to create mobile ads.
But you need to make sure your website is mobile-ready and responsive so text, videos, or images are viewable on different types of phones. It is also important to have a fast-loading website, and the call to action stands out and has a visible button.
6. Video advertising
Video is an effective way to present your offer and give the user an idea of what your product is about. You can set up Video campaigns on sites like Youtube, Twitch, TikTok, and other Social media Networks.
Video ads can appear as Pre-Rolls before a video or in-between, or at the end in different formats and content options. It is up to you if you want to create a video more like an ad for your product or a story type to get brand awareness and maybe go viral.
7. Influencer
With Influencers, you can find a large audience in all types of different niches. They can do reviews and product placement. Influencers can help you reach a very targeted audience when you work with them, and they create a successful ad for your product.
It is important to be very selective with Influencers. When done right, it can gain you more traffic and leads than most other advertising campaigns.
8. Remarketing
Remarketing is an advertising form where you find users that already visited your website but didn’t convert. This can be done if you have already made an ad on Social media or Search engines and tracked your conversion and website visits. You just need a campaign with collected data and select that you like to advertise to the user group again.
It is also possible to create Look Alike audiences to target people that more likely will convert to potential customers through your ad.
How to advertise online successfully?
To create a successful ad campaign, you need to make sure you keep the following tips in mind:
1. The Website
Before you start an ad, you need to make sure you have a website that loads quickly, has an easy-to-navigate design, and an overall good user experience is guaranteed.
This will help you keep the user who clicks on your ad, stay on your website and look for what you have to offer.
So take the time to define what people can see when they come to your website. It can be a special message or anything that is fitting and useful and can generate conversions.
2. Investigate your audience
Nothing is more important when you want to sell or promote something than to know your target audience. So make sure to do your research and find the people that most likely convert best.
It is difficult when you start, as it can be a trial and error process where you have first to invest some money into ads. Then you can see what demographics, like age, gender, interest, and region, engage the most with your offer.
3. Type of advertising
Above, you already saw a selection of advertising methods. To choose what best suits your business online, you need to do some research while having your budget in mind. For example, when done right, Social Media Ads can work well while costing less, but if you want more traffic and have a higher budget, Google Ads are a good choice.
It is a good idea to choose one or two advertising platforms and try to master them. And if you don’t find success after some campaigns, move on. Rember, no matter what you select, some campaigns will fail, so keep in mind you will most likely lose some money in the process.
But when you create successful ads, it will be worth it as you can renew and improve this campaign in the process.
4. Have a goal
Without knowing what you want to accomplish, it is very hard to create effective ads. So decide your goals if you want to get more traffic or gain more leads and sales and improve your brand image and awareness. Whatever it is, make sure to focus your advertising campaign on these goals.
5. Make a template for your ad
It is important to think about how you want to gain people’s interest. You need to know what pictures or videos you want to use and the message you want to write. This is very important as you have to use the right visual elements and call to action to gain users’ attention.
People who show emotions can work. Also, animals or stunning photos can get the attention you need for your ad.
Keep in mind that various ad platforms have different rules for how you can create ads. So make sure you research these rules and look at what image resolution you need and how many words you can write in your ad.
A good website to design your ad is Canva there, you find many ready-to-use templates, images, and videos for all types of platforms, and easily customize them to your liking.
6. Use your Brand voice
No matter where you want to advertise, it is important to have a clear voice in the message you want to share. It means that you need to keep your vision, mission, and values in mind. And know how you reach your target audience. This doesn’t necessarily mean you should use things like Memes when you want to reach a younger audience, especially if it doesn’t fit your normal image.
7. Have a good call to action
If you want your campaign to perform well, your message needs to have some type of action for the user, like “visit our website,” “buy now,” “sign up here,” etc. This will let the person know what they can do on your site, and it increases your engagement rate.
8. Check your Campaign
Before you create the campaign, make sure your ads don’t have spelling/ grammar errors, that your images and text are of good quality, and your ad looks professional overall. It is also a good idea to integrate your logo and brand colors in the right places.
9. Time and Budget
Know your budget on how much you want to invest. For most campaigns, you can set a time when and how long you want to run it. It is also possible to set a budget weekly, daily, or for the full campaign.
Keep in mind sometimes a campaign can be more expensive than your set budget. This happens because many users will see your ad, and some may click sooner and others at a later time.
Ad Campaigns have a bidding system where you choose what you are willing to pay for the desired action. It is an auction that determines whether your ad is shown to your target audience. The ad networks have only limited ad space, so they run these auctions to see what each advertiser is willing to pay for ad space.
In an auction, the highest bidder wins. So if you pay $10 per click on your ad and the other bidder only pays $5 per click. In reality, you need to only pay the lowest amount possible, which would be $5.01. But it is hard to know what other bidders pay, so the additional factor is important, which is the overall quality of your ads. It also determines how your ads are displayed on the ad networks.
So even the lowest bid can get a good position if the ad quality and engagement are high.
To know what you should spend to make a return on investment, you can use the following equation:
Lifetime Value (LTV) x Average Lead-to-Customer Rate x Average Conversion Rate
LTV is how much a customer is worth to you over time in their relationship with your business. The average Lead to Customer Rate is the rate when your leads become paying customers. The conversion rate is when a new contact is willing to fill out a form on your content offers.
If you combine these metrics, you can determine how much you should spend on ads to break even. That this equation works, you need to know what your maximum ad should be so you can see a positive return on investment. When you know the three factors about your business, like in this example:
- Lifetime value: $500
- Average lead-to-customer rate: 10%
- Average conversion rate: 10%
The equation would be $500 x 0.10 x 0.10 = $5. This means you can spend a maximum of $5 per click to break even. So the goal should be to spend less than $5 to have a positive return on investment.
10. Measure results
It is important to keep track of your campaigns and analyze your results. So you can see what works and what doesn’t and make changes accordingly. A good idea is to split test, which means using different target audiences and messages and images. Then you can see what combination works the best.
Online advertising is a good way to get traffic and conversation. But it will take time and money, and it is a trial and error process. However, it can grow your business a lot. Even more, if you combine Search engine optimization and Ads.
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