Top 6 Online Advertising Strategies
When starting out with digital marketing, it can seem complicated and overwhelming. With so many platforms and channels for advertising and keeping updated, knowing where to start is often the hardest part for businesses.
The majority of marketers have two large concerns, cost-effectiveness of ad campaigns, and the final result. This article will be going over the top 6 online advertising strategies, how they can benefit a business, and what they cost.
Website Design
One of the most important aspects of online advertising, or offline for that matter, is your website design. Your website acts as the first impression people online have with your business. When paying for advertisement, you want the potential customers who click your ad to stay on your site.
A poor web design or layout can be the difference in success or failure. You will need a website that reflects what your offer, who you are, and appeals to your target audience. This will help keep their attention once on your site.
In fact, 94% of people said poor web design caused lack of trust. Therefore, an outdated design, poor navigation, and not having needed information handy will cause potential customers to run. It is important to have a professional looking website.
SEO
After ensuring your website looks modern and professional, the next step is to make sure people know about it. That’s where SEO comes in.
Search Engine Optimization, more commonly referred to as SEO is the next important area to invest time. SEO helps your website rank above the competition in search engines like Google when looking for related searches.
SEO requires strategic use of keywords relevant to your service or product. When users are searching those terms in their preferred search engine, the most relevant pages are shown. By identifying the keywords that fit best for you, you can potentially outrank the competition and take the #1 spot.
Ultimately, taking the #1 spot is always the goal, but ranking in the first three positions can be considered a success as well. Studies show that 35% of desktop clicks, and 31% of mobile clicks go to the top three spots.
SEO is more than just ranking for a search term, it can help boost your traffic organically, bringing in potential customers, increases exposure, and improves conversion rates. SEO is a long-term strategy, but worth investing the time in.
Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing is quickly becoming a more popular avenue for online advertising due to the massive user base. They also allow you to easily target a very specific or a broad range audience, giving the ability to fully customize your target audience.
Depending on your product or service, you may find Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter to be used more than the other by your audience. Some niches may benefit from a combination, while other businesses will be more cost-efficient targeting a single platform to start.
Studies show that 81% of Americans over 18 is active on at least one social media platform. Therefore, the chance your target audience is on one or more of them is high. The first step is knowing where your potential customers hang out.
To narrow your audience, choose your demographic information including gender, age, location, behaviors and interests. This helps you get ads shown to high-value traffic with a higher conversion rate. This helps maximize your ad campaign.
For example, if you’re an auto detailing business, you could utilize social media ads to target the users around your area, while also focusing on more specific demographics. For instance, for Valentine’s Day you may run an ad campaign targeting men in a relationship.
Half of B2B marketers consider social media marketing a low-cost advertising method compared to other forms of online or offline advertising.
PPC Advertising
With Pay Per Click, commonly known as PPC marketing, you can get your advertisement shown on search engines and other websites by using keywords that target your audience. The concept is similar to that of SEO, get shown on the top of search results.
However, SEO is a long-term process that requires content optimization, and PPC advertising simply requires paying for placement at the top of search results for the targeted keywords.
When first starting out with PPC advertising, Google Ads is recommended, as you can quickly position on Google search results.
Pay Per Click advertising is setup like an auction. First, you choose your audience, then your maximum bid and budget. These factors will determine if you outbid the competition for your targeted keyword. If your ad campaign is among the highest bids, your ad will be placed at top of search results for the keyword(s) targeted.
Unlike CPM (cost per 1,000 views), you’re only charged when the user clicks on your ad. This helps reduce costs for showing ads to uninterested traffic. For this reason, PPC is the strongest strategy companies use.
Another benefit to PPC is that it can begin bringing in traffic immediately after launching your ad campaign. Whereas, SEO requires a longer commitment of several months or more before increasing conversions and sales.
For example, a car dealership using PPC advertising could begin generating new leads and scheduling appointments immediately for test drives, trade-ins, etc. By getting your ad placed at the top of search results when users search for your keyword, it greatly increases the chance of a positive marketing campaign.
PPC advertising allows you to gain more immediate results, but if combined with SEO you can eventually reduce your overall advertising expenses. For instance, if you’re ranking among the top search results organically with SEO, you could begin targeting a new keyword if your website begins ranking in the top 3 organic search results.
Email Marketing
A classic advertising method is email marketing. These strategies have been around since the beginning of widespread internet and remain effective. Email advertising allows businesses to reach past customers, new customers, and interested leads on an individual level.
Email marketing strategies can make use of various forms of content, including newsletters, coupons and offers tailored to each customer. With the use of email marketing tools such as MailChimp, you can easily segment your current customers into different groups.
For example, if you’re an online retailer you may have several categories. Let’s say you’re running a sale for all dragon-themed products. By segmenting your customers, you could have a segment for those who purchased or added dragon related products to their cart. Then, send just those customers an email about the upcoming sale on dragon products.
While that is just one straightforward example, email marketing can be much more complex. Customer interests are always changing, and what worked in the past may not always work later. For email marketing to continue being successful, you will need to review, analyze and learn how to improve over time.
Research has shown personalized email marketing had a 14% better CTR, as it helps create a sense of importance. Make your customers feel unique as an individual, and you’re more likely to get repeat business.
Content Marketing
Businesses can use content marketing strategies to increase organic and paid traffic to their website. When done correctly, combined with SEO it will increase organic traffic over time through offering people relative information to their interests.
There are many ways to go about content marketing, including infographics, blogs, videos, or any other form of online content related to what you’re offering. The key to a successful content marketing strategy is creating unique and original content.
Unique Content!
You never want to copy existing content, this will look bad if your target audience notices but more importantly search engines will penalize you. To maximize the results of content marketing and SEO, always provide unique content, it will increase brand trust and awareness.
Businesses can create an authority in their industry by providing valuable information, which helps create and improve online reputation. When the target audience will notice the information published is reliable, it builds confidence and furthers your relationship with the customer or potential customer.
Regular Posting
Posting regularly is the second important part of a successful content marketing strategy. In fact, research has shown businesses that post ever couple days received 4x more traffic on average than those which only post weekly.
Writing and publishing 16+ articles per month can seem time-consuming, but with the use of a copywriting service, you can easily outsource your content.
Infographics
Of course, there is more to content marketing than written content. Creating original images and infographics are another effective method. Visual elements help capture attention of users on the page. When you provide useful information in a visually appealing way, it is more likely to keep users interested and increases the share rate.
Video
Lately, original video content has really gained traction in content marketing. They improve user engagement, but it can require more time and work compared to written content or infographic design. Although, the results are much more significant on average.
Amazon Advertising
When it comes to advertising your ecommerce website, one of the best platforms is Amazon. Over half of users looking for a product will search on Amazon first. The only companies that outrank Amazon as an ad platform, is Google and Facebook.
Amazon can be used for promoting product pages, even if your business is not ecommerce. Advertising with Amazon is more than the main site, they also own other niche related sites, such as IMDb that can help you increase brand awareness.
Geofencing Advertising
Geofencing is a great method when your marketing goal is to target high-value leads, top talent, get ahead of the competition, and reach more local traffic. The idea behind geofencing is targeting people in a very specific geographical location.
It works by creating a digital fence around this specific place, such as a conference center, college, even a competitors location. You build a remarketing list each time a person enters this specific location.
By remarketing to these people, you increase overall brand awareness and this can result in influencing their decision to reach out for a quote, or simply try your business over the competition.
Geofencing is a newer marketing strategy that can be effective to reaching a very specific group of people. When done correctly, it can increase awareness, influence purchase decisions, and secure customers away from the competition.
Influencer Advertising
Finally, influencer marketing is another trending method used by companies of all sizes. Studies have shown that successful influencer advertising brings a ROI of 650% on average.
By partnering with influencers across the internet, you can generate new leads, sales, build trust, and gain awareness. All these benefits come from simply having your brand, service, or product mentioned by an influencer with a large following.
Also, your ad could incorporate the influencer to gain more attention from their fan base. This is similar to how companies advertise on sports teams and large events, except it’s well-known online personalities.
The key to success with influencer advertising is choosing someone with a similar niche as your business. For example, if you sell beauty supplies, find an influencer that is popular for make-up tutorials. If your selling car detailing services, look for influencers known for talking about cars.
How You Can Choose The Best Online Advertising Strategies
Knowing where to begin can seem difficult when there are so many different marketing strategies and platforms available. You will need to factor in things such as your target audience, where are they more likely to be, and how much is your overall budget?
If you are just starting out with a small marketing budget, you may be more successful with a lower-cost method, such as email marketing, social media, or SEO. These are often things that can be done in-house without paying more for outsourcing.
If you have a larger budget with flexibility, you could combine as many of the methods above as you can afford. This would help you create an in-depth advertising campaign. Additionally, it increases your chance of reaching the most consumers possible compared to a single method.
No matter which method or combination you choose, you want to always be sure your website design is professional and designed to help convert leads. Otherwise, all the PPC and SEO efforts will fail if people do not see you as a trustworthy company.
After you get users to visit the website, they need to be greeted with a user-friendly design and navigation that makes finding the information they want quick and easy.
Finally, the largest advantage to advertising online is the ability to track and analyze. By monitoring your advertisements, you can determine what works best and improve on the areas that is not producing the results you want.
