+30 2811 11 7281
What is digital advertising? It’s not just one thing. It can look very different depending on where you advertise and how you do it.
What is the best way to reach customers where they spend the vast majority of their time? The Internet. It leverages the popularity of trusted sites like Facebook, YouTube, Yelp, Google Search and more
.
Reach The Right People with the Right Message
This form of advertising allows you to reach the right people with the right message at the right time. You may think you’re doing this already through newspapers, flyers, or radio ads. But as we explore digital campaigns together, you’ll see just how much digital is raising the bar in advertising.
Get Measurable Results
Digital advertising isn’t just putting an ad up on Twitter, Pinterest or Facebook. It uses Internet-based advertising tools to research, manage, track, analyze and improve online advertising campaigns.
When done effectively, digital marketing seamlessly integrates into your target customer’s user experience on that website, guiding them back to your own site and business.
It can be personalized to maximize relevance to your target customer. This, in turn, maximizes conversion rates. And because it’s digital, you can track virtually every step your customer makes in relation to your ad.
This allows you to achieve an ROI not possible through other means.
Why Digital Marketing Has Become So Important
You may be thinking that your way of advertising is working right now. Why should you make a change to online ads? Here’s why it’s great that you’re asking this now rather than continuing with other methods any longer.
The Grammy’s, Emmy’s, Super Bowl and Olympics all suffered record-breaking viewership declines this year. It’s not a new trend.
The Oscar’s alone saw an over 6.4 million person drop. Those who paid $2.6 million or more for a 30-second spot on these programs are furious.
Chances are, as a small business, you’re not advertising on these programs. But this highlights a swift-moving trend for cable and network programming alike. People are cutting the cord and tuning out.
We’re seeing similar trends with magazines, newspapers, radio and direct mail ads.
Where are the people going? This will come as no surprise to you.
Why Digital Advertising Is So Successful
Forbes Magazine states it very well: It’s affordable, specific, and easy to use. That about sums it up.
It’s Affordable & Scalable
You may see the headlines: Digital Advertising Costs Skyrocketing. But when you break it down and look at the ROI a business can get on even small campaigns, the headlines simply don’t reflect reality.
Digital advertising is affordable. You can start digital advertising with as little as €5 per day on Facebook. As you grow, increase your budget. Analyze, test, and streamline to maximize your return on investment.
What is digital marketing if not very scalable.
It’s so easy to scale up and down based upon your conversion rates and the number of customers you can handle at any given time. If you get a little overwhelmed because your ads are performing so well, then you can just suspend them until you catch up.
However, if you’re working with a digital advertising company like ours, then you spend less time on your ads and more time focusing on running your business.
It’s Specific & Targeted
Using data collected by your business or by a social media platform, you can reach exactly who you want to reach. This means that you could run 5 different ads targeting 5 different types of customers. Each customer sees the ad that will appear most relevant to them.
Digital Advertising Makes Sense for Small Business
On top of all of the benefits of digital advertising, it’s small business’ best friend. You don’t need a huge corporate marketing budget to use it.
Yet, with the right strategies, you can be side-by-side or even beat out huge businesses.
What is digital advertising? It’s the ultimate way to level the playing field for small businesses. You can compete and win against huge franchises like McDonald’s and Ikea.
Do it without spending a fortune when you employ digital advertising.
It Works Fast
There are some marketing techniques that take time to get results.
Long-term strategies of branding, SEO, and content marketing help you get your acquisition costs down while boosting revenues. But they’re not typically fast by themselves.
What is digital advertising? It’s fast.
Start showing ads. See 5 times, 10 times or more traffic that day. Depending on your business type, within minutes start booking appointments or making sales.
Start completing orders. Customers start leaving reviews. More people see those reviews and want to do business with you.
Your business takes off. Online advertising can make this happen.
Types of Digital Advertising
Next, let’s explore the primary types of digital advertising. As we do, it will become clearer how well these align with your brand and business model. You’ll see how you can use them to meet your marketing goals like:
- Generate leads
- Increase Brand Awareness
- Get More Customers
- Make More Sales
- Get customers to spend more
PPC (Pay Per Click)
With PPC you only pay the platform you’re advertising on when someone clicks on your ad. Most types of digital advertising are set up on a PPC basis.
This is one of the reasons digital advertising works so well for small business.
You don’t pay based on how many viewers, listeners, or readers a program, station, or magazine has. You only pay for the ones who are actually interested in your service – and who show their interest by clicking on your ad.
The CPC (cost per click) you pay is normally on a bidding system with the average bid price being under €3. It’s all automated and happens behind the scenes in a split second. Simply set a max bid in the system.
Several factors influence how much you pay for a bid:
- How competitive the ad space
- How relevant your ads are to the people seeing them
- Your industry
- Time when the ads display
If your ads are deemed more relevant than your competitors, PPC-based systems will often give you the ad space for less money than they would charge your competition.
Why would they favor more relevant ads? It’s simple. They make more money when they show ads that users want to click. Their users feel that they’re getting a better experience when they see ads that matter to them.
CPM (Cost per 1,000 Impressions)
Instead of paying for a click, you may find it’s more cost effective to pay for impressions. An impression is every time your ad appears on someone’s screen. These work well when you want to create an enduring impression in a person’s mind that may or may not result in an actual click.
But there’s a catch. If you get a lot of clicks that you normally would have had to pay for, the advertising platform loses money. If the scale tips too far in your direction, they may review your ad or give it less visibility to encourage you to switch to pay per click.
Social Media Advertising
According to a report from Sprout Social, on average, people spend almost 2.5 hours on social media every day. Time spent is going up year after year.
It’s where they go to connect. They go there to unwind and just pass the time. They also go there to shop.
31% of people say they use social media to discover new brands and shop. Facebook influences directly or indirectly about 52% of purchases. That includes both online and brick-and-mortar.
About 96% of people regularly discuss brands online as part of their social media experience.
Social media advertising gives you a very direct and measurable way to funnel interested people to your website.
Social media advertising includes boosting posts and showing display ads on social media. Most social media advertising is based on extensive demographic, interests and behavioral data collected by search engines.
We knew there was a reason Facebook was collecting so much data on us. They allow you to use this data to show ads to the people most likely to want what you have to offer.
Not only can you target by high-level demographics like gender or age. It allows you to whittle the target down to things like whether they buy fashion online to maximize your relevance to each person who sees your ad.
Relevance is key in social media advertising. The more specific and targeted you can be with both the audience and the ad, the better you’ll perform.
Email as an Advertising Tool
72% of the general public and 86% of business buyers say that they prefer email as the way for businesses to communicate with them. This includes ads.
Because email is so preferred, you’ll get much higher engagement rates through email. The average ROI on email advertising is €40 for every €1 you spend. That makes email the highest ROI form of advertising.
But using email as an advertising tool isn’t as simple as posting an ad on social media. Getting this kind of ROI depends on several factors like:
- Ability to get quality subscribers
- Ability to engage subscribers
- Ability to keep subscribers
- Access to automation and segmentation tools
Content Marketing As an Advertising Tool
When you ask what is digital advertising, you may not think of content marketing. But 90% of marketing departments are using content marketing for a reason. It can be a very important advertising tool.
Content draws interested people in. Tell them about your products or services without paying for ad space.
As mentioned before, content marketing isn’t fast unless you’re using paid ads to amplify its effects. But it does help cut your advertising costs over time.
More people are coming to your website and profile naturally because of the magnet you created.
Are you learning too much about what is digital advertising? No worries. We offer services for all the types of services we’ve discussed. Just complete this contact form for a free consultation about what types of digital advertising are best for your business.
It’s Small Business’ Best Friend
You won’t need to ask what is digital advertising once you see it working for your business. No other method can drive targeted traffic faster than Internet ads. Increase revenues and grow your business with this very important tool.
If you’re asking what is digital advertising, you’re new to digital advertising. You may be ready to dive right in. But you may have questions.
Hire an agency like ours to take the questioning out of what is digital advertising.
We can help you get the best return on investment. We’ve got the in-house expertise and the tools to help you succeed. Let us help you grow your business. Contact us for a consultation.
