Online advertising is the fastest and most powerful way to reach your target audience and increase sales. Now, doesn’t that sound like a good idea for every brand?
This idea works from the simple premise that the easier you are to find, and more people know you’re there, the more likely they are to buy from you (if you have the right strategy in place, of course).
However, it may just be the most treacherous of areas in digital marketing.
While just about anyone can set up an ad campaign, getting results that make your investment worthwhile is a whole different matter.
But that’s why we’re here! To determine the channel(s) that will reach the clients you’re in search of, optimising them as we go to get the results you seek.
Put simply, online advertising means strategically displaying ads to reach an audience, or getting them to access a specific website or platform. The main types of paid online ads are:
Google Ads, which display as the first results when you type a query into the search engine. See that little “Ad” symbol next to the first results?
Those companies have paid to be there and chosen specific words they want to target. Then, when potential clients type those words in, they pop up, ready to be found.
This is a PPC (or pay-per-click) solution, which means the company only actually pays if someone visits their website – someone who may well be a qualified lead, as they’re in search of that exact service!
Social media (Facebook and Instagram) Ads display across the social media sites, whether on timelines, stories, or that “sponsored” section, broadening your brand's visibility.
By targeting your ad to the people you think it will appeal to – by age, location, interests and even the other pages they follow – you can make sure they see what you’re up to.
You can also decide what you want your audience to do, whether it’s visiting your website, following your page, or getting in touch with you.
These are display ads, which means you pay the platforms to show them to people, setting your budget by day, depending on how many people you want to see your ad.
Now, with so many parameters to optimise and choices to make, it’s no wonder brands get lost down the rabbit hole of online advertising.
While there’s a lot to take in, however, you can also do certain things to keep you on the right track.
Whether Google, Facebook or other ads, the secret behind any successful ad campaign is consistent optimisation.
Keywords go up and down in price and your understanding of your audience grows over time, so use all the information you gather to make your campaigns more effective.
You may have guessed it already. The first step to perfecting your digital marketing is deciding on the channels that work for you. Then comes the fun: crafting messages that speak to your audience, appropriate to the channel.
While there’s a science to the optimisation and targeting of ads, there’s a lot more to it than that, starting with:
Then there’s the content of your adverts.
Not to mention the all-important CTA – call to action. The magic words that persuade your target market to take the action you want them to take. But worry not, we take care of every step for you.