Although it's true that advertising online can take some getting used to - particularly if you've been living in a World where television marketing and magazine banners are the number one way to drive people towards your business - it's impossible to get by in the professional World today without it. While online advertising can be somewhat overwhelming, it doesn't have to be if you have the right information and guidance at hand. If you feel as though you're tackling the jungle of online advertising alone - this handy insider's survival guide could be the perfect tool for making sure you come out at the end more successful than ever.
Do you know exactly what your perfect customer looks like in terms of geography, demographic, age-range, and profile? Online advertising is the perfect opportunity for businesses to target and retarget their ideal prospects - meaning that instead of simply marketing to anyone and everyone, and hoping someone responds - you direct your ads straight to the people who are most likely to engage with them. Finding your target audience can involve running polls for your current customers, and brainstorming as a company, but ultimately, you should be able to figure out who the most likely candidate is to buy your product or service. Then, when you're advertising online, you'll have the ability to target a specific population!
Your targeting capabilities with online advertising goes beyond simply reaching out the right customers. Internet advertising provides a variety of media that allows you to take your idea a step further, and serve up an advertising creative that resonates perfectly with your target. "Creative" refers to the digital advertising opportunities that companies can engage with online - reaching their audience through rich media, video, and imagery. Using video ads, banner ads, and other concepts can be an ideal way to highlight your competitive edge online and increase brand recognition over time. Remember that when it comes to creative, a perfectly designed banner can be enough to turn your campaign from a disaster, to an incredible success.
Targeted campaigns and amazing creatives can be used to drive traffic to your website, and help you build "brand awareness" - a term that describes how likely it is that customers will recognize your product, service, or logo when they see it. There are numerous forms of online display space where you can use rich media and be creative to get audiences excited about your online presence, and make an emotional connection with your intended audience. Using online advertising to develop brand awareness is all about placing the right advertisements in the right places, at the perfect times.
One concept that you will become more familiar with the longer your business remains up and running - is scale. Often, as brand awareness regarding your company or product continues to grow, then you will need to find ways to scale your digital campaigns towards bigger and more impressive audiences. This could mean that you use PPC (pay per click) advertising to scale and optimize adverts across your networks to a budget that you feel is right for your current position.
One of the biggest benefits of online advertising is that it provides you with new ways to engage your customer, and find out just how effective those engaging techniques actually are. By developing new advertisements and analyzing them through A/B testing, you'll be able to determine which colors, words, and even banner positions appeal most to your target audience, by finding out how often they click on your advertisement, and how frequently they convert. Engagement is essential to online advertising success, and your aim should be to continue testing and improving your strategy until you reach the optimum level of audience interaction.
Finally, online advertising allows you to establish a longer and broader reach when it comes to finding new customers and potential clients for your business. Not only can you reach out to new consumers through online advertising - you could also potentially catch the attention of collaborators or investors who might be interested in getting involved with your brand a different way. Your reach will vary according to where you place your advertisements, so try to make sure that you always run your campaigns in spaces that are the best fit for your target audience by using keywords and search engine optimization as frequently as possible.
Today, no matter which industry you might be in - online advertising is an essential part of any marketing mix. It provides a wide range of benefits - from robust targeting solutions, to lower advertising costs, and valuable customer insights that you wouldn't achieve through any other medium.