Digital marketing comes in a number of styles. At the top you have PPC – an internet advertising model that charges you based on the number of clicks your ad is getting. Coming close is social media advertising – a viable and lucrative option for small and big investments. Flexible enough to accommodate any budget size, this is an investment worth pursuing, and if done right, guarantees a high ROI.
Goes without mentioning video ads… and the list continues. Keep in mind that each of these options comes with its fair share of strengths and setbacks. But needless to say, tying them all together increases your chances of setting your business up to a whole new level of success, in addition to helping you target a specific audience.
This post delves into the detail of each of the different types of digital advertising and the techniques involved, NOT forgetting the most appropriate moment to use each one of them and in what combination.
Here goes the list:
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search engine marketing is an all encompassing term for all forms of ads associated with search engines, PPC included.
With PPC, advertisers are at liberty to create customized ads and set a budget for it. The option comes with a metric that you can use to closely monitor your ads and weigh the results.
PPC comes in two forms – display ads and search ads.
Search Ads
This one shows whenever someone enters a keyword into the search engine search bar. This form of ad is considered one of the most impactful considering it shows up when one searches for a specific keyword.
The Ads showing up tend to come as response to specific questions. This may be to present a list of products or services the user was searching for. They therefore tend to have one of the highest conversion rates – with the least number of cold leads.
For what’s worth, a cold lead is someone who’s never heard about the product or service you’re offering. Usually, this will be the hardest bunch of people to convince into forking over their hard-earned cash for what you’re offering.
Come to think of it, these people have the least idea about your product, leave alone what they’re looking for. Odds are also good that they’ve never heard about your business before.
Here’s a layman’s explanation of how PPC works for those with trouble understanding the concept:
Assuming you have an item or service to sell — say, you’re a web developer based in Singapore. You simply head to the search engine bar and search for “web developer in Singapore.” When you press enter you’ll be presented with a long list of results. Appearing at the top will be a list of paid ads.
The position the ads appear will always vary depending on the amount people have bid on that particular keyword and most importantly the quality score it’s awarded by Google. Speaking of which, an ad with a high quality score are considered the most relevant and are as such awarded a higher ranking in the SERPs.
Each PPC ad you make contains a tile tag, Meta description, and a link to your website or page. With Google, you can write up to 30 characters of headline and 80 characters of description.
This doesn’t leave you with plenty of room to pass your message across. So you have to exercise the highest level of creativity. Be sure to hit direct to the point, touching on all the product selling points but in a fun and interesting manner. Even more important is the Call to Action, which informs your visitors what to do upon reading the ad.
Also featured in some of the search ads are the ad extensions, which basically contains your email address and a phone number to reach you. Their purpose is to provide a web searcher with extra info about your business—phone number, price, location and product details.
Displays Ads
As the name suggests, this type of ad appears on other people’s site. What happens is that a prospect is identified and targeted, and ads followed with every website they happen to land to, provided it accepts display ads.
Display ads work better when your target audience is completely unaware of your brand. It basically focuses on creating brand awareness, and it’s the ideal kind of ad to invest in if you’re new or still struggling to get your brand name out there.
Display ads tend to have a lower conversation rate compared to search ads, even though they can reach up to 90% of all internet users.
More impressive about this type of PPC ads is that they also include photos and strong graphics which give them an aesthetic appeal, something the other types of ads lack.
Not all display PPC ads are the same. So you’d be required to sample each one of them to find out which one among the options you have works best with your kind of business.
Even so, there’s no harm in running two different types of digital ads at a go. If anything, you’ll be targeting your consumers from different angles, thus increasing the odds of converting an even bigger number of online users.
For ecommerce, you have Google shopping ads, which still fall within the PPC category. With this, you’re allowed to post a product alongside its image or create a photo carousel with their corresponding prices next to them.
There’s nothing complicated about setting up this type of ads. All you have to do is upload your product images in the Google Merchant center and you’re good to go. For help, you can always reach MediaOne with your questions and they’ll be glad to help.
Google shopping is the ideal type of PPC ad to set if you run a big business and happen to have a huge collection of products to sell. For small business, you might want to look into the other options you have for a more appropriate choice of ad to run.
Social Media Advertising
The number of ads that you can run on the various social media platforms you know are NOT limited.
Be it linkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest to name a few, each network comes with a huge selection of ad campaigns for you to choose from. It’s your call to choose what you want to run depending on what you wish to achieve by the end of it all. Is it to drive sales, increase the number of leads, or work on brand awareness – all this can be achieved with social media advertising provided you know how to successfully run them.
Every single one of the social media networks you know has its strength and weaknesses. But for this post, our focus will shift to the two major social networks – and that is, Facebook and Instagram.
It bears emphasizing that Facebook is one of the most popular and oldest online advertising platforms. The ads created on the platform are therefore bound to reach a huge section of online visitors compared to any other advertising platform you can think of.
This makes it the most recommended platform for building brand visibility. By running your ads on the network, you can target a specific demographic and location or a fraction of users with a common interest.
Facebook offers a smorgasbord of advertisement options. You have a long list of ad options to choose from depending on the goals you’ve set or what you intend to achieve by the end.
You can set the ads to generate leads, increase your number of downloads and app installs, or to drive your visitors into undertaking a particular call to action.
Even better, Facebook ads can be integrated with user feeds. The process is a cinch to a point that you may fail to notice the number of ads running on the network right before your eyes.
The thing is – to run a successful ad campaign; you have to be super creative with how you place the ads to avoid being overshadowed by the large number of other running ads.
Be strategic with how you create the ads and run them on the board. Most importantly find a way to strike out by making your ad more conspicuous compared to those posted by your competitors.
Instagram ads can also be directly integrated into the platform. The ads are also designed to bear the same semblance as normal posts. This makes them less annoying and easy to set up.
Instagram ads come with a clickable call to action button with texts that lists it as a sponsored post. Depending with how creative you were while creating the ad, the post is designed to encourage users to engage with the post by clicking through the CTA button to either learn more, contact you, and visit another site for purchasing the products or services you’re offering.
SinceInstagram is used by users from all over, it’s advisable to run your adverts on the platform if your targeted users are available on a global scale.
Read this bearing in mind that majority of Instagram users access the platform via their mobile devices. Meaning a good number of the people you’re targeting will be viewing your ad from a mobile devices and NOT desktops.
That’s perhaps one of the major differences between Facebook ads and Instagram ads. With Facebook, your ads will appear in the newsfeed for both desktop and mobile. It can also be displayed on the sidebar depending with how the ad was set.
Given the option to choose between the two, your safest bet should be to go for both. You can take advantage of the fact that it’s possible to create Instagram ad from the Facebook editor. Just create a single ad and allow it to run on both platforms.
But first, do some due diligence to find out which platform is being used the most. Where do your prospects spend the bulk of their time whenever they’re online browsing?
Retargeting Ads
Has it ever dazzled you how the internet finds out about the products you’re interested in. You express some interest in a particular product or services, and suddenly their adverts popping up in almost any imaginable website you visit.
In the world of online marketing, this is what is widely referred to as retargeting. Once a user shows some vested interest in a product you’re offering, that data is gathered and stored, and thereafter pulled to start supplying the user with related ads.
It’s even possible to retarget your ads through emails, social media, and search engines.
The emphasis put on posting the ads can make a prospect change their mind and consider going through with a purchase they were earlier on reluctant about.
Online users haven’t wised up to such level of technological advancement. They therefore view retargeting as a sign to make a purchase they were skeptical about.
To harmer the idea in, you don’t retarget once. But with every opportunity you get. Where possible, send emails and make sure the retargets are running the ads on social media and any other platform the user happens to be visiting.
There are so many forms social media retargets can take. One of them is the dynamic product ads, which presents a carousel of all the products the user has previously seen. This encourages them to consider checking out one of the site on the list or making a comparison of the list presented for a bargain.
The dynamics ads aren’t every different from the regular ads, save for allowing users to swipe through the list of products presented before choosing one. Once they click through any of the links presented, they’ll be directed to a site where they can go ahead and make a purchase – in this case, they’ll be directed to your site.
Video Advertising
While video advertising is still considered part of social media marketing, they surely do deserve a slot of their own.
Video ads help curb the hurdle of short attention span. Online users have an easy time remembering what they’ve watched as opposed to what they’ve read in a blog post or text advert.
With video, users have an easy time absorbing your content and retaining whatever is presented to them. You can significantly transform your business by running video adverts in place of text ads.
One caveat, creating a high quality video for advertising is NOT an easy task. They’re however worth every drop of effort and penny sliced in.
Online users are always in for instant gratification. They want to digest as much info as possible in the shortest time as possible. Speaking of which, listening and watching are the only surefire way to achieve this.
The internet is inundated with video ads, particularly on social media. It’s high time you joined the train to take advantage of this one marketing hack only serious web owners are privy of.
Possible Ways to Implement Video Marketing
You’re NOT limited as to the number of ways you can integrate video advertising into your online marketing strategy. Here’s a compressed list of them:
- Use videos to showcase a new product you’re introducing into your product pipeline. Marketers do use this to influence buyer’s decision. By walking your prospects through the details of the product you’re selling, and creatively touching on some of the selling points the product has, you’ll be building their trust, thus increasing the possibility of getting them converted.
- Make sure the video you’re making can be watched at zero volume and still make sense. If the users scrolling through their social media timeline can be able to tell what the video is all about without being forced to put on sound, then the video qualifies enough to generate leads.
- Does the video appeal to your prospect’s emotions? What exactly does it evoke – happiness, sadness, fun, or mushiness?
It’s a wrap
Digital marketing isn’t as complicated as many people assume. Of course there are a few dos and don’ts, but nothing about it is too complicated to break a sweat over.
Odds are a good the number of your online competitors are completely clueless as far as paid ad go. However, with the list above, you have the perfect opportunity to outshine them, and grow your business at a rate only a few can afford to keep up with.
For more info about digital ads, feel free to contact MediaOne today for a free online advertising and SEO consultation.
