If you want to ensure that you gain the maximum amount of visibility for your brand, then it’s important that you put your time and energy into advertising. And depending on your niche and target audience, there are many different forms of advertising from which you can choose. More specifically, you can advertise both online and offline.
Online advertising is cost effective and gives you access to an enormous amount of data about your audience. Offline advertising gives you the ability to reach out to your customers while they’re going about their daily lives. Let’s discuss each category.
How to Advertise Online?
In the past 5 years alone, online advertising has evolved tremendously. With the rise of mobile phone usage, Singapore businesses are now able to reach their customers practically 24 hours a day. This makes this form of advertising a very lucrative option. Here are a few of the most effective methods.
Social Media Marketing
No matter what industry you’re in, it’s important that you establish a presence on social media. This is especially the case if you are operating on a relatively small budget. Social media platforms give you access to billions of consumers who are often ready to purchase services and products. All it takes to turn these consumers into your own personal customers is the perfect social media marketing strategy.
The perfect strategy often involves reaching out to prominent influencers in your field. In this way, they can give you exposure to their audience. Social media marketing also often requires a willingness to invest some of your budget into ad placements. This will help you gain more visibility. With any platform, you need to take the time to study the behaviour of your target audience so that you can know the best ways to interact with and engage them.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
One of the keystones of online advertising is search engine optimisation, also known as SEO. This is the process of getting free, organic traffic to your website with the use of certain keywords and keyword phrases. SEO involves building a user-friendly website, earning backlinks, and much more. The more relevant you appear to the search engines, the more highly you rank and the more visibility you earn.
What makes SEO so effective is the amount of traffic that Google receives. There are 3.5 billion searches performed on this search engine each day. The search results that are listed on Google’s first page get over 70% of this traffic as users rarely ever click past this page. And this means if your page ranks at the top, you will see a significant portion of this traffic and experience more conversions.
However, it’s important to note that SEO is no small undertaking. There are several factors that can affect your ranking and the amount of traffic that you are able to earn. Also, this form of advertising can take months, sometimes years, to show the best results. However, if done well, you can market virtually any service or product, even on a shoestring budget.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Like SEO, search engine marketing, or SEM, depends heavily on keywords and keyword phrases. However, the difference is this form of advertising is paid. You and your competitors bid on certain keywords through the search engine in attempts to get your site to rank higher in the search results. All of the SEM ads that appear in Google, Yahoo and other major search engines are simple text ads. They are positioned at the very top or in the sidebar of the SERP. They are either Pay Per Click or PPC, or they are Cost Per Thousand, or CPM.
In the case of PPC, businesses bid on keywords and their results appear at the very top of the search results based on the value of the bid. The business is only charged when a user clicks on the ad. In the case of CPM, businesses are billed a flat rate fee for 1,000 impressions. The business is guaranteed that the ad will show up a certain number of times in the search results.
SEM often requires the use of Google AdWords. This platform will give you the ability to create ads that are highly targeted. Bing is another popular platform for SEM.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is another cost effective online advertising strategy. It also offers the best return on investment when it comes to your time. And the process is pretty straightforward. You simply build a newsletter subscriber list, prepare campaigns, send out emails, and then track and measure all of your performance.
Though there is no one size fits all email marketing plan, the key to succeeding with this strategy is making sure that you attract the right customers to your site. This means that you need to create content that will be compelling to your target audience and become a resource for them. Once you have gained a certain amount of credibility and trust, you can then start to make special offers and increase your conversions.
Content Marketing
No matter what form of advertising you’re doing, it would be nothing without content. However, there is a special type of marketing that focuses solely on content. And this is referred to content marketing. This advertising strategy is designed around the idea of reaching the most qualified audience. And the best part about it is, it costs little to nothing.
In most cases, content marketing is done through authority sites that give everyone the ability to post to them. This includes website such as Quora, Medium.com, LinkedIn, and SlideShare. The goal is to deliver as much value as possible to the audience so that they want to learn more about you. The more they want to know, the more likely they are to visit your website. Not only does this type of marketing help to get the word out about your website, but it’s also great for building authority within your community.
Referral Marketing
Another often overlooked forms of online advertising is referral marketing. As technology evolves, consumers are becoming more savvy when it comes to their buying habits. Before they make a purchase, most will take the time to perform online research about the product or service. And not only will they want to know more details about its benefits, but they will also want to know what others think about.
In fact, many consumers will base their opinions on online reviews. This means that sites like Yelp and other review aggregates can be a great place to spread the word about your business. So sign up for these sites and place a link in your email signatures and on your site which connects people to these aggregates. This way, your customers can leave their honest opinions and refer their friends and family. Think of these types of sites as online word-of-mouth.
Just keep in mind that in order for this strategy to succeed, you must make it your top priority to deliver quality content. This way, you can ensure that most of your reviews are positive. Also, you must be willing to respond to the negative reviews in a swift and professional manner.
How to Advertise Offline?
While there are a lot Singapore consumers who spend their time online, that doesn’t mean that there are no other opportunities to engage them. Sure online advertising can be a cost efficient way to reach a large amount of the population at one time, but traditional methods can still be pretty useful. Here are a few of the most effective offline forms of advertising.
Flyers
Perhaps one of the most popular forms of offline advertising is flyers and brochures. A well-designed flyer can easily attract a potential customer’s attention. The best flyers include an overview of the products or services as well as your business address, phone number and an offer that the customer would be interested in. You could even include special offers for those who share your flyer with a friend, such as a discount for both the new and current customer.
It’s a good idea to place a call tracking number on the flyer so that you can actually track and measure the success of each flyer. If you mail flyers then make sure you use A/B testing on the direct mail flyers versus those that you physically hand out. Your level of success can be measured by the number of calls that you receive.
Telemarketing
Many assume that telemarketing, also referred to as “cold calling,” is a be bit outdated. However, this form of advertising can still be effective if done well. In fact, in some cases, marketers may find that they get an even better response than they would with any other form of advertising.
Telemarketing involves a sales rep getting in touch with a customer by phone. These calls are usually unsolicited and the customer typically knows little to nothing about the brand. The job of the sales rep is to inform them about certain services and products and eventually persuade them to convert.
If you want to ensure that you call is a success, then you need to address all of the most important issues. Explain how your services or products will help solve a particular problem for the person. In other words, don’t sell them the product, offer the solution.
Many Singapore businesses choose to work with telemarketing services. These types of agencies are able to track and analyse the results of your calls. In this way, you will know what works and what doesn’t.
Radio
There are several advantages to advertising by radio. But perhaps the biggest benefit is gaining exposure to your target your audience. You see, specific age groups and lifestyles are associated with certain stations. And this means you can easily attract a qualified audience. The key is to choose a station which best suits your ideal demographics.
TV Commercials
Small businesses are often under the impression that they can’t afford airtime. However, this isn’t entirely true. The trick is to think on a smaller scale. Even startups can afford airtime on the local stations or cable companies. Not only will you be able to get rates that better suit your budget, you will also be able to reach your local audience and this is very valuable.
Billboards
If you want to ensure that your brand is seen on a large scale, then you could always try billboard advertising. Simply create an eye-catching ad and then display it in a high traffic area. This form of advertising may not seem as exciting or creative as the rest, but it opens your brand up to a significant amount of visibility. Studies show that over 70% of drivers read the messages that are on roadside billboards and many of these individuals make purchasing decisions while in their vehicle. So make your ad memorable.
Newspapers
Perhaps one of the oldest forms of offline advertising is the newspaper. The benefit of newspapers is that the readers are usually local. So if you would like to tap into your nearby or neighbourhood audience, this form of advertising is ideal.
The only downside is that newspapers are disposable. And it takes a lot to catch the reader’s attention before they turn the page. So the ad you take act needs to be large enough and make a value proposition that the user finds hard to refuse.
Bus Ads
Bus ads are another form of outdoor advertising that can get people’s attention while driving. Large vehicles are often hard to ignore. So even people who are walking or sitting will be likely to pay attention to the ad. And this means more visibility for your brand.
Conclusions
Whether you are interested in digital marketing or something more traditional, you can always find ways to get visibility for your company. But you must be in tune with your target audience. Where do they spend their time? What are their goals? What message and design will resonate most with them? Once you have answered these questions, you can make an informed decision on which mixture of advertising methods you’re interested in investing in.
