Welcome to the digital age where billboards and print media alone just wouldn’t do to get your product across to a broader audience! But worry not because online advertising doesn’t have to be complicated at all.
When the global health crisis put the world to a halt and most offices shifted to online workspaces, digital advertising grew to an even bigger market. People don’t just skim through their emails and find ads in their inbox, but more so, you must have encountered such ads on all of your social media platforms, as well.
This is how powerful online ads can be and are made even smarter through technological advancements. Have you ever encountered searching for a specific product or interest that you must have thought of and inevitably found on your Facebook or Instagram feed automatically? Then you know what I’m talking about when I say that online ads are smarter.
What Is Digital Advertising?
Imagine how advertising has been. Now, rethink it and make it smarter. Make it reach people targeted for their specific interests, background, and even preferences.
This is the age of digital advertising where we often don’t even have to search anymore as our own interests find their way through our mobile phones, our emails, and practically on any digital media.
This is the age where we channel printing costs towards a cheaper and more effective budget. This is the space where you won’t have to think about a premiere location for foot traffic to target specific possible buyers because the internet will do it for you and will bring your product straight to wherever they are.
Digital advertising, in a nutshell, is the visibility power you’ve always dreamed of for your company, product, or idea. It is visibility in the most useful technological advancement just yet: the Internet.
The Types of Online Advertising
You might not have noticed them directly as an ad (this, too, is one of the powerful features of digital advertising in that they are mostly enjoyable to your viewers!). Still, you’ve probably encountered most types of online advertising.
Here are some of the different types of online advertising available today:
1. Display Ads
These are the banners, pop-ups, interstitial or loading screen ads, rich media or interactive ads, and video ads – be it skippable or not.
2. Native Ads
They are called native ads because they appear and are designed to look and feel seamless to where they are displayed. These include ads across social media, paid search, promoted listings, recommended listings, influencer partnerships, sponsored content, and product placement in videos or video games.
What Is the Purpose of an Ad?
You finally decided to make that start-up dream come to life. You have a brilliant idea that has physicalized and needs an audience. Your company has grown so much that tackling the digital space is now an urgent matter.
This is all great news! This is why you invest in digital advertising. It meets that need for the public to get to know what you have to offer–no matter how simple or brilliant that may be.
Whom Are You Targeting?
Like traditional advertising, knowing your target audience is crucial to effective online ads. Social media ads, take Facebook, for example, is a very effective tool in targeting specific audiences.
The platform enables you to indicate age range, specific locations, gender preference, and other personal data by the users that match what you indicate as your audience.
Thus, it is only truly efficient if you know the specifics behind who you want to see your ads. Digital ads will work for you when you also put in the work to know exactly what you want and need.
What Are the Metrics to Measure?
Thankfully, getting through the technical aspects of online ads does not require you a full course to take. Sometimes, all you need is reliable ad tracking software to ensure that your ads are not just up but are operative.
Make Your Advertising Mobile
As you have encountered them, ads are also available on mobile platforms. When you put an ad up digitally, you have to ensure that they are also compatible with mobile devices for better accessibility to your target audience.
Mobile advertising, too, has grown as mobile usage has increased over time. You can use this feature as an advantage as you work your way through going digital.
Hyperlocal Advertising Is the New Black
What do we mean by hyperlocal advertising or what is also referred to as geofencing? This is the technology that allows you to target audiences within a specific geographical location.
You want to reach people in a specific country? What about just within the vicinity of your neighborhood? What about a target city? This is possible in digital advertising.
Use Videos When You Can
It is common to see visual material online. In order for you to stand out, you need to make your ads go beyond just mere images into moving pictures.
Engage as many senses of your audiences and their attention span can be reached in just a few seconds. Seeing your ad is one thing; engaging with it is another.
Other effective ads even include interactive media such as those games that pop-up (and some are even un-skippable) on your mobiles. You’ll require them to swipe or work around the ad and thus they have to truly see what you’re saying more than just another passing image on the screen.
Videos also encourage narratives and nothing speaks better to an audience than a compelling story. In the long run, it will also work for you to have a team of creatives to help better deliver the brand’s story across your possible target audience.
Diversify
On the Internet, boundaries are limitless. This means that you can use this to your advantage. Don’t stick to a single platform or type of digital ad.
This way, you are not just engaging and interacting differently but you are intentional about reaching a wider audience.
How to Budget for Your Ad Campaign?
Moving your print cost budget to a digital ad budget is easier if you are set into target web spaces on the internet to place your ads. These spaces are most effective on social media.
Additionally, there’s no cause for trouble when the specifics of each of the top social media sites for online ads are also readily available. Budgeting across platforms is also easier since most social media platforms have an array of costs for specific frequency and geolocation requirements from you.
Go Ahead and Go Digital
With this much at the tip of your hands (and your eventual audience!), there’s literally more to gain when you shift to digital advertising. Most get overwhelmed when doing so because they think it is so much more challenging.
However, if you understand what it can truly do and more so, just how much larger an audience you can talk to if you work smart, as smart as gadgets are turning out today, then you’ll see for yourself that it is doable in as much as it does more for you.
By keeping the tips we have shared with you in mind, we are confident that you’ll be able to make the most with the resources on your hands, hit your marketing goals (both online and offline), and most of all, grow your business. Good luck!