From major corporations to small start-ups, all types of businesses use advertising to let people know about their products or services.
Now with the wide range of traditional media and online advertising solutions available, the big question is: where does your marketing money go?
Types of Online Advertising
With all the available forms of traditional media and online advertising, marketers understand how challenging that question can be. Business owners have to really consider their business strategy and their target market.
There are several ways you can use online advertising to market your goods or services. Here are some of the popular ways to promote your business on the internet:
- Display Advertising
Display Advertising lets you place banner ads or web banners on third-party sites to drive traffic to your website, which increases awareness for your product or service. This form of online advertising makes use of geographic and demographic targeting to ensure that the appropriate ads reach the target user. Display ads can be in the form of static images, or even animated images and video.
- Social Network Advertising
This type of online advertising is done on social networks like Facebook or Twitter. Social network advertising can be in the form of display ads, or promoted or sponsored posts, depending on the social networking platform.
- Blog Advertising
Most internet users nowadays have personal blogs, with some bloggers even reaching celebrity statuses because of the unique content on their blogs. You can use blog advertising by tapping key bloggers to promote your product or service to their readers through sponsored posts or banner ads.
- Mobile Advertising
With the numbers for mobile users on the rise, mobile advertising is playing a bigger role in the online advertising mix. Mobile advertising is usually carried out through text messages or mobile applications. Because most people have smartphones with them all day, it becomes a cost-effective way for brands to send targeted ads. Some mobile advertising tactics include idle screen advertising and “app-vertising”, or designin apps that promote the brand, among others.
Online Advertising versus Traditional Advertising
Many of the same principles hold true in terms of print and online advertising. First, you have to consider your reach, where your target audience goes and how many of them will be able to see your ad. With online advertising, businesses can potentially reach prospective customers from anywhere in the world. This can be advantageous to small companies who are looking to do business outside their local areas.
At the same time, online advertising allows you to target specific customers depending on their location or behaviour online. For example, if you’re into children’s toys business, you’d want to target parents, or simply those looking for toys. Online advertising lets you place ads that would attract the customers you want. This way, you know you’re reaching the right people.
Online advertising also provides businesses with low-cost solutions to promote their ads on the web. The cost of producing TVCs, billboards, newspaper ads, and other traditional advertising methods can take up a business’ entire marketing budget. On the other hand, online ads are not just much cheaper, it delivers measurable results which traditional methods can’t.
Over the past years, more and more brands are making the shift to digital. According to the Internet Advertising Revenue Report released October 2013, internet ad revenues reached a landmark $20.1, which represented an 18 percent increase from 2012’s $17 billion over the same period.
If you want to start placing online ads effectively and more efficiently, we know we can help. Talk to us!