These are 9 reasons you should be advertising online:
- Insight
Determine which ads brought in the highest number of qualifying leads. Know how many impressions were served, where, and when. Identify your optimal channels, ad copy, and ad locations. The metrics and analytics available with online advertising allow you to see the exact cost of acquiring and converting a customer. The insight available to you can result in more effective marketing. - Targeting
Online advertising gives you the ability to target and retarget the ideal prospects for their preferences. Retargeting will serve ads based on prior engagement, enabling you to further develop your ideal customer profile. With broader customer profiles you will know just who to target and where to find similar users online, making sure they receive your ads. Advertising online allows you to target a specific population: eg. men or women, by specific age ensuring your message is in front of the right people at the right time. - Creative
Ability to target is achieved by understanding the preferences and interests of your intended customers. There is a common misconception that online ads are of poor quality, because digital advertising is not engaging using video and other rich media. Using animation and in-banner video ads can increase brand recognition and highlight your competitive edge. A well-designed banner adcan turn your digital campaign from good to great.
- Brand Awareness
Online advertising can be used to drive traffic to your site and buildbrand awareness. Effectively targeted campaigns can create brand influencers and reach complementary audiences. Key to online advertising is SEO (Search Engine Optimization), which is imperative to the success of your site. Companies that offer good SEO can help your website reach its deserved audience. Use the endless online display space to be creative with rich media. For example, establish your online presence, make an emotional connection, get online consumers excited about who you are and what you have to offer. Online displayenables brands to focus on their ideal audience and tailor messages that improve both recall and engagement.
- Flexibility
Online advertising campaigns can be adjusted with a few clicks or keystrokes. You have the flexibility to respond to incoming data and make changes instantly. Similarly, you have the ability to pause campaigns or adjust your strategy in minutes. This flexibility allows you to stay in front of your customers, anticipate customer needs and adjust your ads before anyone even notices. - Scale
Many digital marketers are turning to self-service providersto manage their campaigns– create their own ads, choose their investment, scaleand optimize across their networks as they see fit. They can also use a full-service provider who will optimize, scale, and spend accordingly, but this often comes with a monthly minimum. Whichever service they choose, scaling their campaign has never been easier.
- Cost
Digital channels are highly cost-effective for marketers. Rates are typically set through a combination of ad size, ad location, performance, and demand. Considering the reach via digital channels, moving your campaigns online is often much cheaper than more traditional offline channels like radio, television, or print. Furthermore, digital campaigns have greater transparency, allowing you to adjust your cost easily based on performance. In the offline world, once you’ve paid for the space in a print publication or a spot on the radio, there’s no adjusting your investment after the fact.
- Reach
People are watching less live TV, turning to their computers for their favorite shows, music, and to access their news. As marketers, being effective requires staying in front of your customers; as it turns out, your customers are online, so you should be too, and sooner rather than later! Moving online gives you access to a global audience, if you so desire, and it means your ads can be working for you 24 hours a day. The options are practically limitless when it comes to your reach capabilities when you take your campaign online.
- Engagement
Online advertising lets you know a customers’ exact level of engagement. You might have circulation and readership data for a print publication, but you can’t know how long customers spent interacting with your ad, or on your website, if they researched more of your products, and whether that ad led to conversions. An online presence gives you all of this valuable data and places you in a position to learn where your most engaged prospects live.
Online advertising is an essential element of marketing mix. It provides you with numerous benefits, including lower costs, robust targeting, and valuable customer insights, that are not available through other advertising mediums. Your customers, competitors, and prospects are online — give them the attention they deserve, while getting more out of your budget.
