If you’ve ever encountered a “pop up”, or experienced flashing images to click on an ad, you’ve encountered a digital advertisement. Over the past 50 years, advertising has changed drastically; to the point where much of it now primarily exists online. So, what is digital advertising and how can it help businesses grow? We’re here to provide you with exactly that information, and even a bit more.
Defining Digital Advertising
To simply define the term, digital advertising is a unique advertising method that utilizes the power of the Internet to deliver promotional and informational advertisements. This includes advertising done through email, social media, search engines, websites, banner ads, and affiliate programs. If you can’t physically touch it, and it’s an advertisement, it’s probably a digital advertisement.
Channels for Digital Advertising
Digital advertisements have the power to span the globe in a matter of seconds. They impact many lives and can also significantly impact the bottom line of a business. So what channels for digital advertising are available for businesses to utilize?
Here are some classic digital advertising channels to consider when beginning to strategize over your business’s advertising spread:
Common email providers such as Hotmail, Yahoo, and AOL began popping up in the late 90’s. Communication through email has been in existence for nearly twenty years, and businesses have been utilizing it to gain new customers for nearly as long.
If you’re a smaller business, platforms like MailChimp, Constant Contact, Aweber, and iContact would be the best place to begin your email marketing. Your company may be larger and have a greater database to manage, so you may want consider a decent CMS, such as Hubspot.
If you’re not sure what platform would be best for your business, we’d love to help you figure out the best email marketing plan for you.
Television vs. Online Video
When marketing your business, television advertisements can be the highest cost within your digital advertising spend. Television ads are most effective when their messaging is consistent with another already existing digital and print campaign.
Filming a basic television ad can cost as much as $5,000, just to start, and doesn’t include the purchase of airtime. If your business has the marketing budget to spend on television advertisements, they can be effective. However, one commercial won’t make your phones start ringing.
If you’re a small business, our recommendation is to begin your television advertising attempt without the television, and switch your focus over to online video advertising. The cost for filming can be as little as the cost of using your cell phone to tape the video. You can then optimize online video channels like YouTube, Vimeo, and Vine. Videography and filming kits can also be purchased at an affordable price. Reach out to us if you’d like more information about video advertising. We’d love to help point you in the right direction.
Social Media
Social media, in the past ten years, has broken records in communication. Billions of people engage with others through channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, dozens of times per day. Social media is a lucrative digital advertising channel; mostly because of the demographic-rich information that it provides.
When generating advertisements on Facebook, as an example, you can drill down an ad to specifically target Asian, 18 year old females who like blue nail polish. Social media utilizes the content (aka posts) that it has received and receives daily, and processes it into finely ground, and nearly perfect, marketing data. Businesses can easily make money by advertising their services through social media, and many now utilize it as their main advertising channel.
Search Engines
Advertising your business digitally using search engines is now also a new creative digital marketing technique. I’m sure you’ve probably heard of AdWords, the leading source of advertising for Google.
Google AdWords allows your business to utilize keywords to promote services through short and concise linking techniques. AdWords can be a pain to manage, so if your business wants to try their hand at Google AdWords marketing, they may want to contact a professional marketing agent to help them get started.
Google’s AdWords channel demonstrates it below:
Get Started with Google AdWords: What are Search Ads?
Websites
Websites are everything. If you’re currently a business owner or would like to start a new business and don’t have a website, you need to stop everything that you’re doing and get one. Consumers are 60% less likely to trust your company if they cannot privately examine your business online through a professionally constructed website.
Have a website but haven’t updated it in years? You could be doing even greater damage to your business’s reputation by having a website that doesn’t meet the expectations of your customers. Not only that, but you more than likely are out of touch with the requirements for a mobile friendly site. Items such as SSL Certificates and optimization are things that need to be considered. Our first suggestion to help with your digital strategy is to make sure that your website meets your needs.
If you do have a website, then you understand the power of online leads. Your next challenge may be optimizing your website to make sure that you are generating the most leads possible. Learn more about best practices for SEO from our team of digital business experts. Fill out the form below if your business needs digital advertising. We will get back to you quickly.
Now that you’ve had time to digest the question of, “What is digital marketing?”, we’d like to offer your more information about how it can grow your business. Make sure to check out our blog and read more about digital marketing best practices.
Make sure to also follow us on Facebook to learn more insightful tips about blogging for your business.
