Are you missing out on valuable potential customers online? If you aren’t using targeted advertising, you may be!

Table of Contents

1. Why Online Advertising?
2. How Online Advertising Works
3. It’s That Easy? How Do They Make Money?
4. Seem A Bit Complicated? Social Media Strategists Are Key

In the ever-changing world of digital marketing, targeted online advertising has become a staple in making sure your brand is in front of countless untapped customers. If you’ve spent any time online (which you are if you are reading this) then you have probably experienced being sold on products or services through targeted advertising. However, do you know the potential benefits that using leading ad companies can bring to your organization or business?

Why Online Advertising?

Let’s face it – print, television, and radio advertising is great, but it’s now an outdated method of doing business. With the majority of consumers making their buying decisions online, having the ability to reach customers with your products or services is vital if you are going to compete in the digital marketplace.

Online Advertising works because of the ability to reach a targeted audience with specific products on the websites that they use every day. Are you a local dog-washing business? Don’t wait for someone to look up “dog washing services” on Google. Instead, reach them directly while they are reading the local news website in the morning. Have an online sales company that offers hand-crafted lunchboxes for sports fans? Put team-specific product ads smack-dab in the middle of an aficionado’s social media stream! Gone are the days of customers looking for you – you need to go to them!

How Online Advertising Works

The largest online advertising operators are large-scale search engines such as Google and Bing. While social media companies offer digital advertising, they are usually social media channel-specific. With Google and Bing ads, you can reach potential clients across the web.

With both Google and Bing, you begin by building an advertising account with each company. Each has a creator suite that allows you to begin building and uploading product and service-specific advertising, including the ability to show both image and video-based ads. Once you have created a variety of ad content, you will begin to target your various ads to specific audiences.

This is the magic sauce of online advertising – the ability to target specific and unique demographics based on a variety of keywords. You can set location parameters, keywords based on searches, and other specifications based on user data collected by websites through caches and cookies. Once you set your demographic settings, you can launch your ads – and watch the traffic begin to pile up on your website!

It’s That Easy? How Do They Make Money?

Online advertising companies such as Google and Bing operate on two payment methods: Cost-Per-Click and Cost-Per-Impression. Both operate just as they sound. With a cost-per-click payment, you set a budget that is used up as online users click your ads and visit your website. The cost-per-impression system works similarly, but you pay as people “view” your ad, rather than actually clicking on the advertisement.

Which should you choose? That depends on your goals! If you are trying to generate traffic to specific website pages or product sites, then you will want to use a cost-per-click payment to ensure that your money is being spent on true customers who are actually interested in what you have to offer. Impressions are great for brands trying to gain recognition or organizations who want to get their message out to the public. For impression-based campaigns, you may wish to widen your audience to reach the most people possible.

Seem A Bit Complicated? Social Media Strategists Are Key

Online advertising is a great way to generate business – if you know what method to use that is best suited for your company. The best way to get started is with the help of a social media strategist who has experience using a variety of advertising methods. Companies such as Shaka Web Design Services can help you develop a strategy to utilize the various channels and methods to ensure that your advertising is reaching the right people in the right way.

Once you start using online advertising through Google and Bing, don’t be surprised when your marketing budget starts to move to an online-only strategy! As long as online retail remains king, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon!