Advertising on the internet is now bigger than on TV and is growing fast. Many businesses are jumping on the internet and social media bandwagon to hawk their wares, or just to build brand awareness. Some advice for businesses:
Stick your toe in the water by building brand awareness on social media. Advertising on Facebook is cheaper than on Google, and is best for expanding your business’s online visibility. Ads appear in Facebook’s news feed and can be targeted by location, language, age, gender, workplace, college, interests, relationship status, education level, college major or your own email lists. Eighty percent of the time, Facebook is viewed on smartphones, where simple branding-type ads work best. However, product-selling ads are also used. Ads that require the customer to input lots of information, such as financial services ads, should be targeted only at desktop computers.
A trial ad campaign can be set up for as little as $1 per day, though $5 to $30 per day is better to gauge effectiveness. If you’re going to go to the trouble of producing decent ads, then you’ll want to give them a good test. Facebook will generate metrics for you, such as number of clicks, likes and shares. The average cost-per-click for Facebook ads is 28 cents in the U.S. Test multiple versions of ads to see which generates the most response. A company like AdEspresso will help you design effective Facebook ads, if you need help.
Google AdWords is a little more expensive, but also gets lots of attention. Ads can be assigned to certain search words, or products can be advertised in Google’s Shopping Ads (Product Listing Ads or PLA). Amazon also has a large reach. Other social media platforms include Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest and Twitter, but the limitations of each of these needs to be considered.
To save time, consider using an advertising management platform like Hootsuite, Salesforce or Nanigans, which allow you to automate a lot of the ad process. Other companies will help you design ads or both design and manage the entire marketing effort. For larger campaigns, third-party ad management can drive the cost-per-click below 1 cent. The trick is to spend enough on an ad in order to have it appear with reasonable frequency, but not to overspend.
A search engine optimization (SEO) expert can help drive your company up the search rankings in Google, ensuring that users see your website.
Native advertising is growing as a share of ad spend, as opposed to banner ads, which can suffer from “banner blindness.” Native advertising contains content that is related to the same topics as the regular content on a website. It often consists of a product testimonial or description written by the advertiser. The idea is to provide an informational service as well as advertising, which may garner more attention from viewers.
Progressive web aps are gaining ground at the expense of regular apps. It is becoming apparent that consumers use only seven apps on their mobile phones and ignore the rest. Apps can be a hassle because consumers must download updates and revalidate their accounts. But apps are still valuable because they result in a lot of online orders, if you can get customers to use them. Because of this, Google has developed progressive web apps. These are versionless apps that work just like accessing the web via a browser and never have to be updated. Apple has been reluctant to compromise its revenue selling traditional apps, but is likely to come around, eventually.
Retail outlets and restaurants will especially want to pay attention to their Google Maps listing, which also has star ratings. Currently, these have a small number of reviewers leaving comments, so just a few can have a large effect on the overall rating, for better or for worse.
Use closed captioning on video ads. Many people don’t turn on the sound on their computer and so don’t pay attention to muted videos that play automatically.
In electronic gaming, rewards advertising is rapidly gaining ground. This is advertising that promises an in-game reward, such as game “money,” abilities or lives in return for a willingness to view the ad first: A good way to get the attention of an increasingly video game-addled population.