There are 3 major vehicles used by online marketers in conveying advertising messages to the target market today.
Of course, there are other digital marketing platforms used in getting your marketing message in front of the target audience, however, I choose to leave out those and focus more on the 3 popular types of online advertising.
No one type of advertising is better than the other type. It all boils down to your marketing objective.
The most important thing is to understand what you are trying to achieve with your advertising campaign.
Advertising influences how consumers interact with your brands, purchase products, and refer their friends to your store.
Setting advertising goals can help businesses achieve financial goals and connect with their customers.
Knowing some of the common goals of advertising can help a company decide which goal to use for specific ad campaigns.
As a marketer, what goal are you trying to score? Are you trying to achieve goals of advertising brand awareness; website traffic; engagement boost; multimedia interest increase or Lead generation?
Whichever of these goals, you can score them using one or all the 3 types of online advertising below, but first, let’s understand what online advertising is.
What is Online Advertising?
Online advertising is about a connection between advertisers, advertising channels, and customers.
Online ads are everywhere around you: They follow you around as you read the news on Google, check social media platforms, and search for information; and they can be fantastically relevant, reminding you of things you have forgotten to buy, or products that seem tailor-made for you.
Types of Online Advertising?
#1. Content Marketing
Content marketing is such a broad subject that it cannot be explained in a short answer. But I will try to share the basic idea behind content marketing and discuss briefly how to develop a content marketing strategy that can help a business grow.
Content marketing is one of the most preferred marketing strategies to generate traffic.
To explain content marketing in simpler words, it is all about telling your story. Yes and of course telling that story to impress your audiences and the search engine.
Content marketing is a crucial digital marketing strategy that is focused on creating and distributing relevant, and engaging content which attracts the ideal audience.
High-quality content not only boosts your brand’s relationship with your current and potential customers but also helps in SEO.
Traditionally, content referred to only the written text. But recently, content marketing has grown exponentially.
Today, content is quite diversified with the use of videos, infographics, gifs, and images. Incorporate social media into the mix and you have got an excellent cocktail for digital marketing success.
How Do You Create a Good Content Marketing Strategy?
Here’s what you need to focus on while developing a content marketing strategy.
#1. Understand your target audience and create content to address their pain points
The pain point is a common phrase in the advertising world, used to describe the specific customer challenges that only you can solve.
But understanding your prospect’s pain points so your products can fulfill their needs can be a challenge for even the most experienced business owners.
Still, this is important for your company’s success. The better you understand prospects’ pain points, the more effective your communications and marketing will be. You will be able to grow your brand like never before.
#2. Have a strong strategy
A strong business strategy is a powerful tool for helping you reach your marketing goals, and defining the methods and tactics you need to take within your brand.
The business strategy also guides many of your company`s decisions, such as hiring new employees and disengaging nonperforming ones.
Creating an advertising strategy that’s in line with the vision you have for your brand takes time and development but it is worth it.
#3. Let your workforce be clear about the content marketing goals and missions
Your content marketing mission statement ought to be a guiding principle and a state of mind. Socialize it, embrace it, and live it every day through the mindful creation of your digital marketing and sales content.
A content marketing mission statement explains the purpose behind every single piece of content you will develop for your audience as a brand.
It is straightforward and easily understood by your audience, clearly defining the who, the what, and the where of your content’s intended focus.
#4. Always Create a visually rich and informative post that can redirect traffic toward your website
Google processes over 40,000 search queries every second. You can watch the searches rack up in real-time.
Many brands struggle to come up with new and innovative ways to boost website traffic. There’s a lot of misleading information online about how to attract more site visitors, which can lead to using the same tired and ineffective strategies over and again and not seeing positive results.
Not only does visually awesome (relevant, meaty, juicy) content improve your SERP rankings, but it’s also good for keeping visitors engaged once they click through to your website.
#2. SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING
Social media marketing includes the use of social media platforms, like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, or similar platforms as marketing tools.
The goal is to reach a wide audience and interact with them to attract new customers.
Here are some of the Benefits of promoting your business through social media Advertising
#1. Boost brand awareness: likes, follows, shares and other types of social engagements will help you get recognized among new customers.
#2. Generates leads and boosts conversion: You are advertising to users who have opted to engage with you by following your page, which can result in the accumulation of new leads and improved sales.
#3. Build and sustain relationships with customers: When you respond to your customer’s queries on social media, they will be grateful that you have spared some time to do that. This gratitude will prompt them to share what they practice with others.
#4. Your competitors are online: keeping tabs on your competitors allows you to take a look at what is and isn’t working for them, and that information helps you to decide what should or shouldn’t change in terms of your company’s approach.
Components of Social Media Advertising: Organic and Paid
#1. Organic advertising leverages free methods for conveying your content to the intended location. It is usually most successful once you already have an established audience.
Usually, brands will invest heavily in their organic marketing to remarket to an audience they already have via email, Instagram, Facebook, or any other platform where they already have a following.
#2. Paid advertising involves paying for more exposure on social media platforms. This could be in the form of paying Influencers or paying the platforms to promote your content.
Typically paid marketing is necessary to introduce a brand and build initial awareness. The best brands usually use their paid ads and their organic ads as a sort of one, two-punch.
First, they will get customers into their sales funnel with paid marketing methods, then they will sell their brand and products to these people in the funnel through organic marketing.
Social Media Marketing has been and continues to be the most underpriced marketplace that brands can shop for attention.
#3. Display Advertising
Display advertising refers to the process of marketing a product through visuals like images and videos. It is all about showing your content to your current or future customers.
Display ads encourage users to click on the ads. The more the compelling display ad is, the more it will attract the target audience and traffic to your websites while turning those potential customers into paying customers.
4 Types of Display Advertising?
#1. Banner Ads: Banner ads are the most popular display advertising format. The name of this ad is inspired by its shape, which is banner-like.
#2. Rich Media Ads: Considering that about 30% of Internet users find traditional banner advertising distracting, advertisers are exploring more innovative ways to display their ads to potential customers.
Using rich media is one such new tactic that involves using interactive elements such as audio, video, and clickable elements to make the ads more engaging.
#3. Interstitial Ads: These are ads that display as separate webpage before a user is directed to the original page that they intended to visit. They are effective in arresting the user’s attention as they take up the entire screen space.
#4. Video Ads: When it comes to displaying advertising costs video ads are slightly more expensive but very effective in drawing in good conversion rates. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube have made it convenient for marketers to run video ads and attract a lot of attention and engagement online.
Conclusion
I have given you enough information to get you started on online advertising, right? If so, then it is your turn, to go ahead and try your hands-on online advertising.
And take this from me as a promise, you won`t get stuck in the middle of your marketing journey while using the three online advertising vehicles suggested in this article to convey your marketing message to your target market.
