No matter what industry you operate in, efficient marketing communication with clients is the basis of your success. After all, you need to inform them that you are present on the market and what you can offer them. You can run this communication through various channels, but you absolutely cannot miss one of them. It’s about the Internet. Where to start the adventure with advertising your business on the web? Learn the absolute basics of promoting online business. Advertising your company on the internet is the basis!
Why is the company’s online advertising a “duty”?
The Internet has taken over the world of communication – both in the personal and business sphere. Do you still imagine that when looking for a service provider, you are looking through a newspaper or telephones directory? Or that you can’t check the network for reviews of the equipment you plan to buy? When was the last time you spent a day completely offline?
It is on the Internet that a large part of our lives take place. As statistics show, 57% of people in the world use it, i.e. over 4.3 billion!
And since marketing activities are to follow the consumer – so as to make contact with him wherever he is – they cannot be missing online.
The network has huge advertising potential. First of all, because:
– you have the chance to precisely target the campaign, and so target it to
the recipients with the highest potential of interest in your offer,
– you have the option of
personalizing your advertising messages – so that they exactly match the
expectations of a specific recipient, and the marketing automation system will
do it for you,
– you can precisely measure the
results of advertising campaigns – e.g. how many recipients clicked on the
promotional banner, left contact details and finally made the purchase,
– you gain a wide range of channels
and contact points with recipients – you can choose those that best fit into
the specifics of your business,
– by optimizing your strategy
accordingly, you achieve a high return on investment at a low cost
Therefore, if you haven’t started promoting yourself on the Internet yet – it’s time to change it.
Internet business advertising – where to start?
Start traditionally – by doing a basic lesson related to planning an advertising campaign. Before you rush into the world of social media, Google Ads, Google AdSense and remarketing, precisely define the purpose of your online advertising campaign.
The final one is obvious: you want to increase your company’s financial results. But a specific campaign can be dedicated to recipients at a certain stage of the marketing funnel and serve e.g.
– raising awareness of your brand and products,
– acquiring marketing leads,
– sales of a specific product group,
– strengthening the image of your
brand about building engagement and “buzz”,
– launching a new product.
It is important, however, that you clarify this goal. Thanks to this you will be able to refine the detailed course of the campaign and messages.
Attention! For many people this stage seems unnecessary. You know why advertising is done. But that’s just a theory. In practice, it is good to discuss and refine the assumptions. The clearer the direction you choose, the easier it will be to stay on course.
In addition to the goal, therefore, equally important question is who you are advertising to.
Are your products / services intended for any group of recipients? Of course not! Even if you operate nationwide and offer a wide range of solutions, there are consumers who will be more interested in your brand. And that’s what your ad should convince them. That is why it is worth determining who is the recipient of advertising messages – and again, as precisely as possible. A good idea is to create a so-called person, i.e. specific customer profiles. When creating them, think not only about the basic demographics, but above all about this:
– what interests your target groups – what are the needs,
– their interests and problems,
– where they are – which channels
they use on the network and where it is worth finding contact with them.
It is only on the basis of these two elements that you can take the right action – so plan where and how you will advertise.
Before you go to the promotion – you need one, quite obvious element: the website. This is your most important business card on the web and a place where advertising messages will lead. Therefore, make sure that the service:
– had an attractive domain, i.e. the address associated with the brand name,
– it was easy to use for users and
responsive (also available on mobiles devices),
– has been optimized in terms of
positioning (e.g. speed of its operation, number of tabs and their subject
matter, optimization of meta data and general ease of movement and searching
for information are important),
– had promotional value – for the
website to be an integral part of the marketing strategy.
With time, when you spread your wings in the world of online advertising, you can also think about creating a landing page that will be used to acquire leads and automate promotional communication.
Online business advertising: what are the options?
The world of online advertising is extremely vast, and there is a sea of options waiting for advertisers. Relax, you don’t have to use them all at once. Choose the ones that will work best for your target. What can you bet on?
Search engine advertising
If something isn’t on Google, it doesn’t exist – you’ve probably heard millions together. And although it is terribly cluttered, there is a lot of truth in it. Search engines are currently the main source of information in almost every situation – especially in the era of huge popularity of mobiles devices (it is with them that much of the traffic takes place). More and more people simply ask the search engine when they need something. That is why one of the basic tools of Internet advertising is promotion in search results. How it’s working? Enter any password in Google and look at the list of results. At the top you will see the so-called Sponsored links, and therefore just advertising. It will be displayed above the other “organic” results, which means that the chance that the customer clicks on the linked result is very high.
Importantly, Google Ads gives you the ability to precisely profile who your ad goes to. For example, you can set:
– regional scope – so define it to people from which cities the message
will be displayed (extremely useful if you run a business on a local scale),
– “demographic”
restrictions – thanks to which the ad will be displayed to people of a certain
gender or age.
And this is just the beginning of the possibilities. You can target website visitors who buy products – there are plenty of possibilities.
Company advertising in social media
Facebook is a portal that has over 1.5 billion users around the world. That’s why advertising here has great potential. How to reach recipients? The basis is of course a fanpage that you can run for free. Most often, however, he plays the image role. But the portal itself gives you the opportunity to publish strictly advertising messages. Speech incl. about:
– promotion of specific posts prepared by you – so that they reach a wider
audience,
– displaying ads on the board, i.e.
the main page of the portal, between user posts and pages tracked by the user,
– sponsored links placed elsewhere
on the portal – e.g. from the side, next to the news feed,
– video ads, which – like on
YouTube – interrupt the video footage.
Of course, this is only the basic division of ads. When you look at the advertising tools provided by each of the social media portals, you’ll find far more opportunities to promote yourself.
AdSense and similar ad publishing systems on external websites
Advertising banners are still one of the most popular ways to promote yourself on the web. When you use them, your brand messages are displayed to users browsing pages that cooperate with the given advertising system. In this way, external services may appear, among others text ads, graphic banners, as well as video materials.
Importantly, in the era of intelligent matching of ad content to the consumer profile, this promotion company is highly effective. Just look at how remarketing works. It consists in the fact that Internet users are shown ads related to e.g. browsing history. For example, if a user visits fishing websites, he will see more ads for lures or fisheries. And if his hobby is mobiles equipment, banners will apply to e.g. smartphones accessories.
Native ads and content marketing
Native ads are also used outside the internet world. You can talk about them in the context of product placement in films and series, as well as sponsored articles in the press. It works similarly in the network. Your brand ad can go to an article published, e.g. on an external portal. It can take various forms – e.g. sponsored content, in which you directly describe the advantages of your company / products, as well as articles on a general topic that will gently mention your brand. The benefits of using this form of content marketing are twofold:
– on the one hand, you strengthen the brand image, encouraging customers to
become more interested in your solutions,
– on the other hand, you increase
the visibility of your website for Google search engine, which translates into
better “organic” positioning results.
Does the above list of available options for advertising your business online cover the topic? Of course not! New forms of communication with clients – both advertising and strictly marketing – appear year by year. It is important that you stay up to date and adapt your campaigns to current trends. You also can’t forget to monitor the effects of your ads.
