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Digital Advertising Part II: Which Type of Advertising Is Best for My Business?

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If you’re reading this, we hope you’ve read part one of our digital advertising blog series: What Is Digital Advertising and Why Do I Want It?

Welcome to the second article in our multi-part series on the ins-and-outs of digital advertising. Now that you know the basics, you probably have one burning question: which type of advertising should I use to grow my business? We’re here to help you answer that by exploring the pros and cons of five primary strategies: social media, display, native, remarketing and Google ads marketing. 

Let’s dive right in. 

Social Media Advertising

As of 2020, approximately 3.96 billion people use social media platforms worldwide (that’s roughly half the world’s total population). With so many people spending their time on social sites, advertising on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest or LinkedIn can be very lucrative.  

What makes social media advertising so attractive?

Social Media AdsReach. Did we mention that half the world’s population is on social media? Facebook alone has 2 billion individual users who span across all age groups and demographics. Advertising on social media is a surefire way to increase your brand’s reach and awareness. 

Targeting. Social media platforms offer a wide selection of targeting options for advertisers – you can target by location, age, gender, income, education, profession, interests, behaviors and other demographics. Segmented targeting ensures that you’re placing ads in front of people most likely to be responsive to them.  

Engagement. Social media platforms are designed to foster connection and communication. Thoughtful and engaging ads can draw the likes, comments, follows, and clicks that help you build a better relationship with your audience.  

Social media platforms are an incredibly popular place for users to be online…..and that means they’re also an incredibly popular place for other advertisers. With so many brands clamoring for attention – and so many ads dominating users’ feeds – standing out is difficult if you’re new to social media. Making a real impact requires a time-intensive (and costly) effort to craft compelling content, monitor the results in real-time, and adjust as necessary.

And even that may not be enough. Even if you use specific targeting to place ads in front of your core audience, they may not be interested in purchasing at that time. Social media advertising can pay off, but it takes time, patience, and a financial investment to hit your stride and see results.  

Display Advertising

Display ads – also called banner ads – appear on third-party websites or apps affiliated with search engines and ad networks. Banner ads are very versatile and can include a combination of text, images, logos, video and interactive elements. 

Google Display Ad Example

What makes display advertising so attractive?

  • Brand awareness. Display ads are designed to be attractive, engaging and visually appealing to visitors browsing the web. You can build up brand awareness, position your brand top of mind, and create initial interest in your products and services. 
  • Targeting. Display advertising offers targeting options – you can choose the websites and platforms you want your ads to appear on, and you can select specific criteria (location, age, interests, etc.) for your targeted audience. Targeting increases the chances that your ads will be seen by people who are interested in your products and services.

Display advertising has significant drawbacks as well. Display ads typically have lower click-through-rates and lower conversion rates than other forms of advertising. While you’re able to target your core audience, display advertising isn’t effective if viewers aren’t actively seeking your products and services.  

The second major drawback is ad blindness. Consumers are besieged by ads everywhere they go online, causing many browsers to scroll by advertisements without really seeing them. Ad frustration has also led to the rise of ad blockers that allow visitors to scroll in peace but cost you impression opportunities.  

Native Advertising

Native advertisements are designed to blend seamlessly into the platform where they are displayed. They look and feel like other content on a website or social media platform, but native ads are paid for by advertisers and have a “Sponsored” label on them. You may not even notice native ads as you scroll through a website or social feed – they look like regular articles that are “recommended for you,” “articles you might like,” or “promoted content.” 

What makes native advertising so attractive? native ad digital ad

  • Relevancy. Native ads mainly appear on websites, blog posts and social media feeds related to your products and services, meaning your audience is already interested in your subject area and more likely to click on your content. 
  • User experience. Native ads are less disruptive to the user experience because they integrate seamlessly within content that visitors are already reading. 
  • Engagement. Today, many consumers have ad blindness, where they scroll past obvious ad content without stopping to read it. Native ads generate more time, attention, engagement and higher click-through-rates because they don’t look like ads. Instead, they match the type of content readers are already looking for, driving more clicks. 

But native advertising isn’t for everyone. While native ads are more engaging at first click, readers may feel duped or taken advantage of once they realize your content is an advertisement. Native advertising only pays off when you craft well-written, useful and engaging content with the reader in mind. A poorly crafted ad will only increase users’ feelings of deception once they realize the content is an advertisement – and that can lead to a negative brand perception.

Creating native ad campaigns is a time-intensive and costly process. Measuring the effectiveness of your campaigns is another challenge because there are no standard metrics to track ROI, actions taken, or ad impact. And finally, native advertising doesn’t drive traffic to your website and therefore has few SEO benefits.    

Remarketing Advertising

Remarketing is a useful advertising method to display ads to people who have already visited your website. This form of advertising uses digital cookies to follow users around the web and target them with ads for specific products or services they viewed on your site. The purpose of remarketing is to draw visitors back into the conversion cycle. 

What makes remarketing so attractive?

  • Recall value. Many consumers aren’t ready to make a purchasing decision the first time they see a product or service on the web. But repeated exposure through remarketing ads familiarizes consumers with your brand and increases brand recognition. When the time comes to make a purchase, your brand will be top of mind.   
  • Conversions. Studies have shown that remarketing ads have high click-through-rates and increased conversion rates. The term “effective frequency” describes the idea that consumers must be exposed to an ad several times before the ad drives an action – although exactly how many times ad exposure should occur is still up for debate.  

Unfortunately, remarketing can quickly go sour with poor execution. There’s a fine line between showing an ad too many times and not showing it enough and finding that balance is challenging. The major drawback of remarketing is that consumers may find retargeted ads creepy, annoying, invasive, or frustrating.   

Paid Search Advertising

Search engine marketing (SEM) displays paid advertisements at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs) on Google, Bing, Yahoo and other platforms. Paid search is arguably one of the most effective ways to find your audience online and drive quality traffic to your website. And among search engines, Google reigns supreme. Google processes more than 3.5 billion searches per day, and many of those queries are from users looking for more information, reviews and recommendations before purchasing a product or service.

What makes paid search advertising so attractive?

Google Ads Search Example

User intent. Keyword targeting is what sets paid search apart from other types of digital advertising. Targeting specific, valuable keywords with high user-intent lands your ads in front of an audience that’s already in the research or consideration phase of the purchasing process. You can also launch targeted campaigns based on audience demographics, location, or even time of day. Precise targeting is a driver of high-quality traffic and high conversion rates. 

Prime placement. Paid ads appear top of page on Google, which is exactly where you want to be when users are searching for your products or services. When you coordinate your paid search and SEO efforts, you have the chance to rank twice for the same keyword – in paid search listings and organic listings, doubling your brand exposure on the page.   

Immediate visibility. Search ads begin generating results immediately, driving targeted, high-quality traffic to your website. Paid search advertising is an excellent technique for gaining short-term brand awareness, especially if you’re still building your organic SEO strategy. 

Paid search advertising is the most expensive method of digital advertising. While you gain immediate web traffic when ads are running, the flipside is a steep drop-off in leads once the ad campaign finishes. Paid search requires an on-going budget to keep driving site visitors, and the costs can add up quickly. While you have complete control over how much or how little you spend, bidding for fiercely competitive ad space is not always cheap.  

Wow, That Was a Lot of Information – How Do I Get Started?

Now that you have a better idea of the pros and cons of each type of digital advertising, let’s have a conversation! There’s a lot that goes into starting, running and fine-tuning successful ad campaigns:

  • Determining what types of ads will help you meet your business goals
  • Choosing a bidding model
  • Setting a budget
  • Performing market research on buyer personas and target audiences
  • Crafting compelling, engaging ad copy, images and video
  • Monitoring and tracking metrics
  • Optimizing ads in real-time to improve performance

Digital advertising is an incredibly complex landscape to navigate if you’re new to the ad game. That’s why we highly recommend seeking help from an experienced digital advertising and PPC marketing services company like Ligon Marketing. From start to finish, our team will help you create and launch an ad strategy to help you achieve your advertising goals. Call us today at 863-838-5475 or drop us a message online. 

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Digital Advertising Part 1: What Is Digital Advertising and Why Do I Want It?

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In the digital-first era, if your business doesn’t have a strong presence online, then your brand isn’t being seen. And if your business isn’t advertising online, then your brand isn’t staying competitive. This year, market research company eMarketer predicts that digital’s share of total advertising spend will near 50% globally, and soon digital ad spending will surpass traditional mediums. 

The rapid rise of producing and distributing promotional content via digital channels (like search engines, social media, mobile apps, emails, and third-party websites) isn’t surprising. First and foremost, online is where your consumers are. Second, advertisers have discovered that digital advertising is vastly more data-driven, measurable and precise than many traditional mediums. And third, digital ads are cost-effective, drive new qualified leads, increase brand awareness and deliver an impressive return on investment (ROI).       

“And third, digital ads are cost-effective, drive new qualified leads, increase brand awareness and deliver an impressive return on investment (ROI).” 

To boil it all down: digital advertising is a bandwagon your business needs to be jumping on. At Ligon Marketing, we specialize in digital advertising and paid search marketing services.  We’re here to help businesses navigate the complex ins-and-outs of advertising online. This blog article is the first in a multi-part series covering all the essentials of digital ads and paid search. 

So let’s dive right in – keep reading as we guide you through the basics of what digital ads are and the types of online advertising available.  

 

What Do I Get Out of Digital Advertising?

We’re not saying that traditional advertising isn’t effective – executed correctly, it is. The stages of the buyer’s journey haven’t changed, but today many consumers are completing the entire buyer’s journey through online touchpoints. To meet this new shift, digital advertising offers several unique benefits over traditional mediums. 

  • Brand awareness. For your campaigns to be effective, your marketing efforts need to reach consumers where they are. And in 2021 and moving forward, the vast majority of your audience is online. Having a digital presence is crucial to increasing brand visibility and reach. 

    Digital Advertising

  • Measurable results. Traditional forms of advertising (print, TV, radio, billboards, direct mail) don’t offer you a way to measure the effectiveness or ROI of your ads. Digital ads can be tracked and monitored from start to finish with ad platforms automatically collecting and documenting the data.  

  • Selective targeting. In the same vein as the point listed above, traditional print or TV advertising may not allow you to target the exact audience you’re trying to reach. Digital advertising offers several valuable targeting options for audience demographics, including age, location, interests, behaviors, past purchasing decisions, income, education and more. Selective targeting ensures that your ad budget is going toward the consumers most likely to take an action after seeing your ad.    

  • Testing. Digital advertising provides testing capabilities that allow you to continuously gather information on the types of ads that are effective. With A/B testing, you can run two ads simultaneously while varying one aspect (like the audience targeting or the ad image) to determine which ad performs better. Once you determine the audience taking the most actions and the ad copy or images generating the most engagement, you can weed out ineffective strategies and optimize future ads for better results.   

  • Real-time optimization. Once your print ad or TV commercial is out in the world, the messaging, ad copy and graphics are locked in until the campaign is complete. And if the messaging doesn’t resonate with consumers, then your business has wasted time and resources on an ineffective campaign. In contrast, the flexibility of digital advertising allows you to optimize ads in real-time as you track the metrics and ad performance. If a Facebook ad is performing poorly after one week of a 4-week ad run, you can adjust the ad copy, image or audience targeting to draw more engagement without overextending your budget. 

  • Wider reach. Digital advertising allows you to advertise to and engage with consumers at every stage of the buyer’s journey, from awareness through the purchasing decision. Your business can optimize ads for different audience specifications or keyword searches that reach consumers at multiple touchpoints along the buyer’s path.  

  • Instant results. Don’t misunderstand us – organic SEO is an incredibly effective strategy for driving traffic to your website, generating quality leads and growing your business. But SEO takes time to make a positive impact and produce results. Digital advertising immediately puts your brand and offerings in front of potential customers. On the backend, you can track ad performance in real-time to determine the impact your efforts have. 

  • Customized budget. Digital advertising flips the balance of control. For traditional print, TV or radio ads, the publisher sets the budget that your business must fulfill to guarantee ad space. In contrast, digital advertising allows you to control how much you spend to produce ads and how much you end up paying based on ad performance (we’ll get into the specifics of that later in this article). Digital advertising is customizable and scalable for businesses of all sizes.   

Still on board? Then let’s look at the ad options available for your business.  

 

5 Types of Digital Ads

Digital platforms allow for a diverse offering of ad types and layouts. The following are the 5 most popular ad formats.

  1. Search engines. Search engine marketing (SEM) displays advertisements at the top of search engine result pages (SERPs). SEM is a great way to put your brand in front of consumers searching for relevant keywords and phrases surrounding your business offerings. Google dominates in search engine ads – with over 3.5 billion searches being processed per day, Google ads marketing offers the largest and most diverse audiences for businesses to target.    

  2. Social media. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest all offer advertising space, and with over 3.6 billion people using social media worldwide, social platforms are the place to be. Social media is also a fantastic place to showcase engaging, eye-catching video or image-based ads. 

  3. Display. Display ads are advertisements that appear on third-party websites or apps affiliated with search engines and ad networks. Many websites also directly sell advertising space to advertisers. Display ads can be an effective component of a remarketing campaign, and advertisers have a bounty of choices for displaying ads through banners, popups, video, text, mobile or images. Like with SEM, Google dominates in the world of display ads. The Google Display Network contains millions of websites and mobile apps that reach 90% of internet users, including user-rich YouTube.    

  4. Native. Native advertising uses ads that match the look and feel of the media platform where they’re displayed. What does that mean? Native ads don’t really look like ads – they might look like advertorials, “recommended articles,” or “promoted content” on social media and websites. They make a soft sell that exposes users to advertising in a non-disruptive way. Native ads can be quite effective for attracting users who are wary of being advertised to and have “ad blindness,” where they scroll past obvious ad content without reading it.  

  5. Remarketing. Remarketing displays your ads to consumers who have already visited your website or taken an action but haven’t taken further steps to convert. The purpose of remarketing is to keep your brand top of mind for consumers and re-engage them into the conversion process.  

Now you may be wondering: what types of ads are right for my business needs? Ad selection is a whole article in itself, so we’re going to cover the topic in more detail in the second part of our blog series – be on the lookout for that in the next few weeks! For now, let’s talk about how payments for ads are determined. 

 

Bidding Models for Digital Ads

Your business has a lot of control over how you pay for digital advertisements. The most popular bidding models for ads include:

  • Pay-per-click (PPC). PPC is exactly what it sounds like: your business pays for every click on your ad. The appeal of PPC is that users who click on an ad are more likely to take an action on your website and convert. The resulting sale would be far more profitable than what you paid for the click. PPC is the most common bidding model in SEM. 

  • Cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM). Again, CPM is precisely what the name implies: your business pays for every thousand times your ad is displayed on someone’s screen. CPM is a good bidding model for expanding brand reach, but it’s not cost-effective if users aren’t taking actions on your ads. Simply put, views doesn’t always translate to conversions.  

  • Cost-per-action (CPA). If you bid with CPA, your business pays for every conversion that results from your ad. An action could be a click, a sale or a form submission. CPA can be extremely beneficial, since users who take an action on your ad are more likely to convert to a sale. 

For more specific ads, your business can also bid by paying for app installs, followers on social media, new connections on LinkedIn, or video views for video ads. 

 

Metrics and Measurables

One of the primary advantages of digital advertising is the ability to track and measure in real-time. Monitoring and analyzing ad metrics helps you improve strategies, optimize ads and decide on next steps to meet your goals. The following metrics can help you gain a high-level understanding of how well your ads are performing.

 

Google Ad GraphsReach is the number of people who saw your ad

Impressions are the number of times your ad was displayed on someone’s screen (*keep in mind that this number includes people who saw your ad multiple times*)

Clicks are the number of times someone clicked on your ad

Conversions are the number of people who completed the action you set on your ad (like filling out a form or signing up for a newsletter)

For a more in-depth look at how effective your digital ad strategies are, we will help you monitor the following:

  • Click-through-rate (CTR). CTR is determined by calculating the percentage of clicks to impressions. For example, if your ad got 3 clicks out of 100 impressions, your CTR is 3%. A higher CTR indicates that your ad is relevant, compelling, and resonating with your target audience. 

  • Cost-per-click (CPC). CPC is the amount of money your business pays for every click. The CPC is determined by maximum bid for the ad, ad quality and ad competition. Your goal is to have the lowest CPC that’s driving the best traffic and generating quality leads.  

  • Cost-per-conversion. Cost-per-conversion is determined by dividing the total cost of an ad by the total number of conversions. The lower cost-per-conversion, the better.  

  • Return on ad spend (ROAS). ROAS is determined by calculating the amount of revenue generated from an ad campaign versus the costs to run the campaign. ROAS looks specifically at the effectiveness of ad campaigns to help you determine if digital advertising is a good investment. 

OK, I’m Interested – How Do I Get Started?

Hopefully this article got you fired up to start your own digital advertising campaigns or at least piqued your interest. There’s a lot that goes into starting, running and fine-tuning successful ad campaigns:

  • Determining what types of ads will help you meet your business goals

  • Choosing a bidding model

  • Setting a budget

  • Performing market research on buyer personas and target audiences

  • Crafting compelling, engaging ad copy, images and video

  • Monitoring and tracking metrics

  • Optimizing ads in real-time to improve performance

Sound time consuming? It is. That’s why we highly recommend seeking help from an experienced digital advertising and PPC services company like Ligon Marketing. From start to finish, our team will help you create and launch an ad strategy that will help you meet your business goals. Call us today at 863-838-5475 or drop us a message online. 

 

 

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How a Sales Funnel Can Transform Your Online Marketing

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Sales funnels are powerful tools used to help businesses attract and convert their customers online. The premise is simple: drive traffic to your website (either through advertising, social media or word of mouth), provide an incentive to visitors to provide their contact information, and continue communication with them in order to promote the actions that are meaningful and profitable to your business.

Even if you are unfamiliar with sales funnels, chances are you have been a part of one before. Have you ever visited a website and were tempted with an additional percentage off your first purchase just by providing your email address? Or has a company offered to provide you with the top secrets or best practices for something relevant to your business, asking for your email address to send the information to you? These are both examples of sales funnels and we’re sure that you’ve seen how effective they can be.

The first step in any lead generation system is the lead magnet, or what will draw customers to your site. This can be something such as an offer, deal or unique product or service that is advertised either through digital advertising, social media posts or email marketing. The most important element is that this magnet should solve a problem that your audience is facing, drawing your prospects into the sales funnel.

Once potential customers are enticed with your lead magnet, they arrive at a landing page which then triggers a series of events to guide customers through the process to drive conversions and profitable actions. The conversions can be defined as anything meaningful for your business goals: online sales, newsletter sign-ups, completing lead forms, or booking an appointment. This conversion is the goal of the sales funnel.

After reaching the landing page, customers are presented with an opportunity, typically, to submit their email address. Once a customer enters their email address, one of two paths can be triggered: a completed journey path (including a thank you), or an incomplete journey path (started but not complete). If a customer completes the desired conversion, their information can then be directly imported into a CRM (or customer relationship management) platform or another database. This automation helps to streamline the customer communication and build brand loyalty and repeat business.

If a customer abandons the sales funnel or does not complete the desired conversion, an email marketing campaign is triggered to maintain communication with the consumer and encourage them to complete the action. The most effective way to achieve this is to use the Soap Opera Sequence of email marketing, outlined here:Email Sequence for Sales FunnelFollowing this template of email communications will draw consumers who abandoned the funnel back to the process and increase the likelihood that they will end up completing the desired action due to the implied urgency of the sequence. In order to make the best use out of the sales funnel, we recommend automating these email communications using an email marketing partner such as MailChimp or Constant Contact.

When looking for a lead generating service, there are a few key elements that you should look for. The first is whether the platform is designed for the specific actions that you want customers, or potential customers, to take. For example, a retail site will have different desired consumer actions than a doctor’s office or law firm. The second is the platform’s ability to integrate with other systems that your company is currently utilizing such as email marketing, CRM platforms, and web systems.

There are many different platforms out there that provide a do-it-yourself approach to creating sales funnels, such as ClickFunnels and Leadpages. These platforms make it simple and efficient to develop automated and effective sales funnels. However, there are limitations to what they can achieve. These platforms require a monthly subscription payment and are limited in the level of customization when it comes to system integrations and options for the funnel triggers.

If you have tried these platforms in the past and are looking for a more tailored approach, or if you have specific business goals in mind, we are here to help. Our sales funnel experts are available to discuss custom solutions and to help build a one-of-a-kind platform that will help achieve your business goals and one that you will have ownership of. These are designed with your consumers’ behaviors in mind and based on what will increase the efficacy of your marketing efforts. Contact us today to learn more!

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