Digital Advertising

Digital Advertising is crucial for brand promotion

• Marketers report that there is increase in digital budgets by 25% from year to year and a whopping 75% in the category of Media and Entertainment
• Social influencers play a vital role in the conduction of digital advertisements. According to Forbes, 70% of the advertisers are working now with the influencers and 40% hope to increase their budgets in the upcoming month

What is digital advertising?

Digital advertising is also called internet advertising. This is one of the modern methods of marketing strategy in which businesses utilize internet technologies to deliver advertisements to the customers so that they can promote their product/service.

This technique usually includes promotional advertisements and messages delivered through e-mail, social media websites, and online advertisements on search engines, banner ads on mobile and other programs related to websites. The scope of digital advertisement is growing day by day. According to Forbes, 74% of U.S. consumers watch online videos every week while 41% of them watch daily.

Some of the specialized areas of Digital Advertising

Internet marketing can be broadly classified into more specialized areas as per their nature.

Web marketing

Most of the e-commerce businesses use web-marketing to promote their product or services. Some companies are also promotional and informative that conduct research activities to support existing businesses. Online advertisements through websites, promotional ads, etc help to attract a large number of potential and existing customers.

Businesses create their websites where various information regarding their services and activities that they have conducted so far are mentioned. Amazon is one of the good examples of an e-commerce business that uses Web marketing to promote its brand.

E-mail marketing

E-mail marketing involves providing messages to targeted customers who rely on the product/service of the company. That is especially done by those businesses that already know their targeted customers. It might take a certain time to identify the targeted group from a large number of potential customers.

However, e-mail marketing is beneficial after the brand has set up its image in the market. The company requires the e-mail address of its existing or potential customers. In this strategy, the organization could forward messages, notices, information about new products, business activities, etc. through e-mails.

Social media marketing

The marketing strategy where marketers use various social media sites such as Face book, Twitter, What’s an app, Viber or Instagram is commonly known as social media marketing. It includes viral marketing effort because this strategy involves advertisement and promotion of the brand. Businesses first need to create a social media account where they share every related activity to the clients.

The most challenging part of social media marketing is to increase the number of followers or subscribers who could view the contents of our sites on a daily or weekly basis. Cisco is an example of an American multinational company that uses social media marketing to promote its products such as hardware, software, and telecommunications equipment

Search engine optimization (SEO)

This strategy involves the optimization of your websites to increase the number of visitors. If your websites appear in the top 5 list of Google pages, while the web visitors are searching on a Google search engine, there is more chance that your website will be visited by them. Search engine optimization is an emerging concept and the website optimization could differ as per the demand of the customers.

The website of the business could be optimized only if it has better quality, higher, reliable as well as authentic information, and attractive pages. On the other hand, websites of the businesses could also be optimized if the company makes payment per page to increase the website trafficking. However, this method could be costlier for those businesses that have been newly introduced in the market.

What are the benefits of digital advertising?

Digital advertising is the most effective means of advertisement for those businesses that are just starting their reputation in the market. Therefore, this mode is used by most businesses whether they are small or large. Some of its benefits include:

1. It’s cost-effective benefits of digital advertising

Traditional advertising is too expensive unless the business hasn’t separated enough marketing budget to promote its product or brand. On average, the amount charged by local television stations ranges from $200 to $1500. On the other hand, digital advertisement is very cost-effective that is affordable even by small-businesses, start-ups or mom-and-pop shops. If the company decides to advertise on Google, it will approximately cost $9.90 and $22.84 per click. There are other cheaper modes of advertisement that Google such as Face book, Instagram or Viber.

2. Teenagers use social media

It is very essential to identify the characteristics of the targeted groups before going on social media advertisements. If your large group of the audience is teenagers, they view your advertisement on social media.51% of teens have already said that they spend more than 3 hours of their time on social media. If your company is a retail store that is mostly targeted to younger age groups, it is far better to go with social media ads. Social media has become one of the omnipresent parts of their lives. This ultimately upgrades the viewers of your advertisements.

3. A brand can go Viral

The Internet is the only platform where brands can go viral. These days’ people share lots of memes, videos, news stories, etc. on the internet. The rags-to-riches success story was also one of the famous virals who spread brand awareness first on MySpace and then on Face book. The company was aiming ads at consumers who were most likely to purchase their clothes. The brand awareness campaign ultimately leads to a partnership with famous fashion and footwear brands and investors. The business is so successful that it now has a retail store in LA and seven online stores internationally.

4. Access to data and insights

Data that is posted on Face book, Google or Snap chat are the real-time data that possess accuracy and reliability. The company can gain detailed information on who reacted or interacted with ads. Moreover, their characteristics can also easily be identified.

The company can view how much money it is spending and what is the return on its investment. If returns are not as expected, the advertisement activities could be modified, eliminated or a completely new form of activities could be introduced. However, in the traditional advertisement, your company had to wait for weeks and months to get the results so that improvement could be made. This ultimately delays the decision-making process.

5. benefits of digital advertising Formats of Ads are constantly improving

Face book updates its ad products to improve the buying process for its users almost every month. For example: In November, Facebook-owned Instagram released shoppable photo tags that allowed users to shop from a brand without leaving the app. Recently, Face book also released Collections, the video ad where the featured product web link is attached. The continuous improvement of the social media platform ultimately improves advertising experience as well.

How can we make digital advertising effective?

It is very necessary to use digital advertising in the right way with the right sense to achieve success in a limited period. Here are some of the ways how you can make digital advertising effective:

1. Creative elements makes digital advertising effective

It is very crucial to refresh creative ideas often so that the posts are relevant and the users aren’t seeing the same posts more than once. The overall social campaign needs to be familiar so that there is a higher rating.

2. Spend wisely makes digital advertising effective

It is very essential to understand the value each channel offers and invest in them accordingly so that there is a higher return of the invested time and money. For example: Search advertising platforms work best when there is a clear demand for the product or service. However, it is less effective for start-up companies.

3. Do your research

It is very important to conduct thorough research and have data to support your actions. Consumers might go in a completely different direction than expected. It is therefore essential to use the information collected from research so that marketing strategy is planned effectively. A lot of companies these days are happy to use sponsored posts and other paid to advertise.

4. Understand the buyer process

Companies must understand what they need to present to buyers at each stage of their buying process. There are so many options and information available when it comes to viewing buyer analytics. Each step a visitor takes is visible through the website of the company. This information is very important to understand consumer psychology and carry out the digital marketing strategy accordingly. For example, Audience targeting allows Google to observe and analyze user history. This history is equally important to understand customers and where are they in their buying phase.

5. Know your target audience

It is very important to analyze who are the target marketers and how to best market to them. This is the most important aspect of any business while structuring marketing strategies. When it comes to digital advertising, it is very essential to know which social media sites are mostly used by the targeted audience. They need to build up content to those platforms in a similar manner such that it is viewed by most of the targeted audience. When it comes to marketing through social media, Face book is the best option because they have the options regarding who you want to budget and how much money the company wants to spend.

What are some of the major challenges for advertisers in digital advertising?

In the above figure, delivery of quality digital advertising impressions is the biggest challenge for advertisers with 63% share of respondents. Similarly, integration of industry agreed online audience is equally the biggest challenge for them. Ensuring the quality of digital advertisement and brand advertisement campaigns reaching the target audience is another biggest challenge for the advertisers. Similarly, the brand perception of the consumers is also one of the biggest challenges covering 41% share of respondents.