If you are a business owner, you probably feel like your marketing dollars are constantly going to waste. While traditional marketing platforms such as TV, radio, direct mail, and print advertising might still be relevant for some industries, it is a waste of money and time for many. Attention spans are growing shorter and traditional marketing platforms are no longer working.
Traditional marketing platforms might be on the decline, but there is another area of marketing that’s on the rise, which is online advertising. If you are a business owner but haven’t started advertising online, you are missing out in a big way. Online advertising is the future of marketing as the world becomes more digitized.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a great way to improve the ranking of your website on search engines for free, but it takes a lot of patience, hard work, and persistence. While you build your organic search engine rankings slowly and methodically, you should consider spending your advertising dollars more efficiently online right now using paid advertising.
Paid advertising is of different forms and here are 6 websites where you can market your businesses:
1. Google
Google has the lion’s share of the search engine market. Advertising on Google and other search engines is known as search engine marketing and is one of the most popular ways for businesses to promote their products or services online. Google’s advertising platform is known as AdWords, and it’s the largest Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising platform is the largest in the world.
AdWords lets you create image, text, or video advertisements targeting people who search for specific terms and keywords on Google or through behavioural and demographic targeting via Google’s Display Network. You can get specific when it comes to ad displays, which translates to a higher efficiency of your marketing dollars. Setting up campaigns might be a bit complicated, but Google will guide you.
2. Bing
Bing is the second largest search engine after Google regarding market share. Bing’s search engine marketing platform is known as Bing Ads, and it serves ads in the search engine results as well as on partner networks. Bing Ads provides free advertising credits to new advertisers.
Bing’s audience is much smaller in comparison to Google, but this makes keywords there cheaper, and you can save some money since your marketing dollars are extended a bit further. Bing has made great it easier for businesses to run their campaigns thanks to the strides it has made in improving the ad network.
3. Facebook
Facebook is one of the most popular websites in the world today with over a billion active users. Advertising on Facebook can be a gold mine for businesses, and its ad platform has improved especially in the last few years both with regards to ease of use and effectiveness.
Facebook ads work just like traditional PPC, but the great thing is that you are allowed to add a video or image along with the text. Even if people fail to click on your ad, you will still be getting a lot of exposure to your target audience for free. Facebook is also unmatched when it comes to defining your target audience.
4. Twitter
Twitter is one of the most popular social media platforms after Facebook. However, most people don’t know that Twitter offers paid advertising through its promoted tweets. The promoted tweets service was originally for those with a large advertising budget, but Twitter has launched a more affordable service for businesses to advertise on the platform.
5. LinkedIn
If you are in the professional services industry, then you have probably heard about LinkedIn. What you might not know is that the platform offers paid advertising in the form of LinkedIn Ads. The great thing about LinkedIn Ads is that highly targeted ads can be served to other businesses and professionals on the platform. The Cost Per Click might be higher than all the other platforms, but you can target your ads to very specific people.
6. Instagram
Instagram is not only good for posting your pictures but can be used to promote your business too. Facebook has been trying to find a way to monetize Instagram ever since it bought the platform. Originally, advertising on Instagram was reserved for big brands, but it is now open to all courtesy of the self-serve platform.
You can create and run Instagram ad campaigns directly inside Facebook’s ad manager, where Instagram is one of the targeting options currently available. The great thing about advertising on Instagram is that you don’t even require an Instagram account to target Instagram users using the Facebook Ad platform although it is highly advisable to do it.
The Bottom Line
Online advertising works and is very efficient when compared to traditional advertising such as Radio, TV, direct mail, and newspaper ads. The great thing about digital marketing is that you see exactly where your marketing dollars are going and whether it is generating a sensible ROI for you.
Paid advertising should not be used in isolation, but rather in conjunction with your organic marketing efforts (SEO). It is important to do both since the two working together can bring impressive results for both you and your business.
