If you’re doing anything on the web with your Ohio or North Carolina business, you probably know that you should be leveraging digital advertising.
But, if you’re new to the game of Facebook ads, Google Ads, Pay Per Click or other online advertising, it can be hard to know where to begin, especially when you need to justify a strategy or budget for it.
Here are the key benefits to digital advertising for your business.
Digital Advertising is Cost Effective
Diving in to digital advertising isn’t like throwing up a billboard (which can be extremely costly and can take days or months to understand your results). In fact, your initial investment into digital ads can be quite minimal.
For example, search engines don’t charge anything to insert a PPC advertisement. There’s no fee to set up an account and you only pay each time someone actually clicks on your ad.
For most social media ads, you can get started for as little as $5. And for just about all digital ads, you can adjust your spending on-the-go as you analyze your efforts and see what’s working and what isn’t.
Of course, strategy is at play here. We always recommend taking a look at the competitive landscape, then allocating PPC budget based on what will be effective in the long term.
Stay in Control of Your Ad Budget
For Facebook and Google Ads, you can work easily within a set budget and add more money as you go, or stop the ad any time. With PPC advertising, you can tailor your budget based on your sales goals and how aggressive you would like to be.
Digital advertising allows you to be fastidious about the money you spend, with many ad platforms giving you the option to adjust or re-allocate money as needed while the campaign is in play.
Level the Playing Field
You might be the new kid in town, but digital advertising is one of the ways you can hold your own with the big guys, right from the start.
Reach the vast majority of Internet users worldwide, or concentrate on a hyper-local focus, or use a mix of local and national ads.
By carefully crafting and targeting your campaigns, you can pre-qualify your website’s traffic. Combine any number of parameters, and target (and sway) exactly the same users as your competition without spending years in the business.
Instant Gratification
We always tell people to be wary of companies that promise immediate search engine rankings. Digital advertising, however, is the exception to the rule.
Because of the nature of PPC ads, for example, you can buy top placement right away, assuming you have a quality ad, followed the set-up rules and are bidding enough to be effective.
Social ads are the same way, when done properly. What’s more, you’ll get results (sales, Likes, clicks) quickly—sometimes almost immediately—which makes digital ads an easy “yes” in a holistic digital marketing strategy that has both short- and long-term goals.
Real-time Trackability
Digital ad campaigns can remain effective and efficient by regularly tracking keyword and phrase successes (and failures), which ads bring the most traffic (and which are duds), conversion rates and more.
Tracking ads in near-real time means you can be sure that your ads are operating at peak efficiency, especially since any necessary changes can be made immediately. Again, compare this advantage to other forms of advertising, where results can take months to determine and changes can take weeks to implement.
Top Questions about Digital Advertising
How long does it take to launch a digital ad campaign?
Setting up the campaigns themselves can be done very quickly. Of course that depends on the size and scope of your intended strategy. If you have a quality website with landing pages that are ready to convert users, it could take as little as a week to have initial campaigns up and running.
How quickly will I see a return on my investment?
From our perspective, we really only consider qualified leads or e-commerce sales to factor into true ROI. That usually takes a couple of weeks from the launch of a campaign because we need to do a bit of learning at the outset with regard to which phrases, campaigns and platforms bring in the best traffic.
What does ROAS mean?
Return on ad spend is a simple way of measuring ROI. The simplest way to think of it is, for each dollar you invest in your PPC or display campaign for example, how many dollars are you receiving in return. ROAS is easiest to measure in an immediate way on e-commerce websites.
Can I manage my digital ad campaign myself?
Absolutely. Many business owners, or marketing departments manage digital advertising in house. Just like anything else in business, it becomes a question of both effort and skill. Experience also factors into the results that a digital ad campaign will generate. If you or your team have the time, experience and skill, it makes sense to keep this effort in house. On the other hand digital advertising is a new venture for your business, keep in mind that it is very easy to spend a lot of money with little return when you don't have the right hands on the wheel.
Want to learn more about digital advertising for your business? Contact us.
