Along with shrinking the world and bringing us all closer together, it’s also taken advertising to the next level.
To give you a complete understanding of what digital advertising is, we’ll be taking a look at its different sub-topics. But first: Why would you not just stick with traditional advertising?.
The Essential Introduction To Digital Advertising
You might be a die-hard traditional advertising advocate, who’s skeptical about all this modern stuff. Don’t worry; we’ll have you excited about the wonders of online advertising in no time!
Incorporating digital advertising into your business doesn’t mean you have to let the old ways die either – traditional and digital advertising can compliment each other perfectly! In order to do that though, it’s important to understand the differences between the two.
The Cost
Price is one of the most – if not the most important factor when comparing anything, and unsurprisingly, digital advertising is cheaper.
Of course, some forms of digital advertising can be costly. With that said, social media ads are nowhere near the amount of money newspapers and magazines ask from you.
Plus, there’s no guarantee the newspaper you placed your ad in will ever reach the hands of your target audience!
Determining Demographics
There’s no way for you to tell if your billboard advertising anti-ageing cream is being seen by older ladies, or by men between the ages of 18 and 25.
Of course, you can make an educated guess based on location, but it’s by no means a science – unlike digital advertising.
For this reason, traditional advertising often works best when it seems like a ‘one size fits all’ type of product, or when it’s something people really can’t do without.
If you’re trying to market an exceptionally niche product then I’m afraid you’re going to have a tough time getting off the ground – or you would, if you didn’t have digital advertising.
Thanks to Google, determining demographics really has become a science. You can view exactly who’s seeing your ads, bounce rate, which ads are performing well, and more!
Which leads to another issue traditional advertising has; It’s much harder to determine if your marketing campaign is working.
An influx of sales might indicate that you’ve got a good ad, but it could also be down to dozens of other factors. Digital advertising allows you to cut out the guesswork and prevents you from tossing your money away.
The benefits of digital advertising are crystal clear, but remember that traditional advertising continues to be the perfect accompaniment.
For many people, the reason they don’t delve too far into digital advertising is fear; It can seem like the most complicated task ever, but that couldn’t be further from the truth (although you will need plenty of free time to do it properly.)
Sub categories Of Digital Advertising
Before we get into why digital advertising is so easy, let’s briefly touch upon its different sub-categories – this will help give you a better understanding of how the pieces fit together – and how you can turn them to your advantage.
PPC Advertising
In layman’s terms, PPC (pay-per-click) advertising is a marketing model in which advertisers pay a fee whenever someone clicks their ad.
Search engine advertising is one of the most common kinds of PPC, as it gives advertisers the opportunity to bid for a place on Google’s front page – the importance of which goes without saying!
Banner Ads
Unlike some other forms of digital advertising, banner ads are image-based, not text-based.
A banner ad can be a .jpg, .png or even a .gif, meaning they can be static or animated. You can think of them as posters for your online store’s window.
In real life, when someone sees an attractive image in a window, they might head into the shop – the same is true online.
A customer sees a banner add that takes their fancy, and with a single click, they’re taken to your store or landing page.
SEO
A complex mathematical algorithm judges your website, and good SEO ensures that it views your site favourably.
You can think of Google as one giant library, and the algorithm is the librarian; It’s the librarians job to filter out irrelevant books, and point readers to content they’re looking for.
If Google decides your site is good, it will cause it to show before other websites when people search for a term related to the website.
There are many ways to improve SEO, but a few of the most common ones are:
- Pay Attention To Your Titles
You may think that titles don’t matter. They’re hidden away in the code after all.
The truth is that the algorithm rummages around through everything, code included. If a title is relevant to a search term, you’ll reap the rewards – as a quick example, let’s say someone searches for “Tips to lose weight in 2019”, and your title is “Top 10 ways to lose weight in 2019.” Yep, it’s that simple. Finding keywords that people are looking for and that doesn’t have too much competition is not quite so easy.
- Links Are Your Friend
If you can get many high-quality sites linking to you, Google will see this as a recommendation. The more reputable sites you can get recommending you, the more Google will reward you.
- Watch Your Words
Ideally, longer content is better, and once again, it’s important that your keywords are relevant.
You’ve got an issue if you ramble on about different kinds of tires for a few pages when you’re supposed to be focusing on the brand of car.
Keep content lengthy and relevant if you want to impress the algorithm.
You should now have an understanding of what basic digital advertising is and why it matters so much. If you’re interested in delving into digital advertising yourself, then here are some helpful tools!
However; if you seriously want to get into digital advertising, then there’s still a long road ahead of you.
There’s no doubt that it’s a time-consuming process, so why not let someone else bear the burden for you? Here at Piccana, we are masters of digital advertising.