Online advertising for small businesses.
Online advertising is essential for small business success.
While billboards and store signage are great, online marketing efforts can boost your sales and help scale your business. The key is knowing where to advertise, how to address your consumers, and what types of ads will prove beneficial for your bottom line.
Here’s how online advertising for small businesses can help grow your company and its audience.
Find out what works for your business model
With countless platforms and advertising options, it can be challenging to narrow down the choices. But to make the most of your online advertising budget, it pays to know your audience and determine what will work for your business model.
Creating a consumer profile can help you target your company’s ideal market. Brainstorm what your ideal customer wants, needs, and searches for, and build from there.
You should know these things about your target customer:
- Their lifestyle preferences
- Their age (or a relatively narrow range)
- Geographical location
- Income level
- Interests/passions
- Purchasing patterns and habits
- Buying preferences and trends
Dialing into your customer base ensures that you’re looking for customers in the right places.
For example, plenty of companies use Facebook advertising to address their customer base. But if your ideal customer falls outside the social media platform’s average age range (25 to 34 years), you might want to reconsider where you’re investing your ad budget.
Set specific objectives—and make them measurable
Once you’ve defined your target audience, you’ll want to set specific objectives for your ad campaign. Make sure these are measurable — specific figures you can check before and after implementing ad changes.
Know what you want to achieve, for example, a target number of clicks on an advertisement or a set number of product sales per day. Then, set objectives that are easy to measure.
Of course, one of the benefits of online advertising is that you can see, often in real-time, how many people are viewing your ad and who’s clicking—or not. You might establish objectives relating to how many clicks an ad receives. Or, you might take it a step further and measure based on the sales that result from the ad.
Look at the bigger picture (literally)
When it comes to grabbing your audience’s attention, it helps to look at the bigger picture. By this, we quite literally mean looking at your overall advertising imagery and artwork. Your online ad’s design is essential for attracting the right audience, so this is an important aspect of your marketing efforts.
Investing in a designer can help take your online ad campaign from entry-level to highly professional. Regardless of your company’s size, spending part of your budget on quality graphic design offers a high return on investment. After all, top-notch marketing materials that catch your audience’s eye will more than pay for themselves.
Online advertising for small businesses doesn’t have to cost a lot, however. You can hire professionals to create ads that will convert better than anything you could produce in-house. The up-front cost may be higher, but you’ll save time and effort when your first, second, or third effort doesn’t earn results.
Don’t discount the power of social media
Though social media shouldn’t be your only advertising platform, it should play a significant part in your ad campaign. Choosing online advertising options on platforms that are relevant to your business can be an effective way to target your ideal audience.
Enticing consumers to follow your social media pages (and receive promotional messages) has multiple benefits. First, interacting with your target consumer on social media can reveal more about their likes and dislikes. This means hyper-targeted ad campaigns based on knowing what your customers already enjoy (and spend money on).
Second, by promoting your brand on social media, you’re also drilling down your target market. People who aren’t interested in your product or service will skip over your ads. But the people you really want to sell to will click, and hopefully, stick around.
Ultimately, investing in online advertising on social media is also relatively affordable. Low cost-per-click campaigns can lead to higher levels of success at a fraction of the cost of other advertising options.
What social media platform is best for online advertising?
Choosing a social media platform to focus your online advertising efforts on can be complicated. But once you narrow down your target audience, you’ll have a better idea of where they spend their social media time.
For example, Facebook attracts a wide demographic, but the majority are aged 25 to 34, according to Statista. At the same time, Facebook users’ genders are fairly evenly split, with slightly more female users than male.
In contrast, Instagram users tend to be younger overall, with the majority ranging between 18 and 24 years old. At the same time, Instagram is an excellent platform for brands with a global consumer base. Along with 120 million users from the US, Instagram also enjoys 88 million users in India, 82 million in Brazil, and 64 million in Indonesia.
Knowing your audience is the first step toward hyper-targeting your social media marketing. Then you can find out what platforms you’re most likely to find your consumers on.
Depending on your brand (and product or service), blogging can also be a lucrative advertising effort. By sharing brand insights, highlighting new products and features, and engaging with customers on your website, you can use your company blog as an advertising boost.
Ready to start advertising your small business online?
While traditional advertising can be costly and time-consuming, online advertising is both affordable and highly efficient. With the ability to target your ideal consumers, boost web traffic, and inspire loyalty in your existing customer base, online advertising is a significant benefit to your business model.
The internet can prove an invaluable tool toward achieving advertising results. But if your company is just starting out—or you need support to improve your online advertising efforts —contact Ketchup Marketing for expert advice or complete our online form.