Source: Lyfe Marketing
A small business without a digital advertising strategy is like a ship with no captain.
Sounds like an exaggeration?
Not when you consider the stakes involved. More than two billion people are expected to make their purchase online by 2021.
This huge figure includes both products and services.
Looking at numbers alone, there is a large audience online that your small business can tap into.
With the right digital advertising strategy in place, your business can really see an increase in results, whether that’s sales, leads or something else.
A small business starts out with one main goal in mind: to grow. To do that, they need to make people aware of their brand, products and services.
To get their product or service out there, they need effective digital advertising strategies.
The question now is which advertising strategy to use. Perhaps the best answer is the one that best fits the vision and goals of the company.
We’re about to discuss some of the different digital advertising campaigns you can have, but the overarching key-point is here is that you want your campaign to align with your goals.
For example, we wouldn’t recommend investing all of your ad budget into a campaign that grows your followers, if your biggest and most immediate goal is online sales.
See how the campaign and goals don’t align? Having clear goals will help you avoid disconnects like this.
Digital Advertising Campaign Examples
Variety is the name of the game when it comes to digital advertising campaigns. For small business owners, these are the types of campaigns that they can choose from.
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E-mail Campaigns
E-mail campaigns need to be a must for small business advertising campaigns. At the forefront are e-mail newsletters, which are very easy to set up.
You place an opt-in form on your website so potential customers will know the latest updates about your company.
These sign-ups are usually integrated into websites courtesy of e-mail service providers.
But what about those businesses that do not have a website of their own? Can they still use this type of campaign?
Of course. All they need to do is use their Facebook page. If they already have an e-mail list, then they can pair it up with their Facebook page to start a nice little marketing campaign.
The other type of email marketing campaign is a drip sequence campaign, which is a little more complex.
This campaign works if you already have an active, existing email list or customer list.
Drip sequence campaigns allow your emails to be automatically sent out based on certain actions the user did or did not take.
An example of a drip sequence campaign is if someone added your product to their online cart but didn’t check out.
An email can be automatically sent them reminding them of the product and prompting them to check out.
Choosing between a newsletter-based email marketing campaign and a drip sequence campaign just depends on the nature of your business and what makes the most sense for you at this time.
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PPC (Pay-Per-Click)
PPC ads have become a common and effective digital advertising strategy, but they can also be very expensive.
In short, PPC allows your website to rank in the top paid search engine results for certain keywords people are searching on Google.
If your business is using keywords that are considered popular (and other businesses are competing for them), then get ready to spend some top dollar for it.
But if you want to avoid that and still use PPC effectively, you can always use the more affordable longtail keywords.
Longtail keywords offer more options so you can find words that are cheaper and much more suited to your budget.
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Content Marketing
Content marketing is a great option to drive traffic as well as engagement.
In this campaign, you can use almost any kind of content that you have.
Depending on what you have or what you want to use at the moment, you can go with blogs, infographics, videos, and more.
Your content is going to be driven by your keywords. So what you really need here is content that is rich in keywords without losing its quality.
The primary driving force for your content is your blog post. So each post needs those quality longtail keywords that will drive traffic and leads.
The key is to come up with and use great keywords. You can come up with these on your own, or you can use tools for finding great keywords.
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Social Media
We all know the power of social media. It offers unmatched reach that other platforms find hard to rival.
Let us be clear about one thing, though. For social media outreach to work, you need to have the willingness to invest in it. And we are talking both time and money here.
Also important is the exact social media network that you want to focus your efforts on.
Do you want it to be on Facebook? Or maybe you want it on Twitter?
Our advise would be to spend some time researching your target audience to see which platform they’re active on the most!
Depending on which platform you choose, they’re may be organic (unpaid) options, or it may be more of a “pay-to-play” platform.
Regardless, we’d recommend setting aside an advertising budget to help you accomplish your goals on social media.
Benefits of Digital Advertising
There you go, if you want to really drive up the visibility and eventually the sales of your brand, then you can go with one or more of those campaigns.
To continue, it will be best to look at what the top 5 benefits of digital advertising are for small businesses who implement one of those campaigns.
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Cost-Effective
Digital advertising is cost-effective, especially when you compare it with traditional advertising, which is much more expensive.
For small businesses, cost is understandably a big deal. They need to be very careful on how and what they spend their budget on since their resources are limited.
If you are an owner of a small company and you decide to go with tradtional advertising such as print ads, billboards, a TV commercial etc., then you better be ready to spend.
Hiring a graphic designer is a given if you want ads that look like they are professionally designed.
Aside from the expense of hiring a designer, there are also charges for getting the ad featured in a magazine or newspaper.
Now you might want to go the extra mile and have ads on TV or on the radio.
That is great and opens up opportunities, but you also have to understand that costs will skyrocket (and usually not for much ROI, but we’ll get into that later).
You have no such issues if you choose to go digital. It is much more affordable, and there are even instances when it can be completely free of any cost.
Posting on some social media platforms does not cost you anything.
You get the unmatched reach of social media while saving money that you can use for other things.
Even when you do invest in digital advertising with Google ads or Facebook ads etc. the cost per 1,000 impressions or cost per click is infinitely less expensive than paying for a billboard or print ad (which may not reach as many people anyway!).