Advertising Online for your Business

Advertising your business online can boost your sales and website traffic if done the correct way. There are many different ways and places to advertise online. Already have online ads? You may need to do some updates for today’s mobile world.  Creating online ads has a good portion of planning before you place an advertisement. Learn all the types and best way to design your advertisement that works for your business.

Types of Advertising Online

• Native – This is the new big way of advertising online. This form complements the website it is on. It will be relevant to the content and/or audience on the website.
• Banner – This type has been a go-to for the longest time but has become obsolete. We are now in a mobile world and banner ads do not fit the screens most people are using.
  • 54% of users don’t click banner ads because they don’t trust them.
  • Native ads are viewed 53% more than banner ads, according to Dedicated Media.
• Search – Most popular example of this is Google Adwords. This type of ad shows up from search engines using Cost-per-click (CPC) and Pay-per-click (PPC)
• Screen Filled – These are mostly for mobile use and take over the entire screen. Usually these only show up every 10 screens or so to not overwhelm user.
• Social Media – Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest have options to create ads, sponsored posts, or promoted posts. This can be organic or paid. Pew Research estimates that 74% of all online adults use social networking sites.
  • Facebook Ads
  • Facebook Sponsored Posts
  • Twitter Ads
  • Twitter Promoted Tweets
  • Pinterest Promoted Pins
• Pop-Up – This is a very popular but described as most annoying. This consists of a small pop-up window upon opening of site and possibly when leaving.

Now that you know what types are out there how do you design an advertisement that works. 

Target Your Audience – Just as you do with just about everything else with your business you need to know who your audience are.

• Geotargeting – Target your audience by country, state, city or zip-code. The closer to home your business is to a customer the more likely they will find your advertisement useful. Find out where your current customers are located using your websites analytics and tailor ads to that location.
• Contextual – Place you advertisement next to content that involves the same keywords and concepts your audience is browsing. Use your websites analytics to see the best keywords for your site and/or products or services. 
  • If a customer is reading a blog site about ‘running’ having your ad with your running shoes would get more traffic than putting it on a blog site about movie reviews.
• Behavioral – This uses analytics and data collecting to target specific users. It tailors to someone by a combination of their searches, website views, and products researched. Although this is highly controversial type but seems to be effective.

Design – After finding your target audience you can decide what you want your advertisement should look like. Make sure you experiment with these a bit. Use different colors, fonts, sizes, and types until you find what appeals to your customers.

• Images – Like you have always heard a picture is worth a million words which is very helpful when using such a small space to get your point across. Make sure they are eye-catching and keep it simple to draw your audience in.
• Videos – This seems to be a growing idea. Have a video of the commercial of your product or service, customer testimonials, or demonstrations. This has been commonly called annoying especially for those listening to music or at work.
  A User Tip: Best technique I have seen is the rollover effect. It only plays when the mouse is rolled over it and it pauses when the mouse is not on it.
• Text – Never use only text on an ad. It looks cheap and crude and almost looks more like a scam. Instead balance it well with your image.
• Urgency – Create a sense of urgency with your ad to get more immediate acts. Examples being time limited coupons, text of “Lowest Price”, or express the stock quantity (even though you may be restocking).
• SMS – With mobile being so big, using SMS texting with business has become very big. A Taco Bell example is “Text ‘TBICE’ to 30364 for a free Frutista Freeze with any food purchase.” Taco Bell sent out in excess of 29,500 SMS coupons, and was so well liked that at the end of the 5 week campaign, 93% of those SMS subscribers were still subscribed to the campaign. This keeps customers interested in your company as long as they are subscribed.

Make it Responsive – Users expect some sort of interactivity with the advertisement.

• • Always have your ad clickable, leading to a page, video, or website
    • Try it now. Click the image.
  • Have ad expand upon mouse rollover
  • Use a Text box to enter sweepstakes or subscribe to emails
  • Have a button leading to product or webpage
    • Try it now. Click the button. 
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Use Day Parting – Often you can pick the time your advertisement is displayed for optimal your audience. Depending on what type of product or service you are making an ad for will depend on the time you may want it displayed.

Examples:

• A restaurant would advertise during afternoon hours when users may be looking for a place to eat.
• A company running weekend sales would run their ad all day Friday.

Now that you have your advertisement created, where should you place it?

Other Websites – You can find and partner with relevant blog sites and news sites when using native advertisements. You can also partner with a mobile display advertising partner (such as Mojiva or Google DoubleClick) that does the work of finding sites for you.

Apps – Depending on your product or service reaching a range of people who use applications on their phone can create a lot of traffic. These are usually the screen filled ads that only show up every 10 screens or so.

• Some mobile ad platforms

Search Engines – This is one of the most popular probably because of how popular search engines have become. Placing Ads at MSN, Yahoo, and Google can be very efficient.

Sources:
http://dealnerd.net/10-types-of-online-advertising-and-when-you-should-use-them/
http://www.appia.com/blog/6-tips-for-building-highly-effective-mobile-ad-campaigns
http://www.pr2.com/webads3.htm