Advertising is the age-long practice involving the reservation of a spot or space with which to promote a product. The product here includes goods, services, even ideas, and causes. Online advertising is often referred to as online marketing or digital marketing since its primary effect is to get a product into public notice, to pull traffic into the highlighted usefulness of the product, and consequently increase its sales.
In the olden days, advertising used to convey a much broader definition. It was everywhere and included everything. From people's look to even their attitudes, their customs, etc. were considered as an advertisement. However, this rather vague description of advertising wasn't the only view in town. Certain other views pointed to a more commercial advantage of advertising. People began to appreciate advertising as sponsored art.
Yet it wasn't until the late 1800s when advertising techniques took on a more persuasive edge. The print media saw an upload of resources. Billboards, newspapers, and magazines were everywhere. Advertising had finally become big business, assuming a larger than life status in the months to come. Modern-day advertising can be traced to have taken off from here. Services and resources became expensive & advertising became a big deal of sponsored art. John E. Kennedy termed it 'the salesmanship in print.' These definitions taken together helped the then changing world better understand advertising and how it works.
Online advertising is a marketing strategy that spreads the word of a product or service to the entire world. It merely is salesmanship on the Internet and at the world level. Again this 'salesmanship' definition returns to separate it further from traditional advertising, which though often targeted at the whole world, is quite slow to perform.
First noticed in an ad post at the end of 1994, now fully developed, online advertising gets delivered by four main methods: display advertising, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), social media advertising, and email advertising.
Display advertising is the type where advertising messages are delivered using mediums like floating banner ads, flash ads, video ads, wallpaper ads, even pop-ups that hit you when you are browsing the internet. This method, while delivering success, is practical and straightforward, and not as complicated as the other two.
SEM, however, is the most complex of the three methods and employs the systematic use of specific keyword and analytical tools that index a product ahead of the competition on search engine result pages (SERPs) during a simple search. You can spot them on SERPs as pay per click (PPC) ads, or cost per thousand impressions (CPM) ads. Search Engine Marketing is yet another topic that we have covered in detail here.
Social media advertising is not only the most accepted method, but it is also the most effective direct traffic advertising. You can call it online advertising's most direct target advertising. It employs the instant sharing of content, text, images, audio, video, audio-visuals, as well as information of products (goods, services, ideas, causes) with a more direct or selected target audience. It is an advertisement on Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter, which generates one of the farthest reach experiences of our time, with consequently high commercial yield. It is also here you can find native advertising, that is, those sponsored listing at the end of blog posts.
We have chosen to explain email advertising separately because of its slight difference to display advertising. With 93% B2B marketers using email marketing method for continuous communication, it has still proven its importance. Also, it is one of the cheapest and fastest forms of advertising, making it a very efficient sales strategy for products of all kinds and ranges. When accepted, email advertising offers a fantastic way to build customer loyalty.
There are also other online advertising techniques like retargeting by the use of tracking cookies, behavioral targeting- which conveys ads relevant to the customer's most recent searches and geotargeting to deliver tailored advertisements to suit a customer's particular geography. Each of these delivery methods, whether organic or paid, has proven advantages in quicker product visibility and a wider reach than all means of traditional advertising put together. So, it won't be a lie if we say, the different types of online advertising offer flexibility and a success rate that is almost assured.
For reasons of offering different advantages, you will need to choose the ideal online advertising solution for your product carefully. It is, therefore, these advantages we will highlight for the remainder of this article.
Let us consider some of the benefits of online advertising techniques, enforced by its 24 hours coverage, as they differ from their traditional counterparts.
With online advertising, you don't have to worry about logistics and mobility since only digital data input is required. A modern laptop is usually enough to start a campaign. This is a significant advantage for SMEs seeking to compete with the big organizations at affordable costs. From the start through progress monitoring, all you need the most time to execute a campaign in full, you can find inside the laptop. Although a sizable investment goes into purchasing modern laptops, it is still considered affordable, drawn against the cost of reaching customers via regular traditional means.
This reason should come tops really if not that the first advantage considers starting up, the beginning process. With all the parameters in place, advertising online can open you up to a global audience from your position on your living room sofa. It can hit maximum reach with tested technical solutions like PPC and CPM, and revenue continues to pour in. Success here is almost guaranteed.
Mostly advertising campaigns result in a good fan base if indeed the service or product is good enough. This fan-base spread all over the world is of real-life people. Real-life people are always talking about their experiences, and sharing their thoughts about life, and about even the product. A few mentions might not be much as you consider, but when hundreds or thousands are talking, it usually results in brilliant success.
Unlike traditional methods of advertising, advertising online offers the opportunity of different ad types at a finger tip's choosing. You can switch platforms anytime you consider appropriate for the campaign.
Digital marketing is very transparent. It shows how things are adding up. Before online advertising came to be, it was impossible to fully appreciate how everything in a campaign progressed, more so to measure the effectiveness of that advertising solution. With online advertising, one can see the entire analytics like impressions in PPC, how often a click comes in, its costs, the ad reach, and conversion rate.
Social media advertising provides considerable benefits in its unique method, getting on one-on-one terms with its fan-base. It offers one of the fastest means of customer engagement known to humanity. As a tool for enhancing customer relations, social media has become an efficient channel for real-time problem resolution towards customer satisfaction.
Advertising online accords the advantage of choosing how much money you want to spend on your campaign. It places you truly in charge of the future of your company. In traditional advertising, once created a campaign, can not be changed because the costs to do that are usually high.
Yet another one of online marketing's unique offerings. Direct targeting is the technique of sending ad messages to a selected audience. It is is the dream of every marketer while creating a campaign to reach the right people. Traditional methods, where they even do, are usually tricky and slow, yielding vague campaign results in the end.
When digital marketing came, things began to take place faster, saving time. Time isn't the only thing to benefit directly from advertising online. Most of the advantages highlighted above are a factor of improvement from an older system or way. In addition to these, online advertising can improve the conversion rate of your campaign. It also enhances business chances. With the saving of time comes an increase in business.
When a company increases sales, the profits increase too. Expansion takes place, and the business grows.
Without any remorse, time is money. Saving it often transcends into revenue and profit. In advertising, delays can hold grave consequences. The faster, more reliable, very efficient techniques are better than the traditional approaches, which seem somewhat static. Despite this, each method has its unique advantage and should be employed as necessary. In any case, our focus on online advertising is justified today, in what it means, and how it benefits the advertising world in general.
