Using online advertising is a great way to reach more people and target specific customers who are more likely to buy from you. However, with so many options available, how do you know which is the best platform to use in order to achieve your goals?
There are a variety of platforms that you can use to advertise your business. These include local news websites, other websites that are relevant to what your business has to offer, social media networks such as Facebook and even the search engine-giant that is Google. As a local business tight on budget, it’s important you choose the most effective platform in order to reach the right people and ensure your budget is being spent wisely. So consider the following questions designed to help you figure out the best platform your business should be using to advertise online.
1) Who uses each platform?
This question is a key starting point as it helps you to think about different types of customers and how they use various platforms. Define who your ideal customer is and start to adapt your thinking and communications to the way they behave online. Ask yourself: Are my customers young adults or middle-aged? How far are they from my business and would they be willing to travel for my products and services? Where do they spend most of their time on the internet? Consider your customers carefully to understand how they use particular platforms to look for your products or services.
Not only is it important to understand this but it’s also crucial to realise how platforms can help to reach different audiences. For example, if you want to reach a younger audience, you might choose to advertise on Instagram. Alternatively, if you want to reach people with specific interests, advertising on a website relevant to that interest may be more suitable. Or, perhaps you want to reach more local people, in which case advertising on a local news website would be a better option.
2) What exactly do you want to achieve?
Once you’ve thought about your customers and how they use different platforms, set out your goals and objectives to help determine what you want to achieve by advertising online. Keep these in mind to shape a more focused plan that will help you work towards specific aims with your advertising.
By setting your objectives, you can think about which platforms will best serve that goal. For example, if you want to raise awareness of your business you could choose to advertise on a website relevant to your products and services, where your adverts would be seen more widely by people interested in your offering. Whereas, if you want to drive more enquiries to your business, advertising on Google may be more impactful as people use this platform to search for products and services indicating they have more intent to buy.
3) Can you trust the platform?
In a world where ‘fake news’ and extremist content is a reality, it’s important that you question the credibility of different platforms and whether they are trusted by users. Again, ask things like how much control is there over the content displayed? Does it provide quality information?
M&S made the decision to stop advertising on some online platforms due to extremist content issues alone so it shows the importance of trust considerations. Using platforms such as local news websites is a great way to overcome this challenge as the editors have a lot of control over the articles published (unlike Facebook for example) so you can avoid appearing next to anything controversial and protect your business's reputation.
4) How will you be charged to advertise online?
There are a variety of payment models out there for different platforms so having your goals in mind will help you decide which will perform best alongside your budget.
For example, if you’re looking to raise awareness, then paying for impressions (i.e the number of times your advert is seen) will probably be the best option as it’s all about how many people you reach with your advert; the more impressions you have, the bigger the reach you’ll achieve.
However, if you want to drive clicks to your website, then a pay per click model would be more suitable as you’re only paying for people that actually click on to your website.
Or, if you want to drive sales, you could pay per lead (Facebook and Google do this) but this usually requires some technical knowledge to get set up so perhaps not the easiest choice if you’re just starting out.
5) How much support will you receive?
Choosing an online platform should go beyond the point of purchase and you should consider how it will work once you are committed. How much help will the platform provider give you? Are you expected to set it all up and manage your online campaign yourself? Or will they manage it all for you?
These are key questions you must ask before making your decision as it all depends on how much time and knowledge you have dedicated to setting up your online advertising campaigns.
6) How transparent are the platforms?
Online advertising can be complex; it’s important that everything is broken down so that it’s easily understandable and you’re absolutely clear on what you are getting. Different platforms should be able to provide you with advice to help you understand how everything will work from the outset. However, if you’re not sure, ask. A good provider will be more than happy to explain everything for you.
Using online advertising is a great decision to make to help complement your other marketing tactics but in order to get the most out of your adverts and more importantly, your budget, don’t forget there are other key considerations to make before deciding which platform to display your ads. Simply ask yourself these six questions when trying to choose the best online platform to advertise your business as a guide to help you achieve your goals.
To find out how our own online advertising service works and the support and advice you can receive from us, check out our dedicated product page here.
Or, for more information on the benefits of online advertising, you can read the following articles:
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