Online paid advertising is the one unique form of advertising that accurately identifies and targets customers who raise their hands to say, “I’m interested in what you have to offer.” Much different than television, radio, magazines and direct mail where we have to wait for the end user to respond. These forms of online advertising effectively round out marketing strategies where online presence is common for the target audience and online advertising firms may help enhance the process.
Banner and skyscraper advertisements, on the whole, are in a sharp decline, but the techniques and tools are changing and improving with time. Paid search, keyword advertising, content marketing and online display advertising are extremely cost effective when used correctly. This is especially true as Search providers begin to offer “Enhanced Campaigns” which effectively bring mobile and retargeting into the mix.
Sounds great, how does it work?
Whether you’re used to Google, Bing or Yahoo, you’ve become familiar with the advertisements that show up around the real results from your search query. This is a common starting point for online advertising called paid search. Sometimes called Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, it’s only a start.
You’ve seen the ads that follow you around the internet, the thumbnails that show up on the bottom right side of your Facebook and Linkedin pages. This is all paid online advertising. The tools used today extend far beyond results on search pages alone. As part of an online marketing strategy, brands or companies will pay for or bid on keywords and placements of display advertisements that relate to the products or services they provide. The search engines, their display networks and social media sites deliver the right ads to the right people on the web or on their smart phone.
Does the return warrant the spend?
Online advertising is ideal for marketers who want to pay for performance. You should try it with or without a marketing firm behind you. It’s cost effective to start a campaign. We’ve found that small campaigns grow. As you run your strategy out, you’ll notice that it becomes time consuming.
With multiple campaigns and hundreds, thousands or even millions of keywords being analyzed. Paid search and online advertising can quickly become unruly when you have other work to do. Managing the keyword research, competitive bid auctions, quality scores, retargeting, extensions, demographics, landing pages, and analytics will often grow into a real job of it’s own.
This is a job that must be done because the return warrants the spend. You’ll need a partner to help when you can’t afford not to show up on the first page your client is on.
Choosing Online Advertising Firm
Digital and online agencies will often provide Paid Search or PPC Management services. There seem to be a growing number of them. Some good some bad. Print companies are buying or making ad agencies to keep afloat. TV, Radio, Newspaper and other Media companies are expanding to include the service as well. Advertisements from “Experts” are everywhere including your email.
So how to choose? Finding a reputable company isn’t time consuming. Listen to what each provider is telling you. Where are they? Will they know your market or just plug in stock content and cookie cutter campaigns. Make sure that they are qualified to do the work and not trying to sell you services you don’t need. Remember, cookie cutter solutions get companies in trouble and if the firm has a core competency in another field, they have to feed that machine.
What does your gut tell you? Is the budget appropriate to the results expected? Are you expecting to work with an online advertising firm but being pulled toward a tactic or marketing platform that doesn’t make sense for your clients? Did they check to see if online advertising would provide you with sufficient return? How are their references?
What do we do?
Holistic Online Advertising, HOA, is an organic marketing process our Paid Search and Display Advertising specialists implement to gain deep understanding of your perspective. We perform extensive campaign, keyword and competitive research to ensure that the people just like your best customers are engaging with your ads on their mobile smart phones, desktops, laptops, & tablets. The expertise we bring will help you with research, campaign setup, platform management, & ongoing research to ensure the best results from the money you spend. We’ll help you enhance:
- Search Engine marketing on Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search providers relevant to your industry
- Display and PPC campaigns across all ad networks and relevant social media.
- Implement best practices and fully utilize tools like retargeting, extensions and enhanced campaigns
- Create effective landing pages and web sites using Search Engine Optimization, SEO, best practices.
HOA is a natural way to create consumer-centric campaigns for paid media marketing. HOA enables marketers driven by data and results to engage and convert their target audiences and meet business goals. HOA allows marketers to engage the consumer throughout the consumer buying cycle.
If you are interested in discussing how Real Big Marketing is able to enhance your program, please send us a note, or give us a call for a free consultation (517) 358-6794. We appreciate the opportunity to support you.