An Expert Example of Digital Ads-What They Are and How to Use Them
Ever since the explosion of the internet, traditional advertising practices are not all that businesses are focusing on in order to put themselves in front of their target audience. With the rise of digital marketing, marketing strategy has been able to evolve, and businesses have many more avenues to explore in order to promote themselves effectively and attract new customers.
Marketing campaigns have changed greatly in recent years, and some businesses are lagging behind. If you’re looking for an example of digital ads and how they can be used, look no further. We’ll cover the best of the best, and give you an expert look at how to use them out in the wild.
What Are the Benefits of Digital Advertising?
This may shock you, but digital advertising provides way more opportunities to businesses than traditional advertising.
For one thing, the pricing of digital ads is way more reasonable, making ad campaigns more accessible to small businesses compared to traditional advertising. They are more cost-effective because digital advertising typically operates on a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) model, or one similar to PPC, in which you are only paying when someone performs the action you desire.
Digital ads are also much more measurable than traditional ads. Digital ads are data-driven, meaning that it is very easy for those running a digital ad campaign to obtain certain metrics that will help them understand how successful the campaign has been. These metrics include:
- Conversion rates
- Impressions
- Clicks
- Outreach
- Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
- And many others
Being able to attract users to a landing page is crucial for an ecommerce business, and online ads are able to achieve this. Whether you see them on a website, mobile app, or in search engine results, there are a plethora of avenues you can use to fit digital ads into your marketing strategy. Using a compelling call-to-action (CTA) to bring users in will seal the deal and boost your conversion rates in a big way. .
Digital Advertising Examples
Just like traditional advertising, there are many different types of digital advertising that help increase sales or brand awareness in different ways. The type of ad you use depends largely on where you intend for your ad to be placed, and what you are trying to promote.
Display Ads
Display advertising is the most common form of digital advertising, and most closely relates to traditional advertising. Display ads are commonly seen on websites in the form of banner ads or images in ad spaces. Advertisers will look to put ads for their products on websites that relate to the product they are selling. For example, a company that sells cooking utensils would place display ads on a cooking blog.
Main Benefits of Display Ads
Display ads have the main purpose of boosting brand awareness, and they are very effective at doing so. Display ads tend to lead to a boost in organic searches for your brand, and can lead to more conversions. They also tend to help boost the effectiveness of search ads, due to the increase in traffic.
Video Ads
Most video ads are found on social media sites like TikTok, SnapChat, or YouTube – and they can be extremely effective when done right.
If you aren’t crafting video content, then you really should be. Especially when it comes to YouTube, since it’s the second most popular search engine worldwide, and one of the most popular websites in general. A great way to use video advertising is by interweaving it into high-quality content so that it comes across as a native ad rather than an invasive one. Though placing a well-designed ad before a popular YouTube video can also get you plenty of conversions.
Main Benefits of Video Ads
As stated previously, YouTube is the second most popular search engine in the world. This translates into the potential for a large number of people to see your video advertisement if placed before a YouTube video.
Search Ads
Search advertising, which is also referred to as Search Engine Marketing (SEM), takes advantage of the search engine user’s intent to make a purchase. As the name suggests, search advertising promotes your product or service via the search engine results page (SERP).
In order to be effective, you will need to understand Search Engine Optimization (SEO) basics. Advertisers will select keywords that closely relate to the product or service they are trying to sell, and will pay search engines, such as Google or Bing, to boost their website or product’s webpage.
Main Benefits of Search Ads
Because you are utilizing keywords that align with the consumer’s intent to make a purchase, search ads tend to be highly effective. Having your products or services appear at the top of a SERP when the potential consumer searches a related keyword will often lead to a click, and many times a conversion. They are also cost-effective, as they tend to operate via the PPC model.
Social Media Ads
As the name suggests, social media ads are found on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok. Social media advertising can contain display or video ads, and serves as a method of continuing to increase brand awareness. Consumers can often view social media ads as more interactive or personal, which can help them create more conversions.
With the prominence of social media in today’s society, it is an important tool that businesses need to leverage in order to have an effective marketing strategy, and therefore an effective ad campaign. A commonly used tool to leverage social media advertising is Meta Ads (formerly known as Facebook Ads), which allows you to manage advertising on Facebook and Instagram ads.
Main Benefits of Social Media Ads
Social media platforms allow businesses to reach vast numbers of potential customers with ease due to the widespread use of these platforms. Not only this, but you are also able to target your ads towards individuals in your target audience, being able to target your social media ads at specific demographics among other criteria.
Another key benefit is that you have the choice to utilize paid advertising on social media, or you can choose to simply post advertisements on your social media profiles at no cost.
Another big benefit of social media ads is that you can use a wide variety of ad formats, such as video ads or text ads. They also can easily fit into your social media content marketing strategy.
Tips to Help Make Your Digital Ads More Effective
Watch Your Ad Spend
Plan your budget with the intent of maximizing the value you get out of your ads. Different advertising platforms will yield varying results depending on many factors outside of your control. Because of this, what a competitor allocates their ad spend to may not be the best idea for you to copy. Take the time to discover how you need to budget your ad spend to get the best results.
Optimize Your Ad Copy
If you want consumers to find your ads and the websites you have placed them on, you will need to optimize the ad copy that you use. Perform keyword research and put focus on SEO to make sure your ads are found by search engine users.
Make Your Content Compelling
At the end of the day, you can perfect your budget and optimize all of your copy, but if you don’t put forward high quality content for your ads, they simply won’t reap the rewards you are looking for. Now, that’s not to say that you should not still focus on the other aspects of a digital ad campaign that we have already explored– they are still crucial elements. However, you cannot focus solely on the technical aspects and expect great results. High quality content will always be the path to catching a potential customer’s attention.
Should You Start Using Digital Ads?
Long story short: yes, you should. Which should be obvious after the example of digital ads we’ve shown you.
In this day and age, traditional methods of advertising and word of mouth simply are not enough anymore. Gone are the days of billboards and ads in the newspaper. It’s easy to see given the many examples of digital ads used by businesses today that it is certainly the new normal.
Now more than ever, businesses need to have a strong digital advertising strategy in order to truly flourish. Being able to leverage online advertising, whether it be done manually by yourself or by leveraging a tool such as Google Ads, in order to promote your business, get clicks and turn them into conversions is what will be key to your success going forward.
There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to developing a digital marketing strategy, and it is easy to become overwhelmed if you are not experienced with online marketing. If that’s the case for you, look to us at Lift Marketing! Get in touch with us and we can get started.
