Why you should consider online advertising

Ifesinachi Okpagu

When launching a product or promoting a business, many entrepreneurs have a variety of advertising options and channels which help increase visibility of their products. Advertising is great, but it is one thing to spend money achieving great results and quite another getting those desired results.

Online advertising also presents its own challenges and successes, but it is one option that has proven over time to be productive in addressing the needs of both small and big businesses. In fact, many business owners have turned to online advertising alone to realise their goals.

Let’s see how online advertising can benefit your business:

Flexible ad spend

Online advertising does not discriminate in terms of advertising budget. Unlike offline advertising options which generally require a larger marketing budget, for example television and radio commercials and jingles, online advertising budget can be little enough to make the small business owner happy.

It also offers a business owner the opportunity to pause a campaign if it is not achieving the desired results which, works for small business owners as well. Online advertising offers better flexible options and ad spend against its counterpart, offline advertising.

Targeted audience

With online advertising, you can narrow your reach so you spend money converting and connecting with the people that really matter. When creating a campaign, marketers usually take into cognizance the audience breakdown, but reaching the right audience can be a challenge. With offline advertising, the most a marketer can do is focus on the message and channels to reach the desired audience, but with online advertising, one can focus directly on choosing the right demographics and channels which will have maximum impact on the marketing campaign.

For example, a business owner selling baby products locally, who has identified mothers, 25-40years, as primary audience can really select those figures when creating a campaign. The business owner can also select location as narrow as the city of business location when creating a campaign.

Connect directly with audience

Depending on the action you desire, your targeted audience take, you can connect directly with them with online advertising. For example, a campaign that drives traffic to a lead-capturing page (a page where you collect contact information about your visitors) can provide you with relevant information that will help you follow up on potential leads and help you convert them to paying customers. Certain online platforms also give you the opportunity of chatting directly with visitors who engage with your advert.

Track, tweak and monitor campaign

This is one of the most beneficial advantages online advertising offers. With online advertising, you can perform three actions seamlessly – track, tweak and monitor the effectiveness of your campaign. These help you ensure that that your ad spend does not go to waste capturing the wrong leads. Online advertising also offers you the opportunity of creating multiple campaigns which you can then monitor to determine which of them is the most effective. Upon getting that result, you can pause the less effective ads and boost the most effective so you get more value for your ad spend.

Smaller marketing teams

The team involved in creating an online ad campaign is much smaller than in offline advertising campaigns. In fact, you can be the only member of your marketing team!This means that you spend less and easily cut down on challenges associated with bureaucracy and long chains. It also ensures that the message is not watered down and is targeted at meeting the needs of your audience.

Viral/ earned media exposure

Online advertising also gives you the opportunity to create viral campaigns affording you the opportunity to tap into a larger audience without necessarily spending money on that. Earned media is essentially online word of mouth, usually seen in the form of ‘viral’ tendencies, mentions, shares, reposts, reviews, recommendations, or content picked up by third party sites (Titan-Seo). A more comprehensive online strategy also targets this niche to ‘spread the word’ even further. Though viral campaigns can also be an attribute of offline campaigns, online campaigns usually have a wider reach.

Future recommendations

An online advertising campaign can help you make better recommendations for future campaigns. This means that you spend fewer resources, especially money and time, on research work. It also suggests to you the breakdown of people who inquired about your products and engaged with your campaign; valuable information for predicting the direction future campaigns should take.

In conclusion, online advertising is as effective as you want it to be, especially when compared with the values it offers against offline advertising. Understanding the different elements that can help you increase your success rate will help you plan an online advertising campaign that brings more visitors to your doorstep.