Recent studies suggest we see up to 5,000 ads a day. As a business owner, that's an unsettling statistic.
How do you cut through all the garbage out there to make your brand known? How, in a world full of advertising, do you get through to potential customers?
It's no secret, the days of traditional advertising are dying. However, as the new world continues to emerge, the benefits of advertising online are making themselves known. It is the present and future of effective marketing.
This year, 79% of Americans are on some form of social media. This means roughly 8 out of 10 people are spending time online, connected.
By tapping into the online marketing scene, you're making yourself available to the vast majority of consumers in the country.
Most of us have transitioned to streaming TV and movie companies such as Netflix or Hulu, and prefer apps such as Spotify and Pandora rather than listening to the radio. Using local TV and radio stations can be beneficial, however, those are dying trends.
Online advertising extends your reach exponentially. Instead of being limited to the number of fliers you print or the number of people who hear your radio commercial, you can potentially reach everyone in your area.
If your business isn't limited by location, you can also extend your reach to distant locations, rather than being stuck marketing only to local consumers.
Online advertising platforms, such as Facebook, allow you to target a specific demographic of people.
This is truly one of the greatest benefits of advertising online. You can choose an age, area, gender, and even discriminate towards consumers based on what their interests and hobbies are.
Targeting specific consumers gives you the biggest bang for your buck. It prevents you from wasting time and money on advertising that would otherwise fall on deaf ears.
Advertising online gives you the option to use whatever media and format you want. It is completely customizable and in your control.
Here are just a few examples of what you can do:
The benefits of advertising online versus using printed advertising or TV and radio commercials are profound and numerous. Most importantly, you're not committed to anything and you can be as creative as you want.
If something's not working, you can pull it and move on. Advertising online allows you to be fluid and adaptive in your marketing.
The average radio commercial can cost anywhere from $200 to $5,000 a week, depending on creation, editing, location, length of the commercial, airtime, and which station you choose.
Alternatively, depending on your advertising strategy, you can technically market for free.
If you use your existing friends on Facebook, for example, and run a competition for a free meal at your restaurant for likes and shares, you can increase brand awareness and all it will cost you is the price of a free dinner.
Your friends will share it with their friends, their friends will share it with their's and so on.
Alternatively, you can (and probably should) use paid-advertising to market to everyone in the area. You can do this for a single dollar a day or put as much as you want into it.
Social media marketing, such as Facebook advertising is incredibly impactful and allows you to specifically target demographics as well as log data pertaining to the efficacy of each ad.
Social media advertising also allows you to be interactive with potential customers, giving you space to develop a relationship with them. For example, offer a 30% first-time buyer discount for anyone who likes and follows your Facebook page.
Additionally, you can use social media to nudge customers toward subscribing to your email list.
Email lists can be even more effective than social media marketing.
Why?
Because email lists are comprised of people who have already subscribed to you or bought from you. You've already won them over, all you have to do is continue to entice them to buy from you. Email lists are cost-effective, laser-pointed ads directed at people who already know and like you. The hardest part is building up your email list. However, that can be as easy as clever social media advertising.
Advertising online helps you generate greater brand recognition. Brand recognition and awareness is everything in the world of marketing. For example, when you think of adhesive bandages, you think "Band-Aid," which is a brand name, not the actual product. Similarly, when we need to research something, we "Google it."
The more people who see your brand on social media, side-bar ads, and email campaigns, the more you will become implanted in their minds.
One of the biggest benefits of advertising online is its long-term modality.
Because of online advertising's cost-effective, adaptable, and versatile nature, it can be done on a large scale and for long periods of time. In fact, it should be.
Long-term modalities in advertising feed into brand awareness, as well as increasing your effectiveness in marketing. The key is to only pursue the advertising routes that grant you the best ROI, or return on investment.
This is where analytics come into play.
Of all the benefits of advertising online, perhaps the most important is analytic feedback that tracks your marketing statistics.
For example, Facebooks ads track how many engagements your ads get, including clicks, shares, and likes. It also tracks the demographics of said engagements. Analytic feedback will tell you how much you spend per post-engagement, so you know how you're spending your money. Finally, your business Facebook page will tell you how many people are visiting your page, what time they're active on it, and how many post engagements there are. Based on this feedback system, you can decide where you need to put more energy and where to pull it back from.
Who is Rev?
» Restaurant Marketing Consultant
» He helps restaurants & brands with their marketing
» Supports hundreds of restaurants to help them attract and retain customers.
» ~100k+ followers on his restaurant marketing oriented Instagram, follow him today for great tips and #restaurantmarketing content!
Facebook and Instagram ads can take a lot of time or money to do right. You'll either spend hours each week perfecting your ads or you will pay a third party thousands of dollars per month to do so.
Our webinar's are hosted by David "Rev" Ciancio the Head of Revenue Marketing at Branded Strategic.
Check out his latest webinar here: https://bit.ly/3oZzyq8
Targetable automates all of this for you for $149 per store per month. You'll execute effective Facebook & Instagram advertising in just 10-20 minutes per week. As shown in the image below, Targetable will provided a fully drafted campaign that includes:
Start advertising smarter today:
