Advertising online can be stressful. Whether you’ve grown up in the digital age, or you hate to even put hands on a smartphone or computer, the world of digital advertising can be strenuous. There are a lot of places you can advertise and thousands of more places that want to tell you how to do it.
IS ONLINE ADVERTISING WORTH IT FOR ALASKAN BUSINESSES?
Not only is the millennial generation getting more disposable income to spend with your business, but they also do more digital research than any generation before them. Even if your audience is aged from 20-40, previous generations are engaging more with the Internet every year. This means you can get your exact market and bring them right to your business before they even leave their homes.
WHAT ARE THE ADVERTISING OPTIONS?
There are three main options when it comes to digital advertising: organic content, social media ads, and cookie ads.
ORGANIC CONTENT
These can be posts on social media or blogs on a website. It’s something that shows activity for your business, but it’s also searchable. That way, whether your customer is searching on a search engine like Google or a social media website like Facebook, they can find you by the content that you talk about. Producing regular organic content is also very beneficial for your relevance score that ad platforms give you.
The relevance score is calculated by the ad platform and is based on a calculation of many variables. This includes the quality of organic content, the amount of information provided on the account, and many other numbers depending on the platform. They then use this number to rank ads in the ad marketplace, so the goal of improving organic content directly improves how your ads will perform.
SOCIAL MEDIA ADS
These ads are very platform specific. When placing an ad on Facebook, it will only be seen on Facebook. That may sound restrictive, but it’s actually very beneficial. Social media websites know a lot about their users because their users tell them all about themselves, not just in their profiles but how they use their accounts. Because of this knowledge advertisers can target the exact market they need to hit without wasting money on groups of people that wouldn’t ever be interested in your product.
COOKIE ADS
No, these aren’t just ads for cookies (but they could be). “Cookie” is a programming term. Essentially a user connects with information, and that information is the cookie. It’s just like trick or treating. Let’s say you go to one house and they give you a cookie. You go to another house, and they give you a chocolate. Using analytics, when search engines look in your bag of candy they can see each type of information as you’ve traveled around the internet.
The same theory applies here. Once the user has shown interest in something, they go about the internet looking at more information. As an advertiser, we are only interested when the consumer is interested in certain things. For example, when placing one of these ads we tell the platform that we want to show to people aged 20- 35 who like butterscotch cookies. That means anyone interested in chocolate chip, or a 65-year-old who likes butterscotch cookies, won’t be shown our ad, thus using our spend wisely.
Examples of various Display ads of different sizes:
A cookie ad is a Display or Video campaign that uses images, gifs, and video to show information to a user. If they click on the ad they are brought to a specific website with more information.
BUT WHAT’S BEST FOR ME?
That’s the tricky part, and that decision-making process comes with knowledge of the platforms and ad types. Doing research on various platforms, and some trial & error is the best way to advertise your company best in the cyber media universe.
OR…
You can come to us! Our experienced team has the skills to find the best platforms for you and your business. Whether it’s just a quick consulting session with someone from our fine team, or you want us to take the reins, we’re here to help you find your footing in the digital world.
Agnes Eaker is the Social Media Strategist at Mammoth Marketing. She has grown up with technology and social media and is excited to use her lifelong learning and degree from UAF to best help business owners. She may love social media, but what she loves, even more, is analyzing new technology and all types of digital analytics. To learn more about Agnes and the Mammoth crew and what we can do for you, click here.
