A wise man said two days back that, more than six out of your ten fingers with a zero in percentage are influenced into buying something all thanks to videos marketed online. And that half of your fingers with a zero in percentage make their buying decision based on Facebook. (Source: Through a survey, the wise man did with Life Marketing).

People have become so attached to spending time online, it has become like their second job. So, to reach them, you too have to make your presence known like one of their own being online. That’s where digital marketing comes in.

But what is digital advertising? How can it help you grow your business?

Let’s take a look!

An Overview

In the simplest words, it is the best way to stretch your fingertips to your patrons where they delve the most, the internet. Digital advertising has become a huge bargaining chip for social media sites and many more. They give the ad space, you do the advertising, both get the attention of people who are interested or happen to be seekers of the advertised. 

The sweetness of digitalization is that with the right mating of technology and platforms, the right person can be reached with the right message making it a paradise for marketers and sales guys. What makes digital advertising more interesting is that it can give you great measurable results. Take a paper, list down the strategies you went for, their figures, the result. Seeing something not worthwhile? Cut it out! Take the rest and decide what to invest more. And oh, it is not one thing, it is a diverse collection just like a rainbow. From just text to speaking pictures to catching your ear with an erotic voice, digital ads can mesmerize you in many forms.

It differs hundred-fold from traditional advertising

Imagine suddenly out of nowhere, your general manager appears and starts screaming, “It’s that time of the year again, for bigger and better summer sales. Marketing team, get here. I need a newspaper and radio advertisements. Call them and book the slots. Get the design team down here. I want some mouthwatering designs this year…”

It might sound exciting but when the work begins will it be that exciting in reality as well? It will start to sound not so exciting when the work begins for the company but despite the difficulties to get the preparations and the logistics done, traditional advertising can still have a bit of a top side to a country lagging behind on becoming ‘tech-savvy for the benefits’ like Sri Lanka.

Still the bigger percentage of the age demographics of Sri Lanka consists of elderly implying they tend to be more traditional than evolving with technology. People can be branded materialistic, so they can hold on to your materials like hanging it on a cupboard wall or fridge. Plus, studies have revealed that people tend to have higher brand recall rates with material mediums than digital mediums.

But, on the downside, so much ends to spend on, and some more to burn calories on, it can take on a lot of your time and monetary resources. However, that is not the worst part. How do you suggest measuring your ROI on everything you spent for the newspaper or the radio advertisement?

People might have seen your ad, they might have even hung it up on their wall, but how to know exactly what they would become a potential lead or a conversation. Unless you have telepathy, that is a no go, making you vulnerable on knowing the actual results compared to your investments.

This is where digital advertising comes in. Being the successor of traditional advertising making up to everything it lacked, digital advertising will never cost you either the money or the man hours you spent on its predecessor. That is not even the best part! You can always track the progress or the results and take necessary actions wherever you see fit. A micro-moment, where somebody picks the phone for that ‘let-me-take-a-break’ moment, or a quick glance at Facebook might be the breakthrough you have been waiting for millennia if your ad catches the interest or the intent of that somebody. That is the kind of power you can gain by digitizing your ads. 

Where marketing was magic or artistic, years back, today it has become a sort of science. Two main elements comprise marketing in the digital world. Intent & interest. Social media is the people where you can find people who are interested in something, like a clothing brand or food store. The intent is when people search out the internet having a certain purpose in mind.

The beauty of this is that, understanding the category your targeted people belong can help you to target them more precisely. Instead of your waiting for your customers to discover you, you gain the upper hand by creating a window for them lure them towards you. Used in the right way, this can be a game-changer despite the scale of your company.

A quick brief on types there are.

• Pay per click (PPC) – What happens in PPC is that each time an ad is being clicked, the respective advertiser will pay a fee. Basically, rather trying to earn the visit of a customer naturally, you try to buy visits to your sites by having paid advertisements flying around the internet. Google Ads is the most popular form of PPC advertising used at the moment on a global scale. The same process happens with Google Ads but with keyword bidding. When a search is launched through Google, the search results are based on the quality and the relevance of the keywords with their respective biddings.

• Cost per thousand impressions (CPM) – This model is based on the number of impressions generated through advertising. Compared to other forms of pay for performance techniques, this is another heavy-used technique, whereupon a certain activity which has been agreed mutually like a click, sale, happens, the payment gets produced.

• Search advertising – Online ads are placed in a pre-planned manner in search advertising so that they would pop up to people who surf the web with very specific intent. Chance to bid on keywords relevant to what people search can be bid upon by advertisers. The trick here is that, the more you play, the higher the chance you would get to pop your ad relative to the search. And that’s not the best part, this creates a far more opportune chance to reach your target audience than a TV commercial or a billboard.

• Social media advertising – Most of the time people tend to mix the two terms social media marketing & advertising. Despite being similar to each other in context, they differ from each other. Social media marketing is where you employ social media sites for the purpose of marketing by producing content for users to create awareness as well for them to share between their social circles whereas, social media advertising is paid efforts to advertise online targeting social media sites. Social media sites can be used to gather user preferences and demographics leading to more specified & appropriate content which is a huge advantage from the POV of an advertiser.

• Remarketing – Imagine reconnecting with someone who came into your website or your mobile app previously but left without any fruitful interactions. This is remarketing. This option allows you to smartly align your ads or reminders to the previously mentioned audiences, reminding them to come back which is good for brand awareness and generating traffic towards you.

For being a good read so far, here are two more bonus options for you to have a go at.

• Newsletters as a tool – The catch here is that this can only be effective if it is expected by the recipients. Therefore, the consent of the recipient has to be taken before, to be sent promotional material. This is what we see most of the time asking us to subscribe to email blogs/promotions/ newsletters and whatnot. Marketers now tend to double opt-in when it comes to this option so that they know their campaigns are well anticipated and welcomed by the receivers. And to add more to the bright side, if used smartly it can become your top cost-effective and quickest solution as well. MailChimp is a good plugin to use for this purpose as they are all about convenience, features, and color composing. You can create eye-catching and professional mail templates for any kind of email focused marketing campaign with their plugin.

• Content advertising – The ability to, not to rely on search or discoverability can be told as the biggest advantage of content advertising. It’s not about addressing a large crowd or trying to rely on SEO for good traffic but selecting a crowd and channeling the content you have created through your ideal distribution channel. But the trick here is the quality. It’s not about getting your content to be viewed but how well the content has been created so that it might interest the targeted person to actually act on it.

Here is to three key reasons why digital advertising is succeeding in reality

1. It’s specific and targeted.

Whereas traditional advertising was hit or miss, going digital has changed the game by integrating the ability to actually segment the target audience you have your eye at. It can help you to put forward your brand at every phase of the buying cycle. What’s more, social media platforms offering flexible options to advertise makes it more target-oriented whether it is geographic, preference, age group or whatnot. Going digital means, you know who you are speaking to, thus, it’s specific and targeted.

2. Affordable and scalable.

You may have a few thousand bucks or just a couple hundred. That’s not a problem. You can easily scale the number of ads you want in a specific category of people and pay accordingly. You could even customize your own campaign to match the budget you have at the moment. Whereas, you had to spend on the preparation, logistics, and deployment of the material traditionally, going digital is all about choosing what’s best for you releasing all the monetary stress.

3. Easy to use.

Imagine for a moment you are preparing a newspaper advertisement. You have to talk to the respective firm, you have to get sorted the conditions, no negotiations can be done the price most of the time, they won’t do any revisions and whatnot. So much work and stress just to get a small paper ad done. Now imagine going for a digital ad. You prepare the ad, go wherever you want and post it, may it be your website, social media platforms, search engines, etc. See how convenient it becomes the moment you chose to go digital over traditional? That’s the best thing about going digital. It is so stressed less and convenient.

It makes sense for small businesses

Imagine being a startup or a laying low-key with a small market share and reach. You obviously have more things to spend on rather than spending tons on advertising just to get some leads and sales. Yes, it is a must to spend on advertising. Yes, it is essential if you are still low key. But what can you do if you don’t have a big budget just for TV spots, newspapers, billboards and what not?

This is where going digital comes in to ease your suffering. It’s the 21st century. Ask yourself whether you would spend more time searching newspaper ads or billboards to find what you need or just google it. Spending online has become a thing, it’s your best option to go wild if you are still a startup or staying at a low scale company.

Why spend tons when you can just plan out the crowd you want to touch and just get down to them through the platforms, they use the most? The convenience of use with the affordability and scalability combined with the ability to be specific and targeted gives you the perfect opportunity to go toe to toe with even the giants in the industry.

Just think about it. Being smart, you can spend just enough to reach the people out there just like your top competitor with the dictatorship in your market. That’s the beauty of going digital, especially for small businesses.

So, by now, if you paid attention, you should feel like a pro in digital advertising. You should know how it differs from traditional advertising, what types are out there which has attracted the people most, what key benefits you can get from going digital and more. Utilized in the right and a smart way, it can ease up your life a lot. More than you can think.

Having a basic understanding of what you have in mind is always great. But having a small doubt or feeling a bit unsure about what exactly to be done or where to start? Take it easy. This is what we do every day. So, why not just give us a ring or drop us an email. Let us get it done for you and just sit back and enjoy what you see!