I’m often asked: when is it time to start investing in digital advertising?
Before you start pumping money into ads, let’s be sure you have your organic digital presence squared away including:
- Website
- Google My Business Profile
- Social Media
- SEO
- Email Marketing
Then YES! It’s time to start growing into paid digital ads. I make this point because too often, brands try to put the cart in front of the horse. You need to have the basics of your digital presence clean and ready before you start paying to send traffic that way. That’s like inviting your mother-in-law over on laundry day- nope! You invite her over when the house is clean. (Unless you have a magic MIL that cleans for you, then ignore my attempts at an easy-to-understand analogy).
So before you start boosting posts and using the Google Ad Words coupons from the mail, be sure your digital house in is order.
Once you have your online presence updated and you’re ready to grow, the next question is: Where should I advertise?
The biggest and most well-known digital advertising platforms are Facebook and Google Ads. Both have their advantages, disadvantages, and unique cost structure.
Facebook- including Instagram, Messanger, and Facebook’s Ad Network
- Better for brand awareness
- Granular targetting by demographics, interests, behaviors, and more
- Get more exposure and clicks for lower costs
- 1.59 billion daily active users
- Works best for low-cost products and products that have a social component
Google- includes YouTube and Partner Sites
- Better for purchase intent
- Broad targeting by keywords with some demographics targeting capabilities
- Pay more for clicks, but users are more likely to convert
- 3.5 billion searches every day
- Works best for high-cost products and retargeting ads
An easy way to think of the difference is that a Facebook ad is an image or video served up to your ideal customer, and hopefully, you can serve up an ad interesting enough to catch their attention as they scroll. A Google ad is a search result served up for an inquiry the user is already searching for. There are some exceptions with their ad partners but this is the main idea.
The right answer depends on your product, service, and target audience. Need some help with direction and planning? Let’s chat!
Once you have your online presence updated, you’re ready to grow, and you know where you want to advertise, you need to figure out: how much are you going to spend?
According to Wordstream, new businesses should be allocating 12 to 20 percent of their gross revenue to marketing efforts, while established companies should be contributing 6 to 12 percent.
While this isn’t a hard rule by any means, it is a place to start. Here are a few more resources to help you figure out the best plan for you and your business:
- How to Create a Digital Marketing Budget That Works
- How Much Should You Budget For Marketing In 2021?
- How to Easily Calculate Your Digital Marketing Budget for the Year
You have the platform, the budget, now how will you grab their attention?
Your call to action is your chance to grab attention and direct them to the desired action- click, buy, sign up, subscribe, or whatever it is you want the user to do. Here are some tips to creating a strong call-to-action that you can use for digital advertising, social media posts, website pages, and more!
- Use a strong command verb to start your CTA such as BUY, GET NOW, CALL, GET STARTED
- Use words that provoke emotion or enthusiasm, this is not the time for bland or vanilla language
- Give your audience a reason why they should take the desired action- what are they getting out of this?
- Take Advantage of FOMO- create urgency!
- Don’t be afraid to get a little creative- stand out!
- Here are 12 examples of great CTA’s!
Now go use these strategies to uplevel your ads and posts!
Kate
