Digital advertising for beginners

Google Adwords

One of the most popular advertising channels on internet is Google Adwords. The basic idea is that Google will show visitors ads based on the keyword he’s searching on. If, for instance, you have a landscaping business or you sell lawnmowers, a visitor will see your ad and website when he searches for “lawnmower” or “lawn maintenance”.
Good news is: you only pay every time someone actually clicks your ad. The price of individual clicks depends on the search words you’ve selected. The more popular they are on Google, the more expensive the keyword becomes.
You can also set the daily budget you want to spend on ads and there are a lot of options to target the right audience. Anyone in a radius of 20 kilometers around your shop, for instance. 

Facebook ads

A second, popular online advertising channel is Facebook. There are nominally two ways to do ad campaigns on Facebook. First are the Facebook ads you see on the right-hand side of your Facebook timeline. These can be targeted quite precisely towards your exact audience according to, for instance, locations, gender or age. You can further finetune your selection by adding “interests”. In the above example, you could add “gardening”, etc. as an interest.  Every time you adapt your settings, you will automatically see how many people you could potentially reach. 

Sponsored posts

A second method of advertising on Facebook are sponsored posts. These are Facebook messages you publish on your own page. Normally these are only seen by your own fans and followers, but by sponsoring them, you can send them to a much larger audience. Again, you determine budget and specifics and you get an immediate view on potential readers. 

More than a name

It’s also a good idea to give surfers a good reason to click your ad. Just mentioning your company’s name is not always enough. So why not mention the advantages you offer, organise a contest, discount or giveaway, … Be creative!

Other options

Aside from Facebook and Google, there are many more sites and networks that allow you to advertise online. Pinterest, for example, uses ‘buyable pins’.
But for starters, you can’t go wrong with the two online giants: Facebook and Google. Play around, see what works and what doesn’t and pretty soon you’ll find yourself marketing like a pro, even with a limited budget.

Measure, measure, measure

Last but not least: no other form of advertising is so easy to measure as online advertising. So don’t neglect this aspect. Monitor, measure, analyse. That’s the only way to make sure you get a great return on every cent spent on online advertising.

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