Welcome to the 4th and final part of this blog series on tips for moving your business into the online and digital space. This post discusses paid advertising across the digital space.
Google Adwords
You will have noticed sponsored links to websites appear on a Google Search. These usually occur at the top or the right hand side of the Google search page. (I focus here on Google, as in Australia it is the most widely used search engine, accounting for 97% of search terms). These posts appear because businesses have paid for their websites to appear there, based on the key words you have searched for on Google. Marketers refer to this as search engine optimisation - pay per click.
Search engine optimisation can be very effective for businesses who have a strong website but need broader reach. Google has an application you can manage for your paid advertising called Google Adwords. Money spent on Google Adwords to promote your business for key search words on Google is only cost effective if your website is optimised to convert any web leads into a sale. If you don’t have a strong call to action such as an online shop, an online quote engine, or make it easy for prospects to contact you, it is wasted money. You can sign-up for Google AdWords
Businesses who should invest in SEO pay-per-click advertising: online retailers, businesses with quotes or click to call functionality, businesses who market events or in the tourism sector.
Regardless of if your business invests in paid SEO advertising or not, it is imperitive that any website is optimised for search engines using key words relevant to search terms in your website. Read our post here about SEO for beginners.
Web Banners
I've read a lot of information about Web Banners and about advertising your business on other businesses sites. You get conflicting reports of how successful it is, but based on my experience, I tend to notice that it is good for building brand awareness, but not so much for users clicking through to your website unless it is event specific. Many web users avoid clicking on anything flashy or gimicky for fear of trojan horses and viruses infecting their computers. As a result, web banners have become less effective. If you do go down this route, well-branded banners are key for success - to build credibility with the viewer.
It is also important that you arm yourself with as much return-on-investment forecasting that you can before agreeing to advertise on a third parties website. For example, a good advertiser will have analytics on their site and therefore be able to give you the following information:
- Number of page views (daily)
- Average bounce rate (users who go to their site, then bounce off again, you want to consider this bounce rate when you are assessing the page views.
- Average click thru rate for web banners on their page - this should help you estimate how many will be engaged with your advertisment and therefore how much web traffic you could expect to receive from it, multiply this by your own web traffic to lead ratio and then you have a return on investment estimate.
- Demographic/Target market of their website
Businesses who should invest in web-banners: Businesses who's target market matches that of the advertiser and who can prove a successful return on investment from their spend.
Facebook Advertising
Facebook paid advertising can be successful if it is planned well and there is a clear objective. Typically I wouldn't recommend using Facebook paid advertising until you have your Facebook company page set-up correctly and have a dedicated resource to monitor it. Once all of your company information is included on the page, an appropriate cover photo, profile picture, and any custom tabs are built, paid posts can be of use.
There are options to target your posts by demographic which can be very useful to ensure you don't post your brand too broadly and waste your advertising spend. It is also important you declare if the post is visible to any current friends or their connections.
You can schedule posts to be used as sponsored ads or Facebook can automatically take a recent post and use that as the sponsored post. The latter can be risky if your posts aren't always broadly relevant. If you are going to take the time and money to invest, I would recommend choosing your specific posts to promote.
Through paid advertising on Facebook you can gain more users of your Facebook application, new engagement or higher likes on your page. Make sure your objective is clear and devise your campaigns around that.
Businesses who should use Facebook paid advertising: New businesses to build brand awareness, Businesses who are B2C and have regular specials, businesses who need to increase their reach in particular demographic areas.
Well that's it for this series, if you have any questions about this post, other posts or any comments or feedback, you can leave it in the comments section of this post, or else please email me at enquire@piggieback.com.au
I hope this series gave you some clarity into taking your business into the digital world.
Have a terrific rest of the week,
Caitlin Davey
Director of Communications
Piggieback
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