Learn Digital Advertising: How to Advertise Online
To start promoting your business online, you need to learn digital advertising and how you can use digital advertising strategies to promote your business.
On this page, we’ve created a guide to help you learn digital advertising. We’ll answer questions like:
- What is digital advertising?
- Why is digital advertising important?
- What types of digital advertising are available to my business?
- Where can I find resources to help with digital advertising?
Keep reading to learn more about how to advertise your business through the web!
If you don’t have time to learn digital advertising, allow the experts at WebFX to help.
As a Google Premier Partner, you can feel confident our team will craft ads that drive results. Contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our digital advertising services!
What is digital advertising?
Digital advertising is when a company pays to have ads displayed on various websites, apps, and other digital mediums. Digital advertising often spans a large number of online channels, including social media and email.
Online ads can target specific audiences, which are typically determined by the advertisers or recommended to the advertisers by data management and insight platforms.
The marketing landscape considers online advertising to be an “inorganic” way of reaching a target audience because advertisers must pay a fee to display their ads anywhere.
This setup is different from free or “organic” ways to bring in users like through search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing.
While advertisers have to spend money for these ads, they often see quicker results than the organic methods stated above. Paid ads allow you to put your ads in front of qualified users instantly, which helps more people see your ads and entices them to click on them.
Why is digital advertising important?
In today’s digital landscape, online advertising is necessary for businesses that want to keep up with their competition. Digital advertising offers many benefits over traditional advertising methods.
First, digital advertising is cost-effective.
While many small businesses cannot compete with their larger counterparts in areas like TV and radio advertising, online ads bridge the gap by providing methods for businesses to target much more qualified leads without breaking the bank.
In addition, digital advertising gives advertisers tons of data to influence their campaigns in the future. This accurate, real-time data is not something you get with traditional advertising methods, which makes it more difficult to understand how your ads perform.
Digital advertising, on the other hand, allows advertisers to gain insights about things like the quality of the ad and what components worked best to drive results.
Last but not least, online advertising allows businesses to interact with and guide the consumer through each stage of the buying funnel.
By running ads to bring in top-of-the-funnel traffic, you can create remarketing lists and then nurture those people throughout the rest of the process with tailored ads meant to keep them moving down the funnel and becoming a client.
6 types of digital advertising
Are you ready to learn digital advertising and build your advertising plan?
Here are six types of digital advertising that will help you start marketing your business online!
1. Search advertising
When you learn online advertising, you’ll find one of the most popular promotional strategies is search ads. Search advertising, sometimes called PPC advertising, involves displaying ads in relevant search results.
Advertisers partake in search ads by creating ads similar in style to organic search engine results. From there, ad makers must target specific keywords or queries for each ad. That’s where our PPC services come in! We’ll help you create engaging ads and choose the right keywords to make sure your ads connect with the people who are looking for what you offer.
When someone searches those terms or terms closely related to the keywords, the ad is displayed above or below the query’s organic results, depending upon the Ad Rank and the maximum bid for the ad.
When an advertiser’s ad appears in these search results, they’ll only pay if someone clicks on the ad.
2. Display advertising
Display advertising is a form of promotion in which advertisers can distribute text, image, and even video ads across a search engine’s vast network of affiliated sites. All major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing have display networks, but Google gets used most often.
Display ads can also show up as clickable banners or images on the top or right side of a web page. These ads are visual to catch users’ attention and get them to click. Even if users don’t click on the ads, display ads are great for building brand awareness for your company.
3. Social media advertising
You can also take advantage of social media platforms as a way to advertise online.
Similar to display, ads on social media can come in the form of images, text, and videos. Some social advertising platforms will even let you choose your bidding option, like paying per follower instead of per click.
You can advertise on multiple platforms, including:
Social media platforms offer advanced targeting, which enables you to put your ads in front of people most interested in what you offer.
4. Influencer advertising
Partnering with social influencers, especially ones with a lot of notoriety in your industry, to display ads is a fantastic way to get your business in front of tons of people within your target audience.
These influencers already have built up loyal followings. By paying the influencer to promote your product or service in posts, you get a glowing recommendation from a trusted source that goes out to thousands, even millions, of people.
When looking for influencers, focus on ones within your niche that connect with your target audience. You’ll see far better results from your ads.
5. Geofencing advertising
Geofencing is one of the best online advertising techniques for targeting people who visit specific geographical locations. This strategy allows companies to draw virtual “fences” or barriers around areas they would like to target, like a town square or college campus.
When someone enters this geographic fence, they get added to a list that is then provided to advertisers for remarketing purposes.
Geofencing also enables you to advertise to people as they enter, dwell, and exit your “fence.” From search ads to pop-up app notifications, you can send special offers to entice people to come into your business while they’re in the area.
6. Amazon
Advertising through Amazon is an underrated technique, but one that can be incredibly beneficial to ecommerce businesses. Amazon ads enable you to promote your products anywhere on their website, from search results to product pages.
Amazon offers three types of ads:
- Sponsored Product Ads
- Sponsored Brands
- Product Display Ads
These three options enable you to reach Amazon shoppers as they’re looking for products on the platform.
Improve your PPC ROI by 20% or more
Harness the power of WebFX’s AdTechFX technology to reach more qualified prospects, and decrease your cost per acquisition.
10 great resources for learning digital advertising
When you’re just starting to learn digital advertising, it can be challenging to find resources that answer all your questions. To help you navigate the world of online advertising, here are some resources that will help you launch successful ads:
What Is Digital Advertising? (Your Digital Ad Handbook)
This post answers the age-old question, “What is digital advertising?” along with providing a comparison to traditional marketing and much more! This article discusses how the digital advertising process works and why you should use it. It’s also an excellent resource for learning about online ad metrics and bidding strategies.
Top Digital Advertising Tips to Maximize Your Marketing ROI
This blog post highlights a few tips digital advertisers should note if they want to boost the return on investment (ROI) for their advertising strategy and how to implement these tips into your strategy.
Best Online Advertising Strategies for Businesses
This article highlights some of the best strategies for conducting digital advertising. It’s an excellent resource for people looking to stay up to date on current best practices in the world of online advertising.
Online Local Advertising: 7 Crazy Good Ideas for Advertising Locally
This page goes over some must-try local advertising ideas for businesses. It also discusses where business owners can apply these techniques, making it a fantastic resource for companies looking to boost their local profile.
6 Best Benefits of Digital Marketing (& Online Advertising)
With this article, you discover some of the top benefits of incorporating online advertising into your marketing strategy. It’s a great resource for learning more about what makes digital advertising superior to traditional advertising.
What Is Online Paid Advertising? (Plus 6 Things to Know)
The primary purpose of this article is to answer the question “What is online paid advertising?” This article is a great introductory resource for people who want to get into online paid advertising but don’t know much about where to start.
Top 18 Paid Advertising Platforms | Best PPC Ad Networks
This blog post features a list of some of the best paid ad platforms for digital advertisers to utilize and reasoning for why each platform made the list. It’s a great resource for finding potential ad platforms you can use to promote your business.
The Top 10 Display Ad Networks
This article highlights the importance of display ad networks and the role they play in digital advertising. It provides a list of the top display networks that advertisers use, along with advantages for using each network.
What Is Display Advertising? (The Definitive Display Ads Guide)
This resource is excellent for people looking to get an in-depth view of how display advertising works. It covers a multitude of topics, including types of display ads, best practices, related statistics, ways to measure success, and so much more!
Keep learning about digital advertising
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If you’re ready to step into the world of digital advertising but need some help, WebFX is here for you.
We’re a digital marketing agency with over 30 years of experience driving results for clients both organically and through paid channels. We will help you jumpstart your company’s digital marketing presence to help you drive the leads and revenue you desire.
Contact us today or give us a call at 888-601-5359 to see how WebFX can improve your online advertising strategy through our digital advertising services!