How to Plan and Implement Online Advertising

While search advertising is limited to search engines, online advertising is promoting on the world wide web. It involves displaying adverts on websites and those on search engine results pages like search adverts. Online advertising also includes those in emails, social media, and other locations on the web.

Those who do online advertising usually want to improve brand awareness, increase sales, and stay competitive in the marketplace. They want to show consumer demand then satisfy it with supply. It’s the fundamental economic idea of stock and consumer demand.

Web user behavior is what online advertising follows. You should place online adverts wherever the potential customers will see them. It’s the same with displaying billboards on the highways instead of small lanes. You should also note that online advertising can be located anywhere on the internet. You can’t limit it to a certain medium or webpage. When online advertising, you also want to include text, videos, images, games, and other interactive elements.

Step-by-Step Guide to Implementing Online Advertising

Once you know the basic elements, payment models, and display options of online advertising, it’s time to start planning. Put all this knowledge together and plan your online advertising campaign.

Here’s a comprehensive step-by-step guide.

What is the Goal of Your Online Advertising Campaign?

What kind of campaign are you having? As previously mentioned, online advertising may have the goal of increased brand awareness or increasing sales. It’s usually either focused on banding or in direct response.

Once you have set your goal, analyze what your key performance indicators are. This is also known as KPIs. Make sure they are closely tied to your goals since these are the elements that allow you to know if you’re succeeding.

Target Audience and Website Research

After setting the goals and identifying your key performance indicators, know which websites your target audience are going to. This website you’ll be displaying your advert on is a very crucial factor. It also influences the payment model you will follow and the creative you will utilize.

What makes online advertising different from email marketing and search advertising is the lack of interaction. Because it is all about acquisition and awareness, users do not usually have to be active or interacting. For the campaign to be effective, place the advert where audiences are most likely to interact or convert.

In terms of flexibility in display options, you can go with niche websites with small and more targeted audiences. These kinds of sites typically charge a flat rate but you also need to consider their bandwidth costs if they serve the adverts.

On the other hand, you can also attempt the use of high-traffic websites. These are the types of websites that charge on the basis of CPM. You can use an advertising organization or more to broker their ad index.

Set Your Campaign Budget

With different online advertising channels, you can dynamically manage your budget. You can make a decision on how much you can pay for every click, action, impression, engagement, and more. 

Start Creating the Adverts

After setting the budget, you can now create the adverts. You can do this on your own or have a creative team who will guarantee that the banners and adverts are suitable for your branding.

Remember the acronym ACE. It stands for attracting attention, conveying a message, and enticing a certain action. Your online adverts need to satisfy these factors. For example, even though animation can catch attention, they usually do not make conversions. There are a lot of possible banners on a website.

The banner for your online advertising campaign should also have a clear and concise call to action. It should also be directional. For instance, you can try “Call now for the best insurance promos!” or “Click to order.” or “Donate Now.”

Once there is a banner and a website to place on, start planning the appropriate landing page of the destination URL. When promoting a product, you don’t want to lead the audience to the homepage of your site. This is not a good way to do it since it leaves visitors confused about what to do next. Instead, locate them to the product information where they can purchase it directly. 

You can create a microsite or simply lead them to a page that already exists. What really matters here is the click-throughs that are not being wasted. 

Implement the Adverts and Track

Once everything is ready and in place, you can finally run and let the ads go live. Make sure to track your expenditures. You also want to monitor whether you are getting a good return on your investment.

Tracking is a necessary aspect of any online marketing tactic. Check the results that your online advertising campaign is generating. Lastly, take advantage of the data you are getting. Optimize your campaign to get an improvement in returns. 

Why Track Your Online Advertising Campaign

Online advertising campaigns are highly trackable, and this is what makes them better than traditional advertising. You can see how many times the advert is going to the landing page with the clicks. Of course, the number of times the advert has been seen is also trackable. This is known as an impression. You need to keep track so you can monitor the success and improve your campaign even more. Success is usually dependent on the revenue being created or the conversions.

Aside from these factors, online advertising tracking may also involve the following:

• Browser
• Internet service provider
• Time of the day
• Type of connection
• Operating system

You can record sales that happen obliquely through third-party ad servers. These set cookies on advert impressions. These are called view-through conversions. This means post-view and post-click data are both trackable. This kind of info allows the ad server to be more targeted. What kind of adverts should be displayed? This will let the digital marketer optimize their online advertising campaign. What follows is how they can maximize the budget they set.

© Image credits to Loc Dang