Do Digital Ads Really Help Businesses Grow?

Since the marketing landscape has transformed into the digital powerhouse, we know it to be, the channels in which we reach our target audience have expanded. Pay per click or digital advertising can be a complex concept for many to grasp, but in short, online ads are a significant part of today’s content and marketing success strategies.

Online advertising means a business pays a fee to publish its promotional material on a specific platform. The platform then displays the created advertisement to grab a viewers’ attention and direct them to perform a particular action. After a viewer clicks an ad, that is when a business is charged.

There is not just one way to advertise online. Multiple platforms allow different types of ads to reach different audiences. Determining what platform is best for an organization’s digital ads may be the first challenge in implementing online advertising into a company’s marketing plan.

Types of Digital Advertising

Social Media: Advertising on a social media platform like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Snapchat, or TikTok, to name a few, allows for specific target audiences to be reached. Each social platform can format the ads specific to that audience – video, gif, still image, etc.
Paid Search: This form of advertising allows businesses to anticipate their potential customers’ wants, needs, and desires and display search ads that are highly contextual on the search engine results page.
Native: Sponsored content and influencer marketing fall into this category. Native advertising consists of published content distributed and posted to various social media channels and websites of people or groups with massive followings in hopes of going viral.
Display: Display ads hold a bad sentiment of being intrusive, distracting, and irrelevant. However, with machine learning capabilities and leveraging data, these ads have more effective targeting strategies, providing consumers with more relevant ads.

If done correctly, digital ads allow businesses to tell a story, reaching the desired audience in a personalized and engaging way, compared to traditional advertising.

Advantages of Digital Advertising 

1. Cost-Effective & Measurable 

Depending on business goals, a budget for digital ads can be reasonable compared to other traditional marketing methods, like radio spots or billboards. Also, in most platforms, the user can choose the budget amount and easily adjust it based on what is working for the specific company. It is important to note that the amount spent will directly affect the campaign’s success. 

Also, one of the most significant benefits of online advertising is the ability to track if the current strategy is driving results. Unlike traditional marketing, where unless a business is asking every customer that visits how they found them, digital ads have direct measurements on the origin of a lead. This goes hand in hand with the cost to see what is not working in real-time and update it to avoid spending on the non-performing elements of the campaign. 

2. Drive More High-Quality Leads 

For a marketing campaign to be deemed successful, it must reach the right audience. Most platforms that support digital advertising allow for parameters to be set around who sees the ad called targeting. The technology uses data from a person’s digital footprint, so businesses can specifically target ads to their desired audience by different factors, like location and personal interests. 

3. Boost SEO 

According to HubSpot data, most people using search engines, more than 70% of them, click on the organic results versus only 30% that click on the paid links. This does not mean Paid Digital Advertising is not worth it. It is a complement and, in turn, helps boost SEO. It assists in the way Google and other search engines read a business site.  

4. Brand Notoriety Across Larger Markets 

Online advertising allows a business to reach markets it may have never been able to or even knew about. Digital platforms enable a brand to be spread across a vast space and globally in different markets. 

5. Flexibility 

The options around digital advertisements are nearly endless. How to present the content, where to show it, how long to show it, and who to show it to can all be adjusted with just a click of a button. For example, the internet never “sleeps,” so a company could run an ad 24 hours a day, reaching multiple people at different times. 

The Challenges and Solutions to Digital Ads

Challenge #1: Paid online advertising takes time, effort, resources, and management. Solution: This is true, however, in the long run, it’s better to invest that time to see better results at a way lower cost than traditional methods. Paid ads allow for a greater return on the original investment.
Challenge #2: Digital ad metrics result in fraudulent numbers and inflation. Solution: It is important to note that more isn’t always better with digital ads. Plus, bot activity and ad fraud do exist. That’s why incorporating a strategy around targeting is so important and constantly comparing metrics to ensure a company’s resources are not wasted.
Challenge #3: Regulations surrounding online privacy eliminate the effectiveness of digital ads.

Solution: The implementation of regulation does not eliminate the need for ads. It assures viewers are seeing more relevant and less intrusive content. As an advertiser this leaves room for incorporating a strategy around effective content for the desired audience.

Online advertising may seem like a foreign concept to those that only operate using traditional marketing methods. However, to stay above and ahead of the competition in this competitive industry, digital ads are not a suggestion but a necessity. At SNR Creative, we specialize in helping businesses build effective and scalable digital ad strategies that increase growth potential.