Digital Advertising Works

Advertising using digital media usually means either pay per click (PPC) or banner advertising.  Choosing which will work better for your business or professional practice requires understanding on how each works then aligning the purpose of the advertising with your advertsing goals, approach and budget.

PPC – Pay Per Click

PPC can be bought for search engines and are ususally called adwords.  PPC also can be bought for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many other platforms.  While people search the internet at their various stages of buying if they see a message that catches their attention and/or addresses the purpose of their search the consumer or patient will click to learn more.  It is important that the place to which they click should be consistent with the message provided in the PPC ad.  Generally the advertiser will send them to a “landing page” or a specific page on their website that answers the “learn more” element of the PPC ad. Best practices suggest that an advertiser should use an experienced digital marketing professional preferably one who is “Certified” based on specific training.  The training helps the marketing person understand how to find the right words or phrases to incorporate in an ad. In addtion a savvy PPC marketer knows how to reduce the cost over time for the clicks, set up A/B tests to acheive the most effective ads and align the “call to action” (CTA) for both the ad and the landing page.

Banner Ads

Banner Advertising can be bought on a wide variety of sites and in several different ways.  Banners can run on individual websites such as a local TV or News website, a Search Engine such as Yahoo and websites that are for associations or causes such as the Red Cross and even on commercial websites for large companies like Home Depot.  They may be bought directly from the publisher of the site or through services that aggregate various websites. Targeting and placement is extremely important.

Banner ads can also be served in many ways. They can be served to people based on their web history (what types of sites people visit) or preferences (ususally based on what internet users have stated on surveys, signups, etc.).  They  can also be set to “retarget” people who have a visited a specific site or researched a specific item or concept on the internet.  Pricing varies substantially for different banner ad approaches and sellers so it is a best practice to use the help of a marketing person who has experience with the many ways they can be served.

Digital Marketing Campaigns

Blade Marketing will help you determine the best targets and approaches based on the goals of your campaign or overall marketing plan. Budgets are critical to understand as to whether digital advertising would fit your goals.  It may not make sense to do a program if the planned budget is too low.  There are ways to define a “not to exceed” budget but if that budget is not large enough to accomplish the goals it is not money well spent. Blade would rather not run a program for you if it does not have high probability for success. In all programs it is strongly encouraged to implement A/B tests.  In all programs meaningful data is provided to help define results and refine approaches to constantly improve those results.