10 Best Online Advertising Strategies for Marketers

About 10 million people visit the Great Wall of China every year.

Don’t you desire a traffic figure for your website that sounds as appealing as this?

No worries, we got this! All you need to do is tweak your marketing algorithm and follow the right strategy.

It can be overwhelming to choose from the myriad of schemes available, especially for beginners.

Moreover small businesses and startups need to be practical about advertising campaigns and spend wisely. What they need is a cost effective and functional campaigning strategy at the same time.

Let’s have a look at 10 most effective online advertising strategies that gave the most successful marketers a head start.

1. Target your audience

This strategy is the foundation to fabricate an effective brand image. If you do not target a specific audience for your product, you are utilizing resources in vain.

Many businesses miss on this important aspect of campaigning.

Based on your existing customer profile you can target audience with similar psychographics and convert more leads to prospects and then to customers.

Be it online or offline, make sure the presentation and visuals of your brand intrigue your customers.

2. Personal Branding

As digital marketers, do we even have to think twice before saying Neil Patel and how he channelized his popularity to build a multi-million dollar empire?

That is how amazingly this technique works. Branding yourself helps you leverage your personality to gain trust and credibility.

The way you present yourself determines if or not people will want to buy from you. As it’s easy to predict your viewpoints once they see you and listen to you.

Boring as it might seem in fiction, predictability is all what people want in real life.

3. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

The technical structure of your site determines the search position ranking of your website.

This structure is fabricated by SEO to bring your website under the lens of the search engine.

It is a form of paid online advertising which is achieved through optimization of the content on the website. It helps generate more targeted traffic.

4. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ads

Pay per click ads is the inorganic mode, used to drive traffic to a website. As an advertiser you pay the publisher when the ad is clicked by a user.  PPC basically means the amount spent to get a click on the ad.

The advertiser bids on the keywords specific to the target audience.  Bidding implies the amount he is willing to pay the advertising service for a click.

5. Native Ads

These kind of paid ads are embedded onto the website in a way that they blend in with its visuals and functioning. Hence, the name native ads.

If you sponsor your content on a website, you must keep up with the consistency of the native user experience.

According to figures reported by sharethrough, consumers looked at native ads 2% more than editorial content and spent the same number of seconds viewing.

They provide a decent experience as they do not interrupt website usability. Strategists may find it more appealing than video ads.

Furthermore, native ads can bag you more prospects owing to the use of click bait headlines.

6. Social Media Marketing

Social media is the heart of the marketing system. You have the scope of pumping your content through various channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram depending on the brand personality and the target audience.

This method might not get you quick results but has the maximum potential for a long sustaining brand image. Not to mention, your content is your trump card here. It is important that you give your audience a delightful experience.

This method helps gain visibility and drives brand equity. Given the reach of social media, you can build inbound traffic using your syndicates.

7. Email Marketing

For this one to work, you need a strong follower’s base.

Mind you! Email marketing can be tedious but has potential for ROI.

Keep content easy on the eyes and brand at the top of the mind.

Poor content quality will not leave you without your targets marking you as spam.

Target your purchase lead list or those in the current customer database.

Email marketing increases trustworthiness and enhances the chance of repeat business. It psychologically moulds the customer to believe that you value the relationship with them causing them to stay loyal and be your verbal advocates.

8. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a kind of outsourcing program which emerged as a result of market complexity.

This is a performance based strategy whose success lies in the efforts of the affiliate. The affiliate gets the website visitors and buyers in return for a reward.

The merchant, network, publisher and the customer make up the core of the affiliate system.

9. Big Data

You may run as many ads online but if they are not seen by the right people, it is not a bang for the buck.

You might have come across ads for products you just viewed on an e-commerce website popping up on a different website you visit. Ever wondered why?

This is the result of up-front research of marketers and their inorganic marketing strategy put together.

They make sure their ads are viewed by the target audience with the aid of big data.

Big data is only a high-standard way of addressing a database containing relevant information, gathered from various sources in abundance.

Advertisers use the big data information to run online advertisements on screens of the audience of their interest.

For example,

They will use marketing data from different sources to determine the youth visiting a particular website are also interested in music instruments. They will run music instruments on sale ads micro-targeting that group.

10. Text Link Ads

This is basically hyperlinked text on a website or a blog. It works well in monetizing a website. When visitors click the link, you as an advertiser have to pay the publisher of the blog or website.

The pay is in accordance with the pay-per –click method.

The popularity of the blogger or the website on which you link these ads plays a crucial role.

In addition, these ads improve the search engine ranking of your content.

Conclusion

Each of the above strategy mutually compliments the benefits of the other. For optimizing your marketing process it would be best to glean them all tactfully.

Do share your experiences if you found the information helpful. If you feel we have missed out on some important strategies, please feel free to share in the comments.

Why Marketers Should Have a Content Plan for Social Media

Do you have a social media strategy prepared?

Do you know what to tweet, share on Facebook and write as your blog posts?

If you answered a yes, great! You are on the right track. If you answered a no, you’re just like the others in the market.

Marketers understand the importance of social media but don’t generally know how successful their campaigns are. They don’t focus on the content and cannot figure out what must be posted when.

If you’re also sailing in the same boat, here are a few questions that you need to ask yourself:

  • Do I have my existing and prospective customers here with me?
  • Is my post of any benefit to the consumers?

There are some other questions to ask as well but if you didn’t have the right answers to the above questions, you need a content plan.

Let us go through some of the key reasons to understand why creating a content plan for social media is so important:

1. Gives you a direction

Writing, posting, sharing – these actions become redundant if you don’t have a content plan in place. You must have clearly defined goals along with pre-decided metrics for success. You must know how and where you need to communicate with your target audience and what is it that they are expecting from you. A content plan adds a sense of purpose to your business and at the same time gives you a blueprint for the journey to your final destination.

2. Have a better sense of the target audience’s needs

If you have a content plan, you will know how to target the right audience with the right services. In the absence of a plan, customer demand for online services can be incorrectly evaluated.

3. Develops Opportunities for Conversations

A content plan helps you measure the success of your conversations. You know what works and what doesn’t with your audience. Social media platforms help you engage with the end consumer and if you are doing correctly with an appropriate content plan, you will notice an increased social media ROI.

4. Helps with Integration

A social media content plan enables everyone in the team and organization to remain integrated. All employees know what communication must be made with the target audience and there are clearly defined goals for everything.

5. Scope of New Strategies

If you are aware of your content plan and its ROI in terms of the metrics you set, you have the option of tweaking it to make it work. Without a concrete plan, knowing what works and what doesn’t is challenging.

Social media changes regularly. This means that you must also change with it. However, this change must be planned according to the current strategy. You must adapt to the changes introduced by the different social media platforms.

6. Identify your Audience’s language

If you keep tweeting without a specific content plan, you would be talking about anything and everything without knowing what your audience is searching for. It is important that you have a well-defined voice and use it when you are sharing content.

7. Eliminate the Guess Work

Once your content plan is ready, you know where your efforts need to be invested. You know how your content functions and are not wasting any time finding what you need to post. Social media platforms are time sensitive and if you are ready in advance, you are ready to make the most of this marketing tool.

8. Increased traffic

Website traffic is an important KPI for every business organization. Well planned and well placed social media updates attract more engagement, thereby generating higher click-through rates and leads for conversions.

9. Better Engaged Visitors

There are options to buy followers and traffic on social media. However, with a solid content plan, you can engage with your target audience realistically. The quantity of followers, clicks, and traffic does matter but the quality must be your focus.

10. Improved Customer Retention

Your bounce rate will start to lessen if your social media campaigns are being executed effectively. This means that you are reaching out to the right audience with the right information, and they are appreciative of the content you are providing.

Remember, social media does not have any magic formula. You need to understand what works for your business and what does not and this can only be done by devising a social media strategy and content plan.