Creating a digital marketing campaign that suits your business needs and goals can be a difficult task. With so many digital advertising platforms available, the choice alone can leave people skeptical and unsure about which one is best for their business. Should I use Google? What about Facebook? What will get me the best results? The important thing is to educate yourself on your options and make an informed decision. This article will break down three of the most commonly used digital advertising platforms, and show you how they can help your business achieve its marketing goals!
Why Digital Marketing?
As of 2019, 89.4% of people in North America use the internet. With this many eyes in one area, it gives businesses the opportunity to reach almost any person they wish to. Another benefit of digital is that it gives you the opportunity to not only collect data on your customer but use it to find others who are similar to them. Digital Advertising puts an end to the age-old question of whether advertising works, or if an advertisement has achieved its desired goals. The proof is in the numbers, you can see how many people viewed, clicked, or engaged with an advertisement. Digital Advertising, while not the sole avenue for advertising, has become an integral part of modern marketing campaigns.
What Platforms are Available?
Google is not only the most powerful search engine in the world, but it is also one of the most popular advertising platforms available. In 2019, Google is projected to receive roughly $103.73 billion in ad revenue, making them the largest digital advertising platform in the world.
Where Do Google Ads Appear?
Google is arguably the most diverse digital advertising service available. Using Google Ads you can publish text, image, or video ads on a variety of platforms including YouTube. Two of their most popular advertising locations are text-based search ads that appear at the top of Google searches, and image-based ads that are shown across websites enrolled in Google Ad’s display network.
Benefits of Google Ads
- Largest User Base: Google is currently the most popular website in not only the U.S, but in the entire world. Each day they receive an average of 3.5 billion searches. This gives advertisers the biggest opportunity to reach their target demographic, as they have the largest pool of people to draw from.
- Massive Display Network: While Google is the single most popular website in the world, they also possess the largest display network available. With ads on over 2 million websites, the Google Display Network reaches more than 90% of the internet’s population!
- Accurate Targeting: Because of the high number of users, Google is able to gather a lot of data on each user. With this data they are able to create extremely accurate advertising profiles on every user; thus, allowing their targeted advertising system to be accurate and effective. Want to see your own advertiser profile? Click here and see how accurate yours is.
Google Ads Tip
Want to steal traffic from your competitors? Use their business name as a targeted keyword in order to appear ahead of them on Google searches.
Facebook/Instagram
Since its launch in 2007, Facebook advertising has developed from a platform with limited capabilities to one that allows for detailed geographical and interest-based targeting. With thousands of customizable options, Facebook allows users to tailor their campaigns to be as specific or general as they would like.
Since being bought by Facebook in 2012, Instagram has become integrated with Facebook Ads, meaning that you can publish advertisements to either platform and manage them in one location.
Where Do Facebook Ads Appear?
A lot of places. More specifically, anywhere here:
While the number of options may seem overwhelming, don’t worry, Facebook will do the heavy lifting for you. Facebook’s algorithms determine which placements perform the best for your ads and will spend your advertising budget to get you the best results possible.
Benefits of Facebook Ads
- Measurable: Get exact results from every Facebook campaign you run, using the hundreds of metrics they provide you with (Impressions, Cost Per Click, Click Through Rate, Etc.).
- Customizable: With Facebook, you can customize campaigns in a variety of ways. Want to run Facebook Ads that only appear to iPhone users on Mondays? You can customize your campaigns like this or in a variety of other ways!
- Optimizable: With the data collected from every advertisement you run, Facebook can begin optimizing to get the best results possible. This optimization can come in the form of showing the ads that are the best performing, showing ads to people who are similar to the people who have already clicked on your ad, and countless other ways that Facebook’s algorithm believes will achieve you better results!
Facebook Ads Tip
Images with little to no text in them are favoured by Facebook, and on average will deliver you better results than ones that include a lot of text!
Launched in 2006, Twitter is now home to approximately 330 million monthly users. Despite its 2006 launch, Twitter did not begin allowing business promoted advertisements on their website until 2010. Since Twitter Ads’ launch, it has become a marketing staple of many top companies, including Apple.
Where Do Twitter Ads Appear?
Similarly to Facebook, Twitter allows for in-feed advertisements, their audience network and apps, and more!
Benefits of Twitter Ads
- Real-time: Due to Twitter’s constantly updating feed, it has become one of the most popular platforms for covering real-time events. For this reason, advertising time-sensitive campaigns are enormously effective on Twitter and have been found to be 11% more effective than TV ads during live events!
- Keyword Targeting: One of Twitter’s most powerful community-building features is their use of the Hashtag. By utilizing hashtags, users can create communities that can be viewed by others. Twitter Ads is one of the few platforms that allow for hashtags and keywords to be targeted. This allows businesses to find and target specific demographics based on communal hashtags.
- Less Competition, Cheaper Results: Because Twitter does not have as large of a user base as Facebook, or Google this means that there is less competition for advertising. This results in cheaper CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) and CPC (Cost-per-click), meaning your advertising dollars can be stretched further on Twitter.
Twitter Ads Tip
For improved results, give each campaign only one “ad category” to help Twitter find relevant websites in their audience platform to show your advertisement.
Which Digital Advertising Platform is best?
That depends on your business’ goals. If you have a special sale going on, perhaps a Facebook campaign would be best to promote it. If you offer a service constantly searched for on Google, then perhaps a Google Ads campaign would be best. It is important to keep testing different platforms and seeing what delivers you the best results.
For more information, or help managing your digital marketing campaigns visit us at https://blackburndigital.ca/contact-us/