A successful online presence is created little by little. It’s slow moving, and trends are unpredictable as the weather but get the right processes in place and you’ll be basking in high-profit results. The beginning of any amazing digital marketing push starts with this list of five essential tactics:
- Google Display Marketing (Programmatic or Direct)
- Paid Social Media (Facebook & Instagram first)
- Google SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
- Google/Social Media Remarketing
Okay, I’m a little biased toward Google campaigns just from working in Google Ads for roughly 75% of my job… but it really works! Google is the 800-pound gorilla in the room when it comes to pay-per-click advertising, and it’s my job to make sure my clients’ campaigns are on top of the trends. Fortunately, it also offers me space to advertise at every touchpoint of the buying cycle
Let’s begin with Display Marketing. This is a high-funnel, low cost-per-click channel (around $0.10-$0.30).
Here, we’re blasting your high-quality, highly engaging visual ad across as many quality websites as possible to drive traffic. Display Marketing is great for small businesses looking to build a solid brand, or for large businesses who want to fuel their SEM campaigns. Here, we’d want to focus on high traffic, impressions & clicks. Below is a screenshot for “weather.com” personalized for me, an advertiser. I can’t not see these ads, even if I wanted to!
Display Marketing is typically done using programmatic buys. That means your agency would use a platform that works with multiple websites across the internet to place different kinds of visually engaging ads according to audience. You also have the option to make “Direct Buys” through Display, where you’d contact a website directly to advertise with them. You can only place ads on websites like ESPN.com by making a direct buy through their website or their sales reps. It’s great to split this tactic with programmatic because you have high-level control over audience with programmatic, and high-level control over placement with direct.
Paid Social Media Marketing serves the similar function of getting out in front of new audiences, but with many unique identifiers.
First, social media works great for brands with a solid reputation, especially if you follow brand design standards exactly. You also have a huge amount of social proof building on your ads constantly and the value of that word-of-mouth marketing cannot be overstated. But put your ad in front of someone who had a bad experience with your business, and the whole ad is shot. It’s essential that there’s a reputation-management system in place if you’re worried about your branded ads attracting any naysayers.
I’d recommend starting with Facebook. If you’re a B2C business owner, chances are you already have experience designing a page (and maybe even boosting posts). Building ads within Facebook Ads Manager gives you a plethora of targeting options and, while the CPC is generally higher than Google Display (Around $2-$3), you tend to see an increase in “page likes” because people are becoming more brand aware. Plus, you can advertise across Facebook and Instagram simultaneously, since Facebook owns both. If I’m running the campaign, my KPIs are website visits and lead generations.
Google SEM, or Search Engine Marketing, is the highest-converting digital tool at your disposal.
Think about which search result you would click on if you were faced with this results page. Personally, I would go for the U.S. Bank result, but not because one is an advertisement and one is not. If the search result matches my search query, I’m okay with clicking on an ad.
The appeal for U.S. Bank, for me at least, is that I’ve seen brand awareness ads for U.S. Bank a million times, and trust that the company will do right by me. Funding Hero has no such loyalty built by Display and Social Media campaigns. Like Social Media advertising, you’d want your brand to stand out in a positive way to your searcher.
Finally, the two words that most often drown my clients in a sea of money: retarget and remarket.
Let me start by clearing up one issue: this only works if your business has traffic to your website. It doesn’t matter how well your brick & mortar traffic is looking to me, because my digital ads are optimized toward online actions.
If you’re having trouble building website traffic, I’d recommend allocating funds toward Social Media, which is a high-traffic building channel. Once your website sees monthly users in the thousands, however, I would absolutely consider adding a remarketing element to your campaign. If you’re not sure how to set it up, there are some awesome guides out there to help you.
Here are the benefits of remarketing:
- They’re laser-focused on clients with huge potential, assuming that your company did a great job creating an unforgettable experience for them.
- They see fairly cheap costs per conversion. You need no more than 20-30% of funds allocated toward remarketing, because it comes out to be a small cost for a very targeted audience (and you don’t want to suffocate them with ads).
Here at Stolen Ground Media, we use remarketing tactics as the “cherry-on-top” of an incredibly effective digital strategy. It lives in its own world in the corner because it doesn’t function effectively as a market penetration or a brand awareness tactic. We’ll leave the standard digital marketing channels to do what they do best, and leave our remarketing efforts as a profitable, loyalty-building effort.
These five digital marketing channels are my bread and butter. They’ve created an online presence that have made heaps of money for my clients and are essential to any business looking to build an online presence. Use display and social media to draw in new customers. Let them check out your website and browse your products with no pressure. Then, turn on the Google SEM and grab them while they’re looking for your product. All the while, show them ads while they’re in your remarketing list from website visitors, and keep them in lists even after they’ve converted. They’re still a great prospect! Finally, have a geofenced mobile campaign at the ready for big events that pertain to your business. Grab that high-prospect audience and serve them up exactly what they’re looking for.
If your business is ready to take on a huge amount of business by employing these tactics, be sure to allocate funds properly and give yourself time to see results. Then, since this will double your income, be sure to send a thank-you card to Kyle at Stolen Ground Media from the comfort of your new lake house.
References:
- https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/01/25/does-facebook-advertising-work
- https://talkcmo.com/featured/revolutionary-digital-marketing-trends-that-can-shape-2020/
- https://www.ppchero.com/ultimate-guide-to-google-ads-remarketing/
- https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/19022/how-to-leverage-the-5-stages-of-the-customer-buying-cycle-for-more-sales.aspx
- https://www.acquisio.com/blog/agency/what-are-display-ads-5-steps-to-effective-visual-advertising/
- https://adespresso.com/blog/8-authentic-ways-align-facebook-ads-brand-design/
- https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/google-ads-vs-facebook-ads/
- https://www.acquisio.com/blog/agency/sem-marketing-create-effective-ppc-funnel/
- https://www.salesforce.com/products/marketing-cloud/best-practices/geofencing-marketing/
- https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/09/14/adwords-budget-guide
- https://www.wordstream.com/google-remarketing
