DIGITAL ADVERTISING

What is Digital Advertising?

Is Traditional Advertising dead?

Why go Digital?

How to make most of Online / Digital Advertising?

What are different Digital Promotion Activities / Tools?

What is the difference in social media platforms in terms of advertising utility?

What Meaningful metrics should we track on Social Media Platforms?

What are the 5 phases of digital marketing?

How big brands use digital advertising?

How to Evaluate the Effectiveness of your advertisement/campaigns?

Ignoring online advertisements is like opening a shop and not telling anyone about it!

So what is Digital Advertising?

Digital advertising is the method of advertising on any digital platform. It is a recent, more effective way of advertising products, services, and businesses and can be done online, via social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) and search engines; and offline, via digital billboards etc.

Is traditional advertising (e.g. radio, tv, newspapers, magazines, flyers etc.) dead?

No, it is still in use today, but it must evolve and integrate with digital advertising. However, it stopped being the main method of advertising a long time ago and now is used just to reinforce the brand name in potential customer’s minds.

Why go digital?

- Both customer and competition are present online.

- It is communicative

- It’s convenient and cost effective,

- It also facilitates data driven strategy

How to make the most of Online / Digital Advertising? What are different Digital Promotion Activities / Tools?

You can take advantage of available tools like -

• Social media channels: Social media channels are the stepping stones of any digital marketing strategy. They are the best medium to introduce your brand, product or service to your customer for the first timer and establish brand-recall thereafter.

Digital Media Tools

• Automated customer services: Integrated digital platforms like mass email marketing services or integrated logistics platforms ensure timely communication with customers and thus enhance brand reputation. Small gestures like sending birthday discount emails or a heads-up confirming that the parcel is out for delivery can go a long way in winning a customer's trust.

• PPC/SEO/Keyword Marketing: Pay-Per-Click / Search Engine Optimisation / Keyword Marketing were first pioneered by Google Ads. Having been picked up by other platforms now, it is a sharpened approach to targeted marketing where you bid for keywords to win space in search ads and pay only when the customer clicks on your link. SEO is the set of techniques to optimise your web front with Keywords and other strategies so as to ride up the google ranking ladder and appear in early pages of organic search results.

• Seamless Ecommerce Platforms: Provide a smooth shopping experience to the customer. A seamless website would take the customer on a smooth journey from product selection to purchase while simultaneously dealing with the delivery logistics, payment verification, order communication via email or SMS, collecting customer behaviour data and interpreting it for future marketing decisions at the back-end. A seamless platform might actually make a 1-5 people micro-business give the impression of a well-staffed, established e-commerce platform.

• Message/ Email Marketing: SMS and email marketing are effective forms of digital promotion for remarketing & relationship management with existing customers. You can read more about email marketing here.

• Digital boards & hoardings: Digital boards and hoardings are the new incarnation of traditional marketing tools. The medium effectively debunks the theory of digital marketing being limited to your mobile, computer and TV screens. With the advent of deep AI-assisted 3D digital billboards which provide realistic moving imagery, the impact of digital billboards is getting stronger than any other medium of digital marketing. The fact that it can capture the attention of most digitally reluctant audiences has made it one of the most promising emerging digital technology for advertising which has huge potential to collaborate with AI and IOT devices to provide a seamless experience.

• Video marketing: With every generation in the household glued to youtube and video feeds form other social media, the importance of video marketing need not be emphasised. The simple fact that moving images accompanied with sound have a far stronger impact on the viewer than still imagery, is the winning argument for video marketing; one that has stood the test of time!

• Content Marketing: Blogs, tips & tricks, DIY and numerous other forms of informative content provide a welcome change to the regular marketing techniques that are built all-around selling. In content marketing, branding takes precedence over selling. If done right, content marketing can bring huge credibility to a business and attract organic growth that could be difficult to achieve otherwise.

• SEO: A set of activities that ensure that your business website ranks higher in search engine rankings and maintains and improves its position over a period of time can be collectively known as SEO. Read this article to understand in detail about SEO.

• Affiliates / Influencers: Affiliates & influencers work seamlessly with almost all offline and online promotional activities. In digital promotion, the influencers make a huge impact on video streaming platforms and social media. Affiliates and influencers can play a huge role in turning the tide for a business, especially in it's early days of inception when it is still introducing itself to its customers.

• VR /AR /Holograms: Virtual reality, augmented reality, holograms, etc. are bound to change the rules of the game in the coming days. As a digital enthusiast, one needs to watch this space carefully as these technologies could revolutionize the world of advertising. While holograms and lasers have the unique advantage of not needing to be connected to the internet for basic functioning, VR and AR can provide customers with a virtual experience that could be hard to resist, boosting sales and branding for businesses.

What is the difference in social media platforms in terms of advertising utility?

• Facebook: has the best reach amongst all the social-media platforms. No other platform has as wide-spread reach across all age-groups. It is a must-do for first-time advertisers while you are still testing waters and collecting clues about which sociography & demography responds best to your product or service.

• Instagram: This platform helps you define the personality of your brand. Here you can post short pictures and videos to define your brand and tap the right customer group.

• Pinterest: It is the digital form of personal archiving of information. This can be extremely useful for businesses which offer products, solutions or services that the customer needs to refer repeatedly. can effectively help in developing a dedicated fan-following.

• Twitter: This is where you take a stand on behalf of your brand. This platform reinforces the socio-political & non-commercial stance of the brand and helps you communicate with your customers directly.

What Meaningful metrics should we track on Social Media Platforms?

It is important to keep a close watch on the following metrics and identify trends. These metrics would fluctuate with certain category of posts, politico-social environment etc. Keeping a close tab would help you keep a check on your brand's popularity with the customers and specific reasons behind it.

• Views

• Clicks

• Comments

• Searches

• Reach

What are the 5 phases of Digital Marketing?

1. Understand customer: Collect analytics data about the demography and psychography of your target customers and plan further advertisements accordingly

2. Plan a timetable: Plan a monthly or quarterly time-table of your adverts keeping in mind factors like advertisement objectives, festivals, shopping seasons, preferred time of the day and message sequence. Apply this time-table on all the social-media handles simultaneously.

3. Build a campaign: Now plan a campaign for specific parts of the time-table as per marketing objectives and roll it out on different platforms simultaneously. This campaign could be a social cause, contest, lead generation campaign or even new product/service introduction.

4. Test campaign efficiency: Keep close eye on how audience is responding to your campaigns by tracking the metrics on social media platforms and goal achievements on analytics platforms. Analytic tools & Reporting- Keep a constant watch on the analytics data provided by social media platforms, website analytics etc. These reports constantly help in aligning the digital advertising journey in the right direction. In short, it tells you 'what is working and what is not working in your digital advertising strategy' and helps you refine your strategy.

5. Refine approach: Make note of 'what is working and what is not working' and keep refining your approach accordingly. It is important to keep tracking the online reputation of your business and make changes accordingly.

How big brands use Digital Advertising ?

• Interact with followers via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Quora

• Quick response to enquiries via chatbots and Quora

• Swift order taking and assistance via Ecommerce platforms

• Constant customer updates via Pinterest, emails, blogs, and vlogs

• Delivering on promises through customer services

• Keeping customers delighted by offers and discounts

• Performance Marketing via Social media and Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

How can I grow my small Business with Digital Advertising?

How to effectively advertise?

1. - Determine advertising goals

2. - Know target customer

3. - Identify brand personality

4. - Consider timings

5. - Test and track advertising campaigns

6. - Run integrated campaigns across platforms

How to Evaluate the Effectiveness of your advertisement/campaigns?

1. Set up data collections- collect data from your website, social media platforms and google analytics like - visitors, engagement, demography and psychography of visitors etc

2. Track and record- track the above mentioned data and record in a tabulate, easy to analyse form

3. Analyse Impact - analyse if goals for business (e.g. hits, views, sales, followers, website visitors etc) are being met and observe patterns in the same.

Do you want to grow your business with the right digital marketing strategy? Contact us to learn more about our Digital Self-reliance Program customised for micro / small businesses!

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