Online advertising continues to rise globally. It’s where the money is being spent.
Online advertising has saved some businesses during COVID-19. Some were already using online platforms to promote their services or products, and some started Day 1 of COVID-19.
Either way, they’re using the new way of advertising to stay in business.
And now everyone wants to know: What’s the secret to advertising my small business online?
Online advertising requires an amazing customer experience. From the first click to the final purchase, it needs to be all about their experience. It has to have clear, concise language, easy-to-read buttons, landing pages that work, etc.
Make sure you have ads that engage your audience and earn you more customers. And make sure you follow these steps!
Be very clear on what you’re selling
This might sound simple, but it’s often overlooked in advertising. Business owners can sometimes feel like they need to be advertising because everyone else is. This isn’t a great strategy.
Instead, get really specific.
If you’re a cleaning company, are you residential or commercial? Do you work weekends? Do you work evenings? Are you bonded? These are simple questions and they’re really important when you’re deciding on your ad text.
You will have multiple ads going at once, so make certain you’re clear on your products, over and over.
One campaign should be one product or service. And then you can have multiple ads within that campaign.
Use separate landing pages for everything
This often gets overlooked. And it’s partly because it’s hard (a lot of things worth doing are) and it takes time.
If you use a web designer, you will have to get them to create your landing pages and then drop in that new URL once it’s completed.
If you can do your own landing pages, you can complete this step quite easily. You can create a targeted landing page for your products or services instantly and start to track your data and make improvements.
Every platform needs its own landing page:
- Facebook ads
- Instagram ads
- Boosted ad from either platform
- Google ads
- Organic promotions
- Your blog sign-up
- Linkedin posting and ads
This list will be customized to your business and your advertising needs. If you want to learn more about creating a landing page, click here.
Target audiences that want your products
When you advertise, you want to be really specific on who is seeing this ad. Online isn’t like traditional advertising: it can be much more specific.
Traditional advertising: Billboard on major highway, you crank your head left – partial turn of the steering wheel, entire family screams. Now what was that billboard for? Something up here on the left?
You don’t have any control over who sees a billboard ad. You can’t specify such things as the age of your target customer, where they live, their gender, etc.
Now let’s switch gears.
Online advertising: Show this ad to people who have visited my product page, are between 18 and 25, female, living in Banff and aren’t a part of my current customer list. (That’s a start to an ideal customer avatar, or ICA.)
This type of advertising is way more specific and will get you customers who are interested in your product or service.
Once you start advertising online, make sure to check in on your ads every day – make real-time adjustments if you don’t like something. Or if you aren’t getting clicks, turn that ad off, make adjustments and turn it back on. It’s that simple.
That’s one of the great things about online advertising – it’s instant. Real time. Real results. And you can use ongoing data to make decisions about upcoming campaigns.
Donita Fowler is an online marketer who supports entrepreneurs in their quest to be the boss of their online platforms.
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
