Goals Business
For a local business that is looking for initial ways to create profit, digital advertising is the way to go. Why? Digital advertising expands awareness for potential customers—it’s that simple.
In turn, more businesses are increasing the amount that they spend for online advertising, including on social media platforms. Unlike traditional media channels, online advertising is easier to monitor and return-on-investment (ROI) can be tracked.
Traditional media channels don’t always have the option or effectiveness of real-time advanced data analytics like there are with platforms like Google and Facebook. Accessing advanced analytics means local businesses know that their money is being well spent and may positively impact their storefront.
For the most part, the success of an ad lies in the ROI indicators and measures listed below.
- Impressions: the actual number of views on an advertisement
- Clicks: the actual number of direct clicks on the advertisement
- Engagements: Social and landing page clicks
- Results: In most cases, results come in the form of a phone call or a store visit.
The Best Places for Online Advertising
Through our team’s extensive work in the digital advertising space, the best places to spend money on digital advertising are Google and Facebook. (In 2017, these two platforms also accounted for roughly 60 percent of ad spend.)
Platforms like Facebook and Google allow for advanced targeting, which puts a local business in front of consumers who are more likely to convert into a sale.
Why Advertise on Google?
Reach: Google is the largest search network in the world, including searching for local businesses. In fact, there are 3.5 billion Google searches conducted every day.
Utilizing Google’s massive network capabilities, online advertisers are able to find ideal prospects and get in front of users looking for their products and services.
In the age of digital marketing, people are not looking at TV commercials or listening to radio ads to find a local business; they are searching for a service online and then visiting the business’s website.
Flexibility: Google allows the local advertiser to spend whatever they want, whenever they want. With flexible options for ad spend, advertisers are able to test what works and what doesn’t work for a business. Spend a bit, and wait to see how the campaign performs. Then reinvest in larger budgets for greater prospect reach.
Why Advertise on Facebook?
Audience: The audience on Facebook includes 1.32 billion daily active users (DAUs) on average, at an increase of 17 percent year-over-year. Facebook is likely an intersection in which local businesses can find prospective customers. If the DAU stats aren’t convincing enough, then let’s talk about how often social media is used. The average person spends nearly 35 minutes everyday on Facebook, according to a recent study by Mediakix.
Targeting: Facebook Ad allows the ability to focus on what its users are really interested in. Users can be targeted by their interests, behavior, age, gender, location, job title and any other voluntary information that the user shares.
The Facebook algorithm has brought about changes to the local advertising landscape, but it remains one of the best environments for local businesses to get the word out about themselves.
By leveraging these two platforms, local businesses can take their advertising game to the next level, and begin to rake in new revenue—with the data to back their investment.
