Paid Advertising

Most businesses need to spend money on advertising at some point.
Our approach is to make sure client's maximise the benefit.

Digital advertising

Online "advertising" comes in different forms, with a large number of options and variations.

» Using search engines to create ads
» Social networking sites offer paid advertising
» Advertising on video sharing sites with text ads, or video adverts
» Display advertising on news and features sites.
» Discount voucher/market place schemes

The old principle for any ad is that it should "first divert then convert".
The most searched terms: "money off".

The main ways to pay for a digital ad are:

◊ you pay when your ad is clicked (cost per click)
◊ you pay by number of impressions (specifically cost per 1000 impressions, known as "cpm").
◊ for a discount site you pay a percentage of the sales value.

We make this work by developing some serious thought around it:

It is an advertising campaign so has to be taken seriously. This means money and time invested to make a return.
It is better if you have something to offer. Just using it for the sake of attracting visitors to your website never feels sufficient. And you often have poor follow up figures.
Using it to make marketing tests can lead to improved results. This is either by expanding the campaign or introducing complementary advertising and promotional techniques based on the test results.

What we do

Good process combines the elements required to market effectively whereby what you spend produces incremental results.
Specific and a good deal - differentiate between the purpose of the campaign:

‡ advertising, where you are promoting your business
‡ marketing, where you have a specific offer for the customer

We look at:

Clear objectives of what you want to achieve
The product you want to sell
What the online competition is doing
The relevant keywords
Creating the advertising copy
Adjusting the website as appropriate
Setting up the campaign(s)
Identifying the budget required
Managing the campaign(s)
Collecting relevant data
Reporting on the results

competition for popular keywords
is intense and expensive

Some clarification on sponsored online ads

Paying for digital advertising has one common feature across all platforms. You pay by a pre-determined result.

This differed from paying for space upfront which is/was the traditional method of Newspapers, Yellow Pages, T.V and Radio. There you were/are paying for space. Online, you pay for visibility where the basis is:

› Cost per Impression, which is paying when your ad appears
› Cost per click, where you are charged because someone literally clicks on your ad.
› Cost per view, paying for video ads (as you have on YouTube)

Part of the "knowledge" is understanding which type ads to use and in which circumstances. The biggest factor is knowing how much to spend as this type of advertising is based on a bidding process. And just to complicate things further the highest bid does not necessarily get the highest ranking. Google ranks on the basis of "qualitative" factors to ensure that ads fulfil its mantra of relevance.

The key places to advertise are dependent on what you sell and your key demographic. Search is still best served by Amazon and Google. Content sites such as YouTube generate a lot of advertising, with display ads peppering the web. The Social Networking sites were slow to take off but have their own options via: Instagram; Facebook; and "X" (formerly Twitter.)

Overall - online advertising is a great system. You can target a specific audience, its geography and demographics. And it is cost effective. You are only paying for a selected criteria which enables you to monitor and measure performance every few hours.

main formats for Ads

Text ads
Image ads
Banner advertising
Pop-ups
Video ads (as banner but seen only on videos)