There was a time when newspaper ads, billboards, radio announcements, and TV commercials were the most common marketing channels for businesses everywhere. But that time has already come and gone. In their place are sponsored ads, push notifications, and other types of paid ads in the age of the internet.
That’s not to say that traditional marketing strategies are no longer useful. It’s just that they have already been adapted to the times. For instance, print ads in newspapers became ads on social media, while TV commercials became ads on YouTube, and so on. They have yet to exist, per se, but they’re now under different formats — ones that are optimized for the digital age.
Sponsored Ads on Social Media Platforms
So many consumers nowadays spend a lot of their idle time scrolling on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Aside from catching up with their friends’ lives and reading about news from all over the world, another thing that they do on social media is finding businesses to support.
You don’t know how effective sponsored ads are in convincing consumers to buy something they don’t actually need or crave food and drinks that they weren’t even thinking about. However, seeing these kinds of advertisements unprovoked can influence them to make spur-of-the-moment purchases.
Although sponsored ads don’t exactly guarantee that your online traction will generate sales, they can help you get the message that you’re open for business out there. If consumers continuously see your business’s presence online, it can help them be familiarized with your brand and products or services.
However, it’s important to note that not all social media platforms work similarly because their users also vary. So, before you decide which platform to use for your business, you have to define your target market demographic because that’s how you can choose the right channel to approach them.
Push Notifications in Mobile Apps and Sites
Businesses with mobile apps or websites can take advantage of push notification marketing, which basically sends public announcements and messages to all users. Push notifications can be used to disseminate information about new product offerings, promotional messages, or even updates about the orders they placed online.
For instance, if you have an e-commerce business and want to notify your customers about your upcoming credit card deals, all you need to do is send push notifications to their devices. At the same time, your customers will have a higher engagement rate with your app or website because of these notifications.
Push notifications are easy to use and practical because most consumers use their smartphones or mobile devices to conduct their online transactions, which means they likely have access to the internet a lot. These notifications can either be in the form of in-app alerts on mobile devices or browser alerts on websites.
PPC and Native Advertising
Aside from social media platforms and mobile applications, another channel that you can use to advertise your business is through the search engine. Go back to the foundations of digital marketing and discover how you can use pay-per-click (PPC) or native advertising to grow your business.
PPC advertising refers to the ads that appear on the search engine once a user makes a search inquiry. From the name itself, you can gather that the advertiser will only have to pay every time someone clicks on their online ads, making it a more practical option than other kinds of paid ads.
On the other hand, native advertising refers to paid ads that aren’t disruptive to the overall content of the web page. Unlike banner or display ads, native ads are designed to adapt to the environment where they appear. These ads are matched with the overall look and feel of the content, so they won’t look out of place.
Both types of paid ads can help achieve your goal to attract a larger audience for your business and generate more sales in the process. But it’s important to know what kind of traction you’ll need because these ads will cost you money. So, you have to make sure that you’re not wasting any pennies.
The traditional marketing and advertising strategies in existence have yet to lose their charm, but you must understand that the times are changing. Since your customer base is mostly online, it’s only right that you follow them to where they are spending all of their time — in the digital landscape.
You might not realize it yet, but everyone is going digital, that’s if they haven’t already. There’s no reason for you to get stuck in the past or continue using traditional ways, especially because not changing will only make it hard for you to stay in business. Do yourself a favor; go where the currents are taking your small business.
