As a small business owner, do you feel like you’re constantly
wasting your marketing dollars?
Join the club.
Although print advertising, direct mail, tv and radio still have
some relevance for some industries, for many, it’s a giant waste
of time and money. Consumer attention span is getting shorter,
coupled with an ever increasing amount of advertising, you can
see why people go about their day with blinders on.
One area of marketing that is growing though is online advertising.
According to a study by Zenith Optimedia, the current global
display advertising market is predicted to reach $25.27 billion
this year(2012), with a 36% growth to $34.4 billion in 2013.
If you aren’t advertising online yet, or are looking for new avenues
to pursue, below are 7 places you can market your small business
online. While I’m a huge proponent of optimizing your website so
you can get found in the search engine results for free (SEO), the
reality is that it takes alot of time, patience and persistence to
rank high in the search engines. While you’re slowly and methodically
building up your organic search rankings, why not spend your
advertising dollars more efficiently online right now?
Note: Many of the programs below offer a free credit for new advertisers.
If you don’t have one or see one on their website, do a quick Google
search online to see if you can find an offer code you can use. If not,
I would call them directly and ask for one, competition is fierce for
advertising dollars and most will give you a credit for trying them out.
Google Adwords
The grand daddy of online advertising. Since Google owns the lions share
of the search engine market, it makes their advertising platform Adwords
the biggest platform for Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing. Adwords lets you
create text, image or video based advertisements targeting people who
search for specific keywords (you bid on keywords in an auction type
market) and terms in the Google search box or through demographic and
behavioral targeting via their Display Network. You can also get very
specific in when your ad displays, making your marketing dollars very
efficient. Setting up a campaign can be a bit complicated for beginners,
luckily Google offers an easy way for small businesses to get started with
Google Adwords Express.
Some options available to you via Google Adwords:
Search Ads – These are traditional ads you see when you perform a Google search.
There are usually 2-3 ads above the organic results as well as several ads to
the right of the organic search results. Here you target specific keywords people
are typing in as they search and compete in an online auction with competitors for
top placements.
Display Network – These are ad placements outside of the traditional Google search.
Google owns dozens of properties such as Gmail and YouTube where you can place
text, image and video ads across all of their networks. They also partner with
thousands of 3rd party websites giving Google Display Network the biggest reach
out of any online advertising platform.
Remarketing – With a remarketing campaign, after someone has been to your website
, you have the ability to advertise to that individual person as they surf the
internet. Between Google’s own properties and their 3rd party network, you have
the ability to reach that person almost anywhere on the internet. Remarketing
is available for both Search and Display Network campaigns.
Bing Ads
Similar to Google Adwords, Microsoft uses it’s Bing search engine to serve ads in
it’s search engine results as well as partner networks. The Bing search engine
has a much smaller audience than Google, but this typically makes bidding on
keywords less expensive and could save you money as it extends your marketing
dollars a bit further.
Over the past few years Bing Ads has made great strides in improving their ad
network as well as making it easy for business owners to run their own campaigns.
Bing Ads offers free advertising credits but they can be hard to come by. If
you go to the link below and submit your site to their search engine, they will
offer you an advertising credit for trying it out.
7 Search
A smaller player in the paid search industry, 7 Search uses smaller, niche search
engines to display your Pay Per Click (PPC) ads. They claim a better ROI than
their bigger competitors and bidding on keywords is cheaper than both Google Adwords
and Bing Ads.
I have had limited experience with 7 Search so far but their customer support has
been really good and their Cost Per Clicks are definitely cheaper, though you
won’t get the same click volume as Adwords or Bing Ads.
Facebook Advertising
Advertising on Facebook can be a gold mine for small businesses and their ad platform
has come a long way the past few years, both in effectiveness and ease of use.
Facebook ads work similar to traditional Pay Per Click advertising (pay only when
someone clicks on your ad), but the great thing with Facebook is that you can add
an image or video along with your text. Even if people don’t click on your ad,
you’re still getting lots of great exposure to a targeted audience for free.
While platforms like Adwords and Bing Ads typically target user behavior (searching
for a product or service), Facebook lets you target according to demographic makeups
and user interests. Their platform is unmatched in this respect and if you know
exactly who your target market it, can be a powerful advertising platform. Their
video ad platform seeks to rival even YouTube and they seem to be pushing out
new advertising features every week.
Twitter Advertising
While Twitter has allowed advertising for quite some time with promoted tweets and
trends, it has been way out of the budget for small business owners (unless you had
a min of 10k to spend a day!). Twitter since launched a small business advertising
program that will make it much more affordable for businesses to advertise on Twitter.
While I do not know anyone currently using it that is getting a good ROI with Twitter
Advertising, it still has many possibilities as they are still trying to figure out
how to make advertising work on the platform. Some interesting features that have
come out are Twitter Cards as well experiments with e-commerce, where users can buy
items without having to leave Twitter.
Stumbleupon Ads
Still relatively unknown to most people, Stumbleupon is a neat social service people
use to discover (stumble on) new websites they never knew existed, related to their
interests. It’s simple to use, create a profile, select your interests and start
stumbling! Stumbleupon has an advertising platform called Paid Discovery where you
pay between .05 cents and .25 cents for every person that stumbles on your site. You
can select the interests you want your website to be included in and pay according to
how targeted you want your stumbles to be. There are no advertisements here, the
website page you select becomes your ad for visitors. They also have a traditional
advertising platform with paid placement opportunities.
While I love Stumbleupon, I would only consider using it if you have a product or
service that has general appeal as it’s not nearly as targeted as PPC or Facebook
advertising. I also wouldn’t use it to drive sales, but to get content you have
created out in front of people fast.
LinkedIn Ads
If you’re in the BtoB or professional services industry, LinkedIn Ads may be exactly
what you’re looking for. Linkedin can serve highly targeted ads to other professionals
and businesses on Linkedin. The Cost Per Click (CPC) is higher than pretty much any
other platform listed here, but you can target your ads to very specific people.
I would recommend this if you are BtoB or offering professional services and you are
looking to acquire high value clients. The advertising platform is pretty easy to use
and with so many highly detailed user profiles, offers incredibly detailed targeting choices.
wasting your marketing dollars?
Join the club.
Although print advertising, direct mail, tv and radio still have
some relevance for some industries, for many, it’s a giant waste
of time and money. Consumer attention span is getting shorter,
coupled with an ever increasing amount of advertising, you can
see why people go about their day with blinders on.
One area of marketing that is growing though is online advertising.
According to a study by Zenith Optimedia, the current global
display advertising market is predicted to reach $25.27 billion
this year(2012), with a 36% growth to $34.4 billion in 2013.
If you aren’t advertising online yet, or are looking for new avenues
to pursue, below are 7 places you can market your small business
online. While I’m a huge proponent of optimizing your website so
you can get found in the search engine results for free (SEO), the
reality is that it takes alot of time, patience and persistence to
rank high in the search engines. While you’re slowly and methodically
building up your organic search rankings, why not spend your
advertising dollars more efficiently online right now?
Note: Many of the programs below offer a free credit for new advertisers.
If you don’t have one or see one on their website, do a quick Google
search online to see if you can find an offer code you can use. If not,
I would call them directly and ask for one, competition is fierce for
advertising dollars and most will give you a credit for trying them out.
Google Adwords
The grand daddy of online advertising. Since Google owns the lions share
of the search engine market, it makes their advertising platform Adwords
the biggest platform for Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing. Adwords lets you
create text, image or video based advertisements targeting people who
search for specific keywords (you bid on keywords in an auction type
market) and terms in the Google search box or through demographic and
behavioral targeting via their Display Network. You can also get very
specific in when your ad displays, making your marketing dollars very
efficient. Setting up a campaign can be a bit complicated for beginners,
luckily Google offers an easy way for small businesses to get started with
Google Adwords Express.
Some options available to you via Google Adwords:
Search Ads – These are traditional ads you see when you perform a Google search.
There are usually 2-3 ads above the organic results as well as several ads to
the right of the organic search results. Here you target specific keywords people
are typing in as they search and compete in an online auction with competitors for
top placements.
Display Network – These are ad placements outside of the traditional Google search.
Google owns dozens of properties such as Gmail and YouTube where you can place
text, image and video ads across all of their networks. They also partner with
thousands of 3rd party websites giving Google Display Network the biggest reach
out of any online advertising platform.
Remarketing – With a remarketing campaign, after someone has been to your website
, you have the ability to advertise to that individual person as they surf the
internet. Between Google’s own properties and their 3rd party network, you have
the ability to reach that person almost anywhere on the internet. Remarketing
is available for both Search and Display Network campaigns.
Bing Ads
Similar to Google Adwords, Microsoft uses it’s Bing search engine to serve ads in
it’s search engine results as well as partner networks. The Bing search engine
has a much smaller audience than Google, but this typically makes bidding on
keywords less expensive and could save you money as it extends your marketing
dollars a bit further.
Over the past few years Bing Ads has made great strides in improving their ad
network as well as making it easy for business owners to run their own campaigns.
Bing Ads offers free advertising credits but they can be hard to come by. If
you go to the link below and submit your site to their search engine, they will
offer you an advertising credit for trying it out.
7 Search
A smaller player in the paid search industry, 7 Search uses smaller, niche search
engines to display your Pay Per Click (PPC) ads. They claim a better ROI than
their bigger competitors and bidding on keywords is cheaper than both Google Adwords
and Bing Ads.
I have had limited experience with 7 Search so far but their customer support has
been really good and their Cost Per Clicks are definitely cheaper, though you
won’t get the same click volume as Adwords or Bing Ads.
Facebook Advertising
Advertising on Facebook can be a gold mine for small businesses and their ad platform
has come a long way the past few years, both in effectiveness and ease of use.
Facebook ads work similar to traditional Pay Per Click advertising (pay only when
someone clicks on your ad), but the great thing with Facebook is that you can add
an image or video along with your text. Even if people don’t click on your ad,
you’re still getting lots of great exposure to a targeted audience for free.
While platforms like Adwords and Bing Ads typically target user behavior (searching
for a product or service), Facebook lets you target according to demographic makeups
and user interests. Their platform is unmatched in this respect and if you know
exactly who your target market it, can be a powerful advertising platform. Their
video ad platform seeks to rival even YouTube and they seem to be pushing out
new advertising features every week.
Twitter Advertising
While Twitter has allowed advertising for quite some time with promoted tweets and
trends, it has been way out of the budget for small business owners (unless you had
a min of 10k to spend a day!). Twitter since launched a small business advertising
program that will make it much more affordable for businesses to advertise on Twitter.
While I do not know anyone currently using it that is getting a good ROI with Twitter
Advertising, it still has many possibilities as they are still trying to figure out
how to make advertising work on the platform. Some interesting features that have
come out are Twitter Cards as well experiments with e-commerce, where users can buy
items without having to leave Twitter.
Stumbleupon Ads
Still relatively unknown to most people, Stumbleupon is a neat social service people
use to discover (stumble on) new websites they never knew existed, related to their
interests. It’s simple to use, create a profile, select your interests and start
stumbling! Stumbleupon has an advertising platform called Paid Discovery where you
pay between .05 cents and .25 cents for every person that stumbles on your site. You
can select the interests you want your website to be included in and pay according to
how targeted you want your stumbles to be. There are no advertisements here, the
website page you select becomes your ad for visitors. They also have a traditional
advertising platform with paid placement opportunities.
While I love Stumbleupon, I would only consider using it if you have a product or
service that has general appeal as it’s not nearly as targeted as PPC or Facebook
advertising. I also wouldn’t use it to drive sales, but to get content you have
created out in front of people fast.
LinkedIn Ads
If you’re in the BtoB or professional services industry, LinkedIn Ads may be exactly
what you’re looking for. Linkedin can serve highly targeted ads to other professionals
and businesses on Linkedin. The Cost Per Click (CPC) is higher than pretty much any
other platform listed here, but you can target your ads to very specific people.
I would recommend this if you are BtoB or offering professional services and you are
looking to acquire high value clients. The advertising platform is pretty easy to use
and with so many highly detailed user profiles, offers incredibly detailed targeting choices.
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