There are many different ways to use the digital world for advertising. People do a lot of advertising free of charge, by using Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. But, unless you have the right readers following you, the free of charge platforms may not drive traffic to your site and definitely won’t convert the traffic to sales.

There are ways that you can pay for online advertising that will not break the bank.  You can do this on your own if you know what you are doing, or you can hire a Digital Marketing person to do it for you.  It makes sense to hire someone with experience and knowledge of the market, even if you are a small company.  Using someone with expertise is always the clever way to go.

Google Ads

Google ads or Google Adwords are brilliant.  You need to have a digital marketing person work out an Adwords campaign for you, target the right market at the right time, and do analytics to ensure the campaign is working.  Google ad campaigns can be changed at any time, halted, amended or redirected, so it is important to do them properly.  If you are unsure, hire a professional.

Google has an excellent record of paid advertising with the highest click through rate for mobile search ads.  They have tracked over 4 billion store visits from ad clicks, offer both display ads and text ads and the beauty for the advertiser – you – is that you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.  Google has perfected the pay-per-click advertising formula.  Talk to your digital marketing team, or person;  they will set up an excellent Google ads campaign.

It is worth investing in a few Google ads but like any advertising, you need to monitor your campaign.  You may find your campaign works from Day 01 and that is brilliant.  It may take off slowly and you may need to invest a little bit more money to improve your search rankings.  Of course it also depends on the product that you are selling.  Young people often don’t click on banner ads but do click on ads with excellent keywords.  If you use niche keywords, you will rank highly in the Google system.  Your digital marketing person will tell you how it all works and will strategise for you.  If for example you are selling travel and want to reach upmarket travellers, you can aim your travel ads at a certain market, in a certain country, at a certain time.  If you are selling hip sneakers, your ads can be directed at the kind of youth who are likely to buy those sneakers.

Talk to your digital marketer.  If you don’t have one, look at the Google ads page, under the Entrepreneur’s starter guide.  They’ll guide you through a Google Adwords campaign.

Facebook Ads

No matter the size of your company, you should have a Facebook business page. This is free to set up.  The only deal with this is that you should be consistent.  Don’t set up a business page and then not do anything on it.  Post pics, run specials, give business updates, and try and do it at the same time every day.  You can do this on your own, especially if you are a little bit creative.

In addition, talk to your Digital Marketing Agency or person about Facebook Ads.  They run the same way as Google Adwords, on a pay-per-click formula. Facebook has so much good information on its users that you can target the age, sex, hobbies, likes and dislikes of individuals.  Ads can also be run to target people at certain times and in certain countries.  If you think that Facebook has over 1.7 billion monthly users, it is likely that you are going to get business out of this platform.

Facebook ads are clever too in that if one person likes your ad, all their friends will see their ‘like’.  You therefore can reach readers who are not even thinking of you, or aware of you.

Note too that people are spending more and more time on Facebook than any other Social Media platform.  Facebook ads therefore make sense, are also not expensive to run and campaigns can be well managed, stopped, started, changed, abandoned, mid ad.

You do need to be strategic with Facebook Ads.  If you are unsure about this, use a Digital Marketing Agency or person.  Let someone with expertise set up a Facebook Ad campaign for you.   Let them monitor the success of the ads and change them or modify them if necessary.  

Instagram Ads

Instagram is a lot of fun and has over 600 million active monthly users.  Instagram is not only for photographs and fun though,  but for anyone with a product to show or sell.  Use it cleverly and creatively and you can really booster your sales.

Think about the Kardashians! They have en enormous amount of business from their Instagram.  Sure, they’re household names but they had to become household names somehow. They engage with their customer to the point that their customer feels like a friend!

People love visuals and Instagram is the leading Social Media platform for image based content.  Post a pic, daily, of your product, with a clever caption.  You don’t need to do much more than that.  And then, use the Instagram Ads to create a campaign.  Again, if you don’t know what you’re doing or how to target your ads, use a professional to do it for you.

Instagram is about engagement.  People may ‘like’ your product and comment on it.  Always comment back, even if just to say ‘thank you.’  Engage with your customer or potential customer.  They appreciate you for it.

Instagram offers a series of free business tools and provide feedback to their customers with statistics on how a campaign is working.  Make use of it.  Instagram will tell you how well your unpaid ads are working and suggest which ads you could bolster.  Instagram also targets the right market for you.  As long as you give Instagram, or your Digital Marketing person, the information on who you want to target, they will target effectivity.

Twitter Ads

We feel that if you are using Social Media for advertising, you should have a presence on all social media platforms.  Twitter is an important Social Media platform too.  Join up, like with Facebook, your Twitter handle is free.  Tweet daily and consistently.  Be smart.  You can use Twitter free of charge to get your message across.

Again, you may need paid Twitter ads so you can reach the right market.  If you are a small company, you may only have a few Twitter followers and they may not be the right followers to convert ads to sales.  A paid Twitter campaign will ensure you get the right readers.

You can use Google to see how to advertise on Twitter.  Like Google, Facebook and Instagram, they will target the right market for you.  And if you are unsure how to do this, work with a professional.

Social Media

Any social media campaign should not be overwhelming.  You don’t want to bombard your customers and you definitely want to be strategic.  Look at the ads that personally work for you, but also look at the ads where you start hating the product! Sometimes, advertisers overwhelm.  Advertise cleverly.  Have a smart strategy. Be consistent.  Be smart. Target effectively.

And use the rule of thumb note. If you don’t know what you are doing, get a professional to do it for you.  Make sure that they communicate with you, and vice versa.  Tell them what traffic you want to your site and tell them about the product you are selling.  The more information they have, the better job they can do for you.  

We have many different platforms available to us.  Make use of them . Google, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter all work.  They don’t have to be expensive and they are effective.  Find out about these platforms from your Digital Marketing Agency.  It’s worth it.