You have probably heard all kinds of things about how important it is to advertise your business online. After all, the market share occupied by online purchases is growing year on year.
Even if your business does not sell online directly, you can still benefit from advertising online. Many people turn to the internet as their first recourse when searching for information on a product or service. Whether an individual is looking for reviews on floor scrubbers, company opening hours or to compare prices on a service, many of them will start either by Googling for it or by asking their friends on social media.
Missing out on these opportunities to advertise and publicize your business is not a very savvy business move! So, what are your options for advertising online?
Search Engines
You have probably heard of search engine optimization, or SEO. This form of advertising or marketing is pretty simple. The idea is you want your website pages to feature prominently in search engine results if a user is looking for information about something related to your company, products or services. An advantage of this method is that you can do it yourself for basically free; however, it can be complicated and outside help might be easier.
There is also the option of purchasing ads that are displayed while users search, targeted at the keyword they are searching for. It’s pretty simple to do, but can be very expensive for high-demand keywords.
You can use Facebook for advertising and marketing in two ways. Firstly you can purchase ads that are targeted at users in particular demographics or with particular interests.
You can also use Facebook as part of an overall social media strategy, where you use your page to post information about your company and products, hoping that people will “like” or subscribe to your profile. This can spread word of your company exponentially as your followers and friends will then be exposed to you.
Shareability
A key component of a social media strategy is the shareability of your posts. That is, how likely are people to spontaneously share them with others.
A blog can be another way to enhance your shareability such that readers will expose your posts to others. Blogs can also be a valuable part of an SEO strategy.
Other Site Ads
You can also purchase ads to be displayed on websites. Google Adwords allows you to target ads to sites that include certain keywords, domain names or are used by a particular demographic. However, you can always choose to cut out the middle-man and contact websites directly to see if they would be interested in selling you advertising space.
Shane contributed this guest post. Passionate about the online world, he likes writing about everything from online advertising to finding deals on floor scrubbers.
