In this article, Adzooma, the online advertising platform for small businesses, looks at the many benefits businesses can enjoy from advertising online.

Online advertising is a billion-pound industry for good reason but many businesses still shy away from it because they struggle to understand how it will benefit them. However, every business is bound to have customers they can reach on the internet, so it is worth investing in online advertising.

Although it can feel like a venture into the unknown, it is actually rather simple. Essentially, it’s a marketing strategy that involves using the internet to gain website traffic, while targeting your messages to the right customer.

Here are some great benefits you can enjoy from advertising online:

In-depth insights

One of the biggest benefits of advertising online is that you can get incredibly in-depth insights into your customers’ behaviour. By analysing which ads brought in the highest number of leads, you can identify which channels work best, which copy is most effective, and which locations respond best to your products.

There are also metrics you can analyse to see exactly how much it would cost to acquire and convert a customer. If this sounds complicated, then it shouldn’t. There are lots of platforms out there, including Adzooma, that can help you cut the jargon and streamline your advertising.

Online advertising allows you to understand a customer’s exact level of engagement. While a print publication may provide you with circulation and readership data, you’ll never know for sure how long customers spend interacting with your ad, how long they spend on your website because of it (or indeed, if they visited your site at all).  You won’t even know if they researched more of your products, or whether it was that one ad that led to them purchasing from you. An online presence gives you all of that data and more, enabling you to learn where your most engaged prospects are.

Powerful targeting

The other benefit of online advertising is that you can target your ideal customers. Once you’ve identified what your customers look like, you’ll know exactly who to target, and can serve your ads to them, on the websites they’ll be on.

By placing ads in front of your prospects based on prior engagement, you can identify your ideal customer profile by seeing who reacts well.

Cost-effectiveness

Digital channels are extremely cost-effective for marketers, with rates decided through a combination of ad size, ad location, performance, and demand. When you consider the sheer reach you can gain through digital channels, online campaigns quickly become much cheaper than traditional offline channels such as television, radio or print. Furthermore, the transparency of digital campaigns means you can easily adjust your cost, based on performance. This further confirms the flexibility of online advertising, because if you compare this to offline marketing, once you’ve paid for a spot on the radio, there’s no adjusting your investment, no matter how well (or badly!) it is received.

Flexibility

This may all sound like a lot of work, but the truth of it is, is once you’ve set up your strategy, your online advertising campaigns can be adjusted in just a few clicks. Plus, changes are usually instantaneous, and the flexibility enables you to respond to incoming data straight away, and pause your campaigns, or change your strategy in minutes. This flexibility allows you to always have your customers in mind – by anticipating their needs, you can adjust your ads before anyone even notices. This is just one of the great things about advertising online.

Brand awareness

Businesses nowadays are increasingly trying to build brand awareness, in order to attract new customers and encourage loyalty. Online advertising is a great way to do this because you can you build awareness and also bring traffic to your website. Once you’ve identified your customers, you can generate targeted campaigns to reach new audiences, and create brand influencers.

Use the endless online display space as an opportunity to be creative with rich media, and establish your online presence. You’ll need to make an emotional connection, and get online consumers genuinely excited about your brand, and your offerings. Only then will consumers buy into your brand, and start a conversation about you to others.

Great reach

When you take your campaign online, the options are practically endless when it comes to your reach capabilities. Consumers are now watching less live TV and instead, are turning to computers to watch their favourite shows, listen to music and access the news. To be effective marketers, you need to stay in front of your customers, and it turns out they’re online. Therefore, if you aren’t already, you really should be. Plus, making the move to online allows you access to a global audience, and if you choose to, your ads could be shown 24 hours a day, across the globe.

Conclusion

Online advertising is an essential aspect of every company’s marketing mix. It carries significant benefits such as reduced costs, customer insights and robust targeting – something that offline advertising just can’t compete with.

The potential to get clicks to your website is huge, and it can also help you to give your brand credibility, by being present on websites that your customers will be on. If done correctly, then online advertising can be a winner for any business.