Which is a Benefit of Advertising Online?

PPC marketing, or pay-per-click advertising, is a powerful strategy that you do not want to neglect. Paying for ad placements can be a nervous prospect. Some small businesses shy away from the idea altogether. Why pay for ads when other strategies, like social media, content creation and SEO, require only time and effort?

In the Digital Age, drawing people to your business through online channels by creating ad campaigns, is a necessary tactic for successful, growing companies. If you aren’t taking advantage of every opportunity to do so, then you’re leaving customers (and money) on the table.

This discussion will not only explore the benefits of advertising online but also clear up some of the misconceptions regarding its costs.

The Three Types of Online Ads

Before you learn the benefits and costs of advertising online, it’s important to first identify the three main PPC ad types.

Search Ads: When you search on Google, Bing or another search engine, some of the results returned are sponsored ad messages. They look exactly like the organic results, but they have a small ‘AD’ icon.

Display Ads: Often, while browsing popular Internet sites, you may see banners, overlays or small box/rectangle ads on the screen. These are known as display ads because they ‘display’ on websites across the Internet.

Video Ads: When you watch video content on YouTube and other platforms, you’re often asked to watch an ad. This is another type of online advertising that is sometimes categorized under the display type. However, with the growing popularity of video content, it really deserves its own ad type.

There are different Google Ads formats available which bring quality and improvements in all available ad types.

The 8 Benefits of Advertising Online

When it comes to digital marketing, businesses need to make smart choices and invest in the strategies that make the most sense for their goals and budget. Here are the 8 benefits of advertising online.

This list is designed to help you make an informed decision about including online ads in your own digital strategies.

More Website Traffic

Drawing new customers to your business, which is a benefit of advertising online mentioned earlier, is a necessity. If you aren’t creating new customers, then your business is stagnant and it may only be a matter of time before it begins to decline.

You’ve spent a lot of time and money on producing an outstanding website experience for your customers to enjoy. PPC ads help bring new leads to the site you’ve created. They can learn about your business, browse your products and services and eventually become your newest customers.

Increasing Sales

If you use your website to sell products, book appointments or otherwise acquire new clients, then increasing your website traffic means increasing the number of sales opportunities you have. More opportunities mean more conversions, which results in money in your pocket!

In fact, leads following an online advertisement are often more likely to convert!

Qualified Leads

The reason that ad traffic is often considered more valuable and likely to convert is that it produces qualified leads. Consumers that click on sponsored ad results, instead of organic ones, are often ready to convert right away. These individuals click on ad content because they know it will connect them with a solution quickly.

Leads are exceptionally qualified when they enter searches with buying intent. For example, a customer searching for “buy dress socks” is more qualified than someone looking at “dress sock materials.”

Brand Awareness And Recall

What happens when Internet users don’t click on your PPC ads? A lot of marketers fear that ineffective campaigns will just be a waste of time. The truth, however, is that customers still see your ad, even when they decide not to click it. Thus, you’ve acquired valuable brand awareness.

In other words, while most businesses want conversions from their ads, impressions are valuable too. Consumers may not be ready to buy yet, but that ad message will make it easier for them to recall your brand when that time does come.

Immediate Results

While SEO, social media marketing and other tactics don’t have the paid element of advertising online, they can take months or even years to produce the tangible results that your business needs to grow.

PPC, on the other hand, generates valuable leads for your business the moment that your ads go live. And, sponsored ad results appear above organic ones, which means they have added visibility above SEO-earned ranks.

Compete with Competitor

Online advertising is a rapidly growing strategy that many businesses are turning to. Google Ads attracts more and more users every month. This means that there is a strong possibility that your direct competitors are already publishing ads and acquiring leads online.

When businesses hold out on creating online ads, they leave the door open for the competition to advertise without resistance. You should not miss this chance to show your presence where your competitors might already be present.

Scale Advertising With Your Business

In the fast-moving Digital Age, businesses need marketing strategies that can scale with their changing needs. You need to invest in marketing tactics that can scale with your company’s growth, which is a benefit of advertising online.

It is very easy to invest more into PPC and capitalize on different ad opportunities, once you have the budget to do so. Or, scale your ad budget back when business is slow.

Transparent ROI

The last but not least benefit of advertising online is extremely easy to measure ROI. You have complete visibility of how much you are spending on ads and how many conversions this leads to. This means you always have a clear sight of where your money is being spent, how much and what the returns are.

Understanding The Costs Of Online Advertising

All of the advantages of PPC marketing begs the question: what are the drawbacks? More specifically, what does all this cost?

PPC is an online advertising model that stands for pay-per-click. This means that you only pay for your search advertising messages when a search user actually ‘clicks’ the message and follows the link to your website. Essentially, you only pay for traffic!

How much do you pay for each click? That depends on a number of factors. Search ads are targeted by keyword searches. You submit bids for various keywords and Google uses these to determine which ad to display.

The good news is that Google favors relevant and quality ad experiences over the highest bidder. You can keep your costs low by creating awesome ad content.

Conclusions

Which is a benefit of advertising online? It’s too hard to name just one! Generating website traffic from your target audience is certainly the primary objective, but there are a number of other benefits, like scalability, transparent ROI, brand awareness and others that are extremely noteworthy for marketers.

And, the costs of online advertising are controllable. You decide what your daily budget will be, which keywords you’ll target and how you will bid on each ad to display. As you put more time and effort into improving your ads, the lower your costs will be.

You can’t beat that!