Why Online Advertising Works for Your Business

Business owners promote their products and services in all kinds of ways: print ads, word-of-mouth referrals and television commercials. With the internet now a major source of revenue for companies such as Time Warner Cable, Dell and Sprint Nextel, it is no surprise that more and more businesses are turning to online advertising to reach potential customers, both the people using search engines and the people browsing social networks. Online advertising is an excellent way to reach people while they are actively looking for your products and services. According to recent Nielsen Online reports, “Google sites ranked as the top online property on PCs in February with 157 million unique visitors.” That tells you web users turn to search engines like Google for information about products and services, or find businesses through social networks like Facebook, so if you are advertising your business online at those moments, there is a very good chance people will find you while they are searching for exactly what you offer. The benefits of online advertising are many. According to an infographic from the digital marketing agency Clicksco, “with more than one billion searches carried out on Google every day, it is easy to see why so many businesses have found great success using this tool as part of their overall approach.” On top of that, with an average click-through rate of around 3% on pay-per-click ads, you can reach potential customers without breaking the bank.

Why Run Online Ads for Your Business?

Business owners promote their products and services in all kinds of ways: print ads, word-of-mouth referrals and television commercials. With the internet now a major source of revenue for companies such as Time Warner Cable, Dell and Sprint Nextel, it is no surprise that more and more businesses are turning to online advertising to reach potential customers, both the people using search engines and the people browsing social networks.

Online advertising is an excellent way to reach people while they are actively looking for your products and services. According to recent Nielsen Online reports, “Google sites ranked as the top online property on PCs in February with 157 million unique visitors.” That tells you web users turn to search engines like Google for information about products and services, or find businesses through social networks like Facebook, so if you are advertising your business online at those moments, there is a very good chance people will find you while they are searching for exactly what you offer.

The benefits of online advertising are many. According to an infographic from the digital marketing agency Clicksco, “with more than one billion searches carried out on Google every day, it is easy to see why so many businesses have found great success using this tool as part of their overall approach.” On top of that, with an average click-through rate of around 3% on pay-per-click ads, you can reach potential customers without breaking the bank.

Print ads in the local paper are still popular with business owners hunting for customers close to home, but online advertising has real advantages. Unlike newspaper ads, which people tend to glance at once and then throw away (assuming they picked up a copy in the first place), search engine ads like the ones on Google or Bing drive sales at a rate of eight or nine times the initial investment. And because so many customers turn to social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for information about businesses, advertising your company on those popular websites matters if you want to win more customers.

Online advertising also comes with several other benefits that traditional print or television campaigns simply cannot offer. With online ads, for example, you can easily track performance: where people click inside an ad, how much money each click brings in and which ads pull the most clicks, all of which tells you what works best for your business. You can also test plenty of ad types before keeping one or two and pausing the rest, and you can even run different ads on search engines and on social media sites, so you know where to advertise smartly to sell better and generate more calls or purchases, for example.

It is true that online advertising takes more time than simply running a print ad or a television spot, but the extra effort is worth it when it raises your visibility and brings you more potential customers. And thanks to the many free tools available to anyone online (Google Analytics among them), getting started with online advertising is easier than it has ever been. So you really have no excuse for leaving this valuable resource on the table!

Why Advertise Your Business Online?

Online ads on Google or on social media sites like Facebook can bring you more customers than traditional advertising does. With search engine ads, you can track performance and test several ad types before settling on the one you keep.

If you want more customers to find you online, and you want to reach them while they are actively searching for your products and services, you need to advertise your business online. With search engine ads, marketers can track performance and test several ad types before settling on the one they keep. On top of that, plenty of people research different products online before buying them offline in a store. And with an email marketing campaign aimed at your existing customers, it is easy to build special offers that encourage repeat visits or repeat purchases.

You can also use email marketing to open a dialogue with your customers, asking them for their opinion or their feedback.