When talking about digital marketing and advertising channels, in particular, I suggest to operate in two paradigms:
- The short term where Paid marketing is a king
- The long term where Content marketing is a king (somewhat similar to SEO)
Outline
AdWords & Google Display Ads
By paid marketing I mean mostly Pay Per Click (PPC) and Display things. Take AdWords – for already formed needs and niches, it’s a perfect crash test of the unit economy – because on every dollar spent it should generate revenue.
The primary difference between display advertising and paid search advertising is that display ads use a push approach, while search ads use a pull approach. People who see search ads were already looking for your product or a similar one; people who come across your display ads were targeted purposefully. This is called remarketing, and has become one of the most effective digital advertising trends today.
Remarketing (aka retargeting) is a form of personalized advertising, based on prior online actions — visiting a website, watching a video, reading a blog, opening an email, looking at images, etc.
Bonus: Google Gmail Ads
Often underestimated and little known channel. However, you get into an entirely private space of people’s inbox. Cost also tends to be much lower compared to text & display ads.
Here is a quite detailed guide if you want to jump right into the setup.
Bing (yes, it is alive)
Bing claims a 34% search share on its website, and some say it’s half as expensive.
Reddit Ads
I recently discovered Reddit ads when demand for a service or product in question is less formed. Since Reddit organized in various communities – one can and should target users based on their interests.
Facebook & Instagram
Not quite the same in advertising approach two platforms have the same admin panel for ad management. Lots of ‘ultimate guides with these 199 crazy hacks’ already out there, so here is a crazy fact for you instead:
June 25, 2018: Facebook Inc.’s Instagram is estimated to be worth more than $100 billion, if it were a stand-alone company, marking a 100-fold return for the app purchased in 2012, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence.
The photo-sharing platform… will likely help nudge Instagram revenue past $10 billion over the next 12 months… and unlike Facebook, Instagram is still growing in the U.S.Instagram could account for about 16 percent of Facebook’s revenue over the next year, up from 10.6 percent last year, according to eMarketer data cited by Bloomberg Intelligence.
Similar to Facebook & Instagram there are plenty of guides on how to do the thing. This one looks good.
The remarkable thing for visually rich businesses. There was also a StumbleUpon platform with a somewhat similar idea and ads – but I was not able to figure out what happened to them after the acquisition.
YouTube
I don’t think a video is fitting the short term paradigm of paid ads in general. However, video remarketing (e.g., showing a promo video to those who visited your website) is a great thing to have from the start, because it is an extra touch to your potential client at relatively low cost. Works with other platforms too.
To sum it up on paid advertising channels for business
There are two principles I worship in marketing:
- If it doesn’t scale it doesn’t work
- Conversions or it didn’t happen
Advertising channels featured above has a remarkable scalability potential because if your unit economy works out, you keep increasing the advertising budget and continually optimize things and run new tests.