5 Types of Digital Advertising: How to Use Them to Grow Your Business

If there is one thing that is clear, it is that we are living in the digital age. And if you want people to buy from you, traditional advertising needs to be complemented by something else. You need to also look into digital advertising, which is the way of the future.

There are several types of digital advertising to choose from – just like traditional marketing. There is no one solution that fits all kinds of businesses and budgets. And that is why it makes sense to look into several types of digital advertising and how you can use them to grow your business.

So, without further ado, here are five of the different types of digital advertising.

#1. Social Media Advertising

Out of the types of digital advertising, nothing has taken the world by storm quite like social media. 3.03 billion people are active social media users. This means brands need to take social media advertising very seriously if they want to survive and stay ahead of the competition.

Out of the available social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram are the largest. Facebook, in particular, is the biggest, with 2.072 billion users. Facebook gives you the ability to run ads for anything you wish to do, from generating leads to getting installs for your latest app.

These ads appear as part of the user’s regular feed. As a matter of fact, you have probably seen them before– they are the ones with the word “Sponsored” on top. Other social media platforms also have their own integrated ads system that you can use.

#2. Email Marketing

When it comes to one of the cheapest and the most effective types of digital advertising, email cannot be overlooked. In fact, for every $1 spent on email marketing, you can expect to get a return on investment of $38 on average. That is the power behind email advertising.

And considering that there will be an estimated 5.6 billion active email accounts in 2019, email is a great digital advertising tool for building and sustaining relationships. These relationships can be leveraged to boost sales.

Email marketing starts with building an email list, which can be done in a number of ways. These include a newsletter signup form on your website or quizzes and social media contests. From there, it is a matter of coming up with an email campaign and emailing your subscribers regularly.

There are a bunch of email campaign managers you can use. These include:

• MailChimp
• Drip
• Constant Contact
• AWeber
• CovertKit

Here are some tips to make sure your email campaign has the highest impact :

• Write relevant content
• Send emails at the right time for better engagement
• Don’t send too many emails to the point of being spammy
• Make sure the message is short and sweet (concise and to the point)
• Add a personal touch (Use “Dear John” instead of “Dear sir/madam”)
• Allow subscribers to respond (avoid automated emails with a no-reply address)

#3. Video Advertising

The biggest hurdle that advertisers have to face is the dwindling attention spans of today’s internet users. This is why video advertising has become the dominant form of digital marketing in this day and age. Videos are just that much more engaging and can easily be absorbed.

This is why video advertisement is one of the best ways to grow your business. Not only are videos more engaging and easily absorbable, they also pack more of an emotional punch than text and audio alone. This makes your message that more effective.

Many people shy away from video advertising because it seems expensive and difficult to use. But the benefits are too great to ignore. And video ads usually go well with social media advertising, meaning combining the two can produce the most effective results.

#4. Your Business Website

As soon as you create a website, you need to make sure that it is visible. You can do everything right, from getting the best hosting provider for your website to making it mobile responsive. But if you don’t advertise your website, it won’t perform as expected.

You can advertise your business website in two ways:

1: Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

When it comes to SEM, you and other businesses bid on keywords. If successful, your website appears in the top rankings of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for the keywords you successfully bid on. The other name for this type of digital advertising is paid ads, and it comes in two forms: Pay Per Click (PPC) and Cost Per Thousand (CPM).

Here is how each of them works:

• PPC: When your ads appear on the SERP and people click on them, that is when you pay for the ad. All you have to do is create a customized add, assign a budget to it and you are good to go. How high it appears on the results page is based on your bid value on specific keywords.
• CPM: This works in the same way as PPC. The only difference is that you pay per every 1,000 impressions. An impression means that the ad successfully rendered on the user’s browser – they don’t need to see it.

2: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This is more like an unpaid version of SEM. This is where you use keywords to optimize your website for crawling. Rather than rank your website using the amount you bid, search engines check how relevant your website is to the search query.

While this is the basic idea, other things also play an important role in SEO, too. For example, search engines, like Google, are now penalizing slow websites. And one of the causes of a slow website is a bad host. So getting a good host for your business website to make it fast can also help you with SEO besides keyword optimization.

#5. Display Ads

Display ads are some of the popular types of digital advertising that many businesses use. They are a type of paid advertising that uses engaging text, audio and/or video to spread your message. Popular types of display ads include banner ads, interstitial ads, pop’s up and landing pages.

You have probably seen one of these display ads before on a website or blog you have visited.

They could even be displayed in apps mobile and web apps to reach a wider audience. So if you are thinking of display advertising, that is how you can achieve the best results since they don’t show up in the SERP.

What Digital Advertising Method Works Best for Your Business?

As you can see, there are several types of digital advertising techniques that you can use to make your company grow. You just have to pick the ones that work for your company. Everything, from social media advertising to email marketing, can help you get more customers and even keep the existing ones.

All it boils down to is knowing how to use them properly. While this is not an extensive guide on the subject, it should give you a good idea on how they work. So pick one or a few and see how customers respond in this digital age.

You will be able to grow your customer base and stay a step ahead of the competition, especially the ones who aren’t using them or not doing it properly.