Online advertising is necessary for both small and large businesses, but advertising for small businesses is decidedly more difficult. their staff is smaller and their marketing budgets are also smaller. How do you compete with larger companies given the circumstances?
The good news is that with the right strategies, you can use online advertising to generate leads, sales, and ROI, no matter your size. In this guide, we’ll share some strategies and tips to help you increase brand awareness and grow your business on a small budget.
When thinking about the best way to market your small business online, start by asking yourself:
- what are your customers looking for online?
- where and when are they looking for it?
- how can you differentiate your product from the competition?
Once you answer these questions, you can implement an advertising strategy that will help you reach more people and build your business.
If you’re a small business looking for affordable and doable online advertising ideas, read on!
use of google ads for small business advertising
A long time ago in the 20th century, small and local business advertising often consisted of getting their message out to large groups of people, hoping to catch the attention of a small percentage of them. I’d place an ad in the yellow pages or a local paper, or maybe I’d buy a radio ad and hope for the best.
Online advertising is generally more profitable and more effective, period, because you can target your advertising budget to a more select group of people and closely measure how that audience responds to your advertising.
One of the most measurable forms of online advertising is paid search marketing, a system that allows you to place ads in search results when people search for products or services related to what your business offers. then you pay a small fee to the search engine each time someone clicks on one of your ads. For this reason, paid search marketing is also known as PPC or pay-per-click marketing.
Because Google is the most popular search engine in the world, Google’s search advertising system, Google Ads, is the most popular platform for PPC.
You can make google ads work even on a limited budget by following these best practices:
- Bid on high intent keywords: Only place ads on keyword searches that reveal commercial intent or the searcher’s intent to buy something. For example, if you’re a real estate agent, you’ll get more value from people searching for specific phrases like “Boston 2-bedroom apartment available now” than something broad and generic like “vacation rentals.” keyword research will help you find those “sweet spot” keyword terms.
- use various targeting methods to focus your budget: for example, you can use targeting parameters to show ads only to users in a certain demographic (such as women or people with high incomes), or restrict your ads to only appear during your small business’s active operating hours.
- Working to improve your Quality Score: Google assigns each keyword in your account a Quality Score, which is a “score” between 1 and 10 that assesses how relevant your ads are to people searching for that keyword. keyword. The more relevant your ads are, the better your score will be, which means that Google rewards you with higher ad rankings at a lower cost per click. Consequently, companies that take the time to create high-quality ads can get more exposure for less money.
for more information on how adwords works, see:
- ppc university: a free learning resource that will teach you the basics of ppc.
- how the google auction works: a visual introduction to how the google adwords auction works . it all starts with a keyword…
- how to advertise on google and grow your business: a beginner’s guide to getting started with advertising on google.
using bing ads for small business advertising
bing has a smaller share of the search engine market than google, but is still used by millions of people every month. That’s millions of people you could reach with your advertising! As a bonus for small businesses, bing ads also tend to be less expensive than google ads.
On average, costs per click (or cpc) on bing ads are 33% lower than google ads. A few more reasons to try adding bing ads to your online ad mix:
- bing ads offers more granular control over some parts of your ad campaigns
- bing is especially popular with older and wealthier demographics, as well as the travel industry
- bing has better device targeting options
Also, if you’re already using Google Adwords, it’s easy to duplicate your Adwords campaigns and use the same ad creative on Bing. so there’s very little reason not to reach that additional audience that might be interested in your business.
social media advertising for small business
Paid advertising on popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram is another affordable and effective way to advertise your small business.
The reasons for advertising on social networks are clear. let’s take facebook for example. About 80% of Americans use Facebook, and more than half of the US. uu. residents use facebook several times a day!
Facebook advertising costs are also lower on average than other forms of online advertising, and Facebook offers a surprising degree of granularity when it comes to targeting options. If you want to reach men ages 19-26 who live in California, vote Democrat, and like gadgets, you can!
for more help with facebook ads see:
- 9 ways to reduce your facebook ad costs
- the facebook ad qualifier (a free tool to monitor your facebook ad campaigns)
- the complete guide to creating engaging facebook ads
These three avenues (google, bing and facebook) can and should be part of your small business marketing strategy.