Internet advertising, also known as online advertising or online advertising, is a type of advertising that has as medium or communication channel Internet.
Internet advertising allows us to introduce our brand, product or service and persuade your purchase, consumption or use, millions of people located around the world, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
But in addition to its broad scope, several others the advantages of advertising on the Internet, among which are…
- It’s high effectiveness: Mainly because it allows us to specify the type of audience to which to direct our ads.
- Its low cost: Use a medium or design a banner usually does not involve higher costs.
- Ease of use: Use a medium or design a banner usually is a simple task that any of us can do.
- Easy measurement: Allows us too easily and in real time to measure the results of our advertising campaign.
- Its flexibility: It allows us to change or modify advertising medium ad immediately.
All these advantages have made Internet advertising one of the most used today when announcing a brand, product or service, and that we are not left behind and also can take advantage of the benefits offered by this type of advertising, this guide will show you in general terms how to advertise on the Internet:
1. Create a web page
If you do not have one, the first step to advertising on the Internet is to create or design a website for the brand, product or service you want to advertise.
It is possible to advertise on the Internet without having a web page (for example, when we published an ad with the description, phone and physical address of our business somewhere classified ads); but in most cases, and whenever we want to make the most of the advantages of this type of advertising, you need to have one.
The idea of having a website is to have a site to which users are directed after clicking on one of our ads, and where they can find more information about the brand, product or service you’re advertising, including means through which they can contact us, and physical places where they can purchase the product or service.
To design a website is necessary to have knowledge in web design that can be purchased through various manuals that exist on the Internet, which are mostly free; but if you do not have the time or the necessary willingness to learn or design our site, we can always use the services of a professional designer.
Whether the design it or send it out to designer with some tips to consider when designing a website are attempting to have a professional and attractive design, publish good quality images that clearly show the product or service, write a clear and accurate description of it and, if possible, publish testimonials from satisfied customers to help us build trust.
It should be noted that an alternative to a web page is a page on Facebook, which today is almost as effective as a website when advertising, as well as it allows us to showcase and promote our brand, product or service, but also provides us with other benefits such as the ability to attract followers and interact with them.
2. Choose an advertising medium
Once you have a website we choose the means or advertising media that we will use to publish our ad or send our advertising message.
On The Internet there are different ways to advertise that vary in effectiveness and cost. The choice of media or advertising media to use will depend basically on the type of product or service you want to advertise, the profile of our target audience (for example, if your target audience is made up of a young audience, an appropriate means would be social networks), and our advertising budget.
Then we name the main advertising media available on the Internet:
Third Party Websites
One of the main advertising media used on the Internet are websites that offer the possibility of placing advertisements on them in exchange for a periodic payment.
These sites are usually comprised of portals or blogs (but also include programs and online platforms) that rent advertising space on their pages (or interface in the case of programs and online platforms) for ad placement usually graphics (banners).
When using this method, it is advisable to look for websites with high visitor traffic (although while higher the visitor traffic that has a site, the more often the price charged for the car), and have a similar theme to the brand, product or service you want to advertise (the ad).
Advertising programs
Another means quite used when advertising on the Internet are advertising programs that exist in this environment, most notably the program AdWords from Google.
These programs allow us that our ad is automatically posted on various websites associated with the program and related to the theme of our brand, product or service (our ad), as well as search results from Google when a user searches for words or related (in the case of AdWords) phrases, may well reach a large audience that might be interested in these.
But besides allowing automatically reach a large number of target audience, another advantage of these programs is that they allow us to only pay every time our ad receives a click by users (Cost Per Click or CPC), but also we provide other payment options such as paying only whenever our ad is displayed a thousand times (cost per thousand or CPM).
Social networks
A medium increasingly used the Internet to advertise are social networks, among which the social network Facebook.
Social networks are like advertising programs in the sense that they allow us our ad automatically reach a large audience that may be interested in our brand, product or service, but with the difference that the ad instead of being posted on websites, it is published in profiles or pages of social network users.
Another similarity of social networks with adware when advertising is that they allow us to specify the type of audience that heading; for example, in the case of Facebook, this allows us to segment users which will target our ads by country, age, interests, etc.
Classified ad sites
Another means commonly used to advertise online are classified ad sites that exist in this environment, such as OLX.
These sites allow us to publish them an ad for our product or generally service for free but also provide the ability to pay if we want to highlight, for example, making it appear in top positions, or is larger than the other.
Usually, these sites advertise different types of products or services, although there are also those that specialize in a particular type of product or service, such as sites that only dedicated to advertising properties or cars, and in some cases, because of their specialization, may prove more effective.
Another means commonly used to make online advertising and virtually carries no cost is email.
Email allows us to send advertising messages that are usually made up of electronic brochures, letters, and advertisements for products or services where, for example, a product or service briefly describes the main features noted, and included the end an invitation and a link directed to your website.
When using this medium is advisable to send advertising messages only to people who we have previously provided your email address or subscribed to our newsletter , as sending messages to people whose email address was obtained without their consent, in addition to that today hardly generate any results, it is considered spam and can be sanctioned.
Other media
Said means are most effective when advertising on the Internet; however, there are also others that are worth considering:
- Yellow Pages: Medium and not as effective as before, but still remains a good alternative especially when you advertise a service. This means we can advertise our business or service in exchange for a periodic payment which varies according to the position where we want to appear (the better is the position, the higher the price they charge).
- Web directories: Medium increasingly disused allows us to publish in them the URL or web address of the website. These web directories are usually free, and mostly dealing with various issues, although there are also directories that only cover a particular topic (thematic directories), such as business directories in a given country.
- Sites pay per click or PTC (Paid to Click) sites: Sites in exchange for a certain payment allow us to publish in them an image ad is shown only to people registered on the site. These people are offered some of the money that advertisers pay for your ads in exchange for viewing ads for a certain amount of time or click on them.
3. Design advertisement
After choosing the media or advertising media that we use, we designed the ad or creative that publishes or sends via this medium.
Internet ads or advertisements tend to be formed basically by textual ads and display ads:
- Textual ads: Text ads are made up of a title, a short message and a link or link directed to the advertiser’s website. The texts ads often have the characteristic of being integrated into the content of a website, making them seem part of the content, and thus giving them a character of non-intrusive advertising.
- Display ads or banners: Are ads boxy or rectangular shaped by a static or animated image. Image ads allow visual impact, but also usually include a link or link integrated that allows them to click on them, be directed to the advertiser’s website.
However, in addition to text ads and image ads, ads or advertising messages on the Internet also, they may be formed by links or links, emails, logos, videos, animations and any other element capable of being displayed in this medium.
The choice and design of the ad or creative depend basically on our advertising goals (what results in you want to achieve with our advertising), the profile of our target audience, and advertising means that we will use.
Design a textual advertisement for Internet is something that any of us can do; however, in the case of image ads it is necessary to have knowledge in graphic design, but if not we have these, we can use some of the design tools that can be found on the Internet, which helps us to easily create our announcement, and they are mostly free; or in any case use the services of a professional designer.
As for the content of the ad, as in the case of ads for traditional media, for this to be effective, generally must highlight the main features and benefits of our product or service, be short and precise and consist of a language clear and easy to understand; but also you must be able to persuade the user to click on it and so this is directed to our website.
4. Launch advertising campaign, monitor and correct
Once you choose the advertising medium that we use and designed our ad or creative, we launched our advertising campaign (we make effective our advertising), for example, we send the code of our report to the administrator or webmaster of a website that has rented us advertising space, activate our AdWords advertising campaign, we send our advertising messages via email, etc.
Once we launched our advertising campaign tracking the same drawing one of the main advantages of advertising on the Internet that is to allow us to make an easy measurement of results.
The idea of monitoring is basically measuring the performance or effectiveness of the medium or advertisement that we are using and thus know whether we should continue using the same advertising strategy, modify or change it entirely.
To follow up, we can use some of the various monitoring tools that Internet offers, which are mostly free; for example, to know the origin of users who visit our website, and thus measure the effectiveness of advertising media that we are using, we can use the program Google Analytics, which also allows us to know the number of users who visit our site and how they interact with.
AdWords if we can use their own control tool, which allows us to know, for example, what are our most effective ads; and the same in the case of Facebook if we go to the statistics section, where we can see, for example, how many “likes” will receive each of our ads.
Finally, once our follow-up was done, if not be getting the expected results, we make the necessary corrections taking advantage of another advantage of online advertising is its flexibility; for example, change of advertising medium, change or edit our announcement, we increased our advertising budget, etc.