Targeting
Advertising offers several benefits, but the biggest is targeting. Targeting is the ability to show your ad to people with very specific interests — namely, people who are interested in your products and services.
Traditional advertising requires that you search for potential customers.
Online advertising reverses this by letting potential customers find you.
We’ll go over exactly how you can target advertisements to your customer interests. For now, consider some other choices you have with online ads that can make your marketing campaign even more precise:
- Age, location, and language of your audience
- Days, times, and frequency your ad should and shouldn’t show
- Ad location (commercial sites, personal sites, search engines)
- Terms people use to search for products and services
Targeting your ads this way will further refine your campaign, and help you weed out people who you know aren’t likely to need what you offer.
Know what works
Online advertising lets you measure your success. If someone clicked your ad, you’ll know. If they clicked your ad and then did something valuable to your business — purchased your product, downloaded your app, or phoned in an order — you can track that, too.
By seeing which ads get clicks and which ones don’t, you’ll also quickly see where to invest in your campaign. That, in turn, can boost the return on your investment.
Change for the better
Online ads give you valuable data. This includes how much it costs you, on average, for advertising that leads to your customers’ online purchases or phone calls. With the help of some analytical tools, you can also learn about your customer’s shopping habits — how long, for instance, they tend to research your product before they buy.
Why is this important? With regular access to this kind of data, you can tweak your ads for the better. And you can change them as often as you’d like.
Budget control
Online advertising gives you control over how you spend your money. There’s no minimum. And you can choose how much you spend per month, per day, and per ad. You’ll only pay when someone clicks your ad.
