Digital marketing is rapidly taking place of traditional advertising: newspaper ads, radio and TV are not as popular as they were a decade ago. There are several good reasons that stand behind company’s choice to run Google Ad Words campaign and pay for sponsored links rather than invest in a newspaper promotional text. Traditional commercials principal is “the more the better” focusing primarily on massive exposure, being unable to track and measure user engagement in the advertised product. The internet, however, allows following people’s online activity and displaying targeted ads based on user search history.
Here are three main reasons why search engine proves to be the best marketing tool.
Being Online Is Vital From Marketing Perspective
Web search is the most popular way of receiving and sharing information of any kind. Statistic shows that the majority of users check out local stores and businesses on the web before making a call or visiting the place. Companies with highly ranked websites significantly benefit from the search engine and the search process, as they are easily found by potential customers. This is why every business and organization today finds it essential to maintain online presence: a website, a blog or a social page.
Targeted Audience On A Global Scale
Traditional marketing, such as TV commercials or advertisement boards, is usually applied to the masses without considering the interest of a particular consumer. This results with high exposure but low involvement rate. Local promotion activities such as mass mailing or flier distribution have their own disadvantage, being restricted to regional populations only. Unable to target the potentially interested customer, 90% of these leaflets and letters end up in the garbage.
Internet marketing, on the contrary, allows tracking users’ activity on the web and building an online behavioral pattern for each individual. Based on cookies and cache data files, Google Ad Words, for example, displays only targeted ads on the browser page – ads that go in line with the user’s browsing history and search queries. People who see these ads have been previously looking for the keywords mentioned in the commercial text. The relevance is what makes the difference and increases the chances the ad will be clicked through.
Cost-Effective: Control Your Expenses, Monitor Your Data
The enormous range of marketing campaigns available on the internet gives a business owner the freedom to determine their actions according to the budget, scale and goals. Google Ad Words PPC, for example, has flexible pricing model varying from $0.1 to $1.5 per single click. Keyword research tools help identify the most influential and competitive keywords and price them accordingly.
Most of the campaigns include search engine optimization (SEO). Every webpage has its own rank based on keywords, tags and links. Google Webmaster Tools is a free, user friendly application which allows monitoring website activity and experiencing with keywords in order to improve the page placement.
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Web marketing has several significant advantages over traditional advertising. Cost, flexibility and targeted ads are the most recognizable ones; however, other benefits lay under the surface: the customer feedback system, multiple content formats and social features – to name a few.
Getting acknowledged by users and search engines requires time and dedication, but in the end of the day the effort is definitely paid off.