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Digital Advertising: Definition, Importance, Types & More!

The first clickable advertisement hit the internet in 1994 and since then, digital advertising has become one of the most important channels for businesses around the world!

The reason is quite straightforward. As of January 2022, 62.5 percent of the world’s total population is connected to the internet. More and more people are using the internet to make purchasing decisions.

In fact, most Americans are exposed to around 4000 to 1000 advertisements throughout the day. So, including a variety of digital advertising tactics in your marketing strategy just makes sense.

Digital ads will help you nurture your buyers until they become customers! In this blog, we will walk you through everything you need to know about digital advertising and growing your business! Ready? Let’s go!

What Exactly is Digital Advertising?

Digital advertising is an advertising strategy that leverages online platforms such as search engines, websites, emails, and social media to deliver promotional ads to consumers.

In simple words, digital advertising is any form of advertising that you see on the internet. Digital advertising is usually paid – when you place an ad on someone’s website or on Facebook, you need to pay for it.

The best part? Through digital advertising, you can create a highly segmented audience and reach people who are most interested in your product. Let’s understand the concept through an example.

A man named Richard visits your website, looks around it, clicks through a few products, but doesn’t purchase anything. However, based on his behavior, you understand what kind of products he is looking for.

After Richard leaves your website, he heads over to a local news website. He sees your advertisement there. Then, Richard opens up Instagram to post a photograph and sees another one of your ads.

These ads show Richard an offer to buy the product he was looking for, along with a coupon code. This piques Richard’s interest, he clicks on the ad, fills out the details, and purchases the product.

Richard then receives a welcome email and is now a happy customer! After a few days, Richard comes back to your website to explore more products. You ask him to rate his experience with the product he bought earlier.

Once he leaves your website, you start targeting him again with advertisements of other products that are complementary to the one he purchased earlier…and the cycle goes on and on!

Well, now that you know the nitty-gritty of what digital advertising is, let’s understand why it is essential in today’s multi-channel and multi-device buyer landscape.

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Why is Digital Advertising SO Important?

1. Supports Your Organic Marketing Efforts

First things first, what are organic marketing efforts? These are all the advertising instruments that you don’t pay for – such as your website, email marketing, search engine marketing, blogs, and more.

Every business needs to attract new customers, and paid digital advertising helps you do just that. Simply put, organic marketing is the vehicle, and paid digital advertising is the fuel that will keep your vehicle running.

2. Your Prospective Buyers Are Using Digital Media

The days when newspapers and magazines dominated your buyers’ attention are long gone! Your buyers spend a lot of their time online. Don’t believe us? Check out these stats.

  • As of January 2021, there were 4.66 billion activeinternet users worldwide. (Source)
  • Americans spend an average of 6.31 hours on the internet daily. (Source)
  • In 2020, there were 4.2 billion social media users, growing by half a billion in a year. (Source)

All in all, digital advertising is a powerful way to reach large audiences in real-time on various devices and channels. Moreover, it’s a fantastic way to tell your brand stories at scale and context.

Read more: What is Outbound Marketing & How Does it Work?

3. Gives You Access to Wealth of Data

Thanks to the powerful advertising and marketing tools available out there, you can now access so much data about consumers – from their behavior, demographics to the content they’ve viewed and engagement levels.

You can then leverage this information to create personalized ads and have more relevant conversations with the consumers. This is undoubtedly the holy grail for every marketer out there!

4. Better Targeting Abilities

Let’s say that you’ve put an advertisement in a newspaper. You would have very little to no control over who sees the advertisement and interacts with it.

Whereas, in digital advertising, you have the ability to target the exact consumers who’re most likely to purchase your product or service. How awesome is that!

In the next section, we will take an in-depth look at the types of digital advertising, so that you can better understand which one will work the best for your business. Let’s dive in.

9 Types of Digital Advertising You Must Know About

1. Social Media Ads

Social media ads are one of the most interesting and effective types of digital advertising. Why? Because social media has billions of users and most of the platforms allow you to segment your target audience.

Social ads use the data users share on social media in order to offer personalized and relevant content. This introduces your brand to more prospects and increases your conversion rates!

2. Native Advertising

Native advertisements are ads that resemble the look, feel, and function of the media format/platform in which they appear. As a result, these ads are less intrusive and don’t cause any interruption in navigation.

In fact, native ads are often called ‘anti-ads’, as they expose the reader to advertisements – without shoving it in their face. People are always more inclined to view these ads and consume their content.

3. Display Advertising

Display advertising is any graphic-heavy, visual advertising that you can display on a digital platform – such as a pop-up advertisement, a banner, or an interstitial.

Even though this format has been tremendously affected by the growth of ad blockers, it still has a lot of potential. The key is to create ads that are worth seeing instead of ads that can bypass the blockers.

4. Remarketing

Here, you use webpage data to show personalized ads to users. In other words, you use user information collected by cookies to show them ads relevant to their latest actions.

Through remarketing ads, you can remind your website visitors about your product, after they leave your website without purchasing anything. Basically, these ads are designed for post visits and not pre-visits!

5. Mobile Ads

Regardless of your product, you should consider mobile-specific advertisements. According to Google, mobile searches are way higher than those on personal computers. (Source)

You should create a few ads that only appear on mobile devices or the ones that are optimized specially for mobile devices. Otherwise, you will miss out on a noteworthy portion of the market.

6. Videos

Video ads appeal to multiple senses, instantly engage buyers and keep them hooked till the end – making it easier for you to get the word out there. This is the reason why this format has become so popular.

Video ads are perfect for sharing product demonstrations, how-to-guides, and in-depth information. If you have got a tech-driven audience, video ads can position you as an innovative and modern company.

7. Email Marketing

To start your email marketing campaigns, you can use the quality databases offered in the market. However, the more segmented the database is, the more powerful your email marketing would become.

So, try to grow your email database, divide it into specific segments, and then target different email campaigns to each of these segments. You need to arrive in your prospects’ inbox at the right time with the right message!

Read more: Drip Marketing: What is it & How to Do it?

8. Search Engine Marketing

Through search engine marketing, you can increase the online visibility of your website in the SERPs. SEM responds to the needs of users in a real way, as it’s entirely based on the keywords that they search for.

Google Ads even offers the option of creating ads according to your retargeting lists. For example, you can show your ads to only those who’ve visited a particular page on your website in the last month.

There’s a lot that goes behind a good digital advertisement. Would you like to know some of the most important elements that help create effective ads? Read on!

5 Tips For Creating Amazing Digital Advertisements

1. Use Catchy Headlines

If you want people to notice your advertisements, it’s important to hook them in as soon as possible. For that, you need to use the catchiest, most compelling headlines.

Almost 80% of the readers that see your digital ads probably won’t read further than the headline. So, if your headline isn’t captivating enough, readers might not be interested to learn more about you and your business!

2. Keep it Relevant

While planning and creating the advertisement, make sure that the message you’re putting across is deeply relevant and offers value to the audience.

In short, if you want your digital advertisement to be successful, it needs to be highly targeted and highly relevant. Don’t go around bombarding high school students with ads of a baby stroller!

3. Include a Compelling Copy + Call To Action

Your ad copy should be creative, easy to read, clear, and to the point. Most importantly, avoid using slangs and jargon in the copy, and don’t forget to include a CTA which tells your readers what you want them to do next.

For example, if you are running an ad to increase the traffic to your website, your advertisement copy must tell the reader something like, “Check out our website!”.

4. Research, Research & Research

Before launching any digital advertising campaign, it is important that you take the time to conduct thorough research, learn about your competition as well as the audience you’re planning to target.

Through research, it will become easier for you to pinpoint ideas and strategies that will resonate with your audience, increasing the likelihood of success!

5. Add High-Definition Visuals

Your advertisement should be able to catch the eye of the audience while maintaining their attention. Incorporating visual elements into your ads is a great way to do that!

Along with your ad copy, add flashy and high-resolution images in the advertisement. Remember that visuals are usually the first things a person looks at before deciding whether they should read the copy or not.

Wrapping Up

Digital ads are everywhere. They are on consumers’ mobile phones, social media platforms, smartwatches, and the websites that they visit. 

So, how can your business breakthrough all the noise and make sure that your advertisement leaves an impression on the prospect?  

Well, as we said above, the key is to keep your ads engaging, relevant, creative, and non-intrusive. Inform the consumers, entertain them but do not bore, or worse, irritate them! 

It’s a thrilling – yet a little challenging – time to be a marketer!

Further reads:

Email Automation: Definition, Benefits & Tools!

10 Newsletter Marketing Strategies for Marketers!

Account-Based Marketing: What is it & How to Implement it?

9 Marketing Skills Every Marketer Must Have!

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