• The internet and self-serve platforms have levelled the playing field and made it possible for small businesses to compete with the big guys. 
• It's so easy to create tailored online ad campaigns that reach your audience quickly and effectively. But how can you legally steal your competitors' customers?
• Content is the key. In this article, we go through the major online advertising platforms and tell you how to create clever campaigns and landing pages. 

Get yourself a nice cup of your favourite drink and have a seat. You are about to come on a journey to build and grow your business, the fun way.

We are going to show you the power of the platforms available at your fingertips, to present your business to your ideal clients, for pennies on the dollar.

In this day and age, the internet has created a level playing field for small companies to compete with the giants in their industry.

Where the larger companies take a long time to go through their approval processes, to ensure their advertising is politically correct, matches their focus groups, vision statements, studies, etc… the little guys can deploy a campaign in a matter of hours and see results within a day of launching their marketing campaign.

Self-serve platforms have made advertising easy to use and give you tools to make sure your message is very targeted. It is like opening up a menu at a restaurant and picking who your ideal client is, identifying all their attributes, where they hang out, their behaviours and only serving your ads to them if they meet your criteria.

There simply has never has existed a time where you can pinpoint with such accuracy your ideal client avatar or target market and get your offer in front of them, quickly.

Let’s discuss the advertising platforms that are available to you through their primary use, their approximate price range, pros and cons, and how you can exploit them to build your list and increase your profits.

What are the two methods of online advertising?

There are two methods of online advertising:

1. Search marketing: Putting your message in front of people that are actively searching for your product or service; or
2. Display advertising: Interrupting them while they are relaxing on their favourite social media and trying to get them to engage with your offer.

Google

Let’s start with Google. You have used Google at some point and know that the first four search results are targeted ads followed by the actual organic search results. Google search ads are used to acquire clients when they are in a hyper buying state and need of your service. The ads are targeting you based on the keywords or phrase you used, make sure you target buying key phrases.

Example: 20kg dumbbell set, Melbourne (Buying phrase) vs Black dumbbell (could be looking for information or images)

The cost of this form of advertising depends on the following variables:

• the quality score of your website
• clickthrough rate  
• ad position  
• competitive advertisers
• bidding strategy
• website speed
• landing page
• mobile responsive
• voice search

Example prices

• Search = $2.69 per click
• Display = $0.63 per click

It is typically used to deliver your product or service direct to your client when they need it. It is used for sales and lead generation.

Google also uses its display network to put your offer in front of people doing research and your product might be a fit for them. Example:

Pros:

• Every aspect of your marketing campaign is measurable on the Google Ads platform
• You control your budget
• If done well a business can be ranked at the top of the search results and get the lion’s share of the clicks

Cons:

• A steep learning curve to learn how to use Google Ads effectively
• Cost Per Click is expensive, compared to other media

The brilliance of the Google Ads platform for business owners is in the scalability and targeting of the campaigns, based on targets data retained by Google throughout its networks.

Yes, Google reads your ideal clients email (Gmail), knows what they are watching on YouTube, understands where they live (Google Maps), where they are eating, what hotels they stay at (Google booking), what service providers they use, what type of pet they have, when they are travelling, where and for how long, who they associate with (emails and phone), what they do in their spare time (Google play store) and how they spend their money if they have a google wallet.

So, this allows advertisers like you to create a very specific profile of their ideal client and Google then puts your offer in front of your ideal client. This is the sole reason why some businesses are willing to spend millions of dollars a year on Google Ads, because they see an ROI.

Google offers marketers the ability to easily measure effectiveness of ad campaigns with multiple tools. What this means for your business is that you can find out exactly what is working and what is not, much easier than most other platforms.

Google Ads also allows you to use Display Ads which are visual ads that will “follow” the past visitors and make sure you are staying at the top of their mind. This retargeting allows your business to build brand awareness, change periodically and follow-up your clients via retargeting advertising.

Facebook

Let’s talk about the most used social platform on the planet. Facebook.

Facebook is interruption marketing, its primary use is brand awareness, retargeting, great for product launches, and direct sales.

The price range again depends on the amount of other advertisers in the market competing for your audience. Roughly the Cost per thousand impressions is $3.34 and the average cost per click is $1.72 across the network.

Pros

• Facebook Ads are affordable for business of all sizes
• Flexibility of many different ad objectives for the purpose of your campaign
• Each campaign is optimised for the purpose of your campaign, giving you a higher ROI
• It’s easy to use and provides detailed analytics
• Has detailed documentation and resources to teach you about Facebook Ads
• Detailed targeting on your audience

Cons

• Requires a proper ad strategy because of the frequency of the displayed ads, so to avoid banner blindness, the ads need to be eye catching and have a good call to action. Remember you are competing with images of cute cats.

The main reason why Facebook Advertising is such a popular choice is that of the number of users on the platform. Facebook has over 2,000,000,000 monthly users. So, chances are, your clients or customers are already spending most of their time on Facebook. The implementation and reach of the Facebook ads is incredibly fast. That means it will drive immediate results. It’s a great way to increase your brand awareness. Most businesses also utilize the Facebook Advertising platform to increase their revenue, leads and sales, quickly.

Instagram

Facebook bought Instagram for $1Billion dollars in 2012, and now they own one of the most engaged platforms on social media. The price range to display your ad to 1000 users is $5.14 or the cost per click is $0.61.

Pros

• Instagram is a powerful visual content platform.
• Uses the same Ads Manager as Facebook.
• Instagram allows ads in story format.

Cons

• Targeted audience of most active users is very specific to 18 - 35 years old.
• No clickable links in the description.

Primary Use: Brand Awareness, Retargeting, Product Launch, Sales.

Like Facebook, Instagram is an extremely powerful platform to advertise on. Instagram’s user base is growing more and more each day, with no signs of slowing down. An important factor to consider for any business is that the main active demographic on Instagram is between ages 18 to 35 years old. This is important if your main target market is within this age group.

It is very important to note that whenever a consumer follows your brand on Instagram, they are consciously making the decision to see and engage with your brand on their timeline. This functionality offers a great opportunity to strengthen the relationship between your followers and your brand.

YouTube:

Next, let’s talk about YouTube Advertising. YouTube allows you to place ads on the videos or in the top right corner of the page. Studies have shown that the top right corner display ads get the most engagement and is the most effective as it sits there for the duration of the video.

The average cost per view of your video or click on your ad is $0.10 and $0.30, respectively.

Pros

• YouTube has over 1,500,000,000 monthly users.
• YouTube is the second largest search engine.
• The average user spends more than one hour a day on average on YouTube.
• The targeting is utilizing Googles data

Cons

• Poor customization as an advertising platform.
• Users can “skip” your ads. Surely, you have never done that on a video ad.

Its primary use is brand awareness, retargeting, product launch and to increase leads and sales.

YouTube showed us the power of cute cats as a way of distracting people from the daily grind of their lives. It launched in 2005 is now the second-largest search engine after Google and the third most popular website/app after Google and Facebook. For any business having a YouTube channel with the correct keywords and targeted traffic to those videos also helps with the Google ranking of their website and increases its engagement as you can embed your YouTube videos directly on your website.

There is no denying video is a powerful tool to get products/services across to your target market. Video consumption accounts for most of the traffic on the majority of the platforms and websites. YouTube also has built-in algorithms that have allowed for enhanced tracking according to preferences and viewing habits. These algorithms allow for smarter targeting which allows you to share your products with people who have shown an interest in your market.

Can you place your best salesperson in front of a camera and have your ideal client watching them from the comfort of their own home all for less than $0.50?

LinkedIn Advertising

The social network for professionals, LinkedIn’s advertising is amongst the most expensive mediums coming in at $6.59 per 1000 impressions and a cost per click of $5.26. However, remember the person clicking is very targeted, so paying $5.26 to get their attention is much cheaper than taking time to meet them, buying a coffee and spending an hour explaining your proposition to them.

Pros

• LinkedIn is a network of professional audience.
• InMail Email Advertising is growing

Cons

• LinkedIn Advertising can be very expensive compared to Facebook and Twitter.
• InMail Email Advertising has a spammy feel by users.

LinkedIn is primarily used to target professionals to a high-end offer.

If you are looking to specifically advertise B2B, then LinkedIn Advertising is the right place for you. They allow you to target an audience based off their job titles, seniority, employer, location and so much more.

Many businesses underestimate LinkedIn Advertising. While this platform may not be a great option for all types of businesses, but if your objective is to reach a C-level executive, then this is the perfect platform for you.

So, if you’re trying new ways to reach new potential leads for a B2B business then LinkedIn will definitely be worth a shot.

Ok let’s get to the part where you can steal your competitors' clients for less than a cup of coffee - “Muah ha ha ha”… Evil laugh

So now you are aware of all the major forms of online advertising that require a small but necessary and powerful learning curve. Let’s put together a strategy for you to implement in your business so that you can deploy your campaign and have your ads presented to your ideal clients.

Pieces you will need to put together.

The Ad:

• Catchy headline identifying their pain point
• A solution for said pain point
• A great image to capture their attention
• A sentence about your offering
• A call to action

The Landing page:

• Send them to a page where they only have two options, give you their details or leave
• Don’t worry, as soon as they clicked that ad, a pixel was fired and you can retarget them
• The landing page needs to have a catchy headline and a promise
• The body copy should reflect the enhancements they will receive should they trade their information with you
• There should be an image to capture their attention and lure them to take the next step or have Fear of Missing out (FOMO)

The Thank you Page:

• Thank them for their trust in you
• This is a great time to add more value and build trust, give them something valuable while you have their attention
• This should be something different to the offer in your landing page, as they will get that sent to their email.

The Email Sequence:

• You can now deliver your promised item from the landing page to their email
• Have a call to action in the email
• Track the open rate and follow-up with another email if they do not download or access the offering from the landing page
• Put them into an indoctrination sequence to build trust and reciprocity

The Close:

• Once they have taken enough actions in your email and engaged with you, your call to action should be for the close, this can be in the form of sending them to a sales page, a phone call, a meeting request or send them a video/webinar with a call to action to buy.

Deployment of your offer:

Now you have your campaign setup, it is time for deployment.

1. Let’s create an ad on Google to bring you direct search traffic as they are looking for your solution.
2. When they click the ad, the pixel is dropped, and you can now retarget them and follow them all over the internet reminding them of your offer.
3. When they take an action, you need to change the campaign to a different one to get them to the next stage of your sales cycle.
4. Now you can deploy that ad on Facebook and test the conversions, once again you will be dropping a pixel when they click and building an audience you can retarget
5. Deploy the ad to YouTube and utilize it to target your audience and get cheap clicks for less than $0.20, building your audience more.
6. By now you have your list getting built, your CRM is following up and nurturing your potential clients to a close, your pixel is getting smarter and you can use it to find a look alike audience and attract more quality clients.
7. You now have the formula to launch a successful campaign and get results.

Note: Most businesses rely on word of mouth referrals and do not do active advertising.

You are better than that and the only way to grow and scale your business is to advertise to the right audience, using the right medium at the right time. So, you leverage the technology and platforms available to you to target market your ideal clients and that of your competitors. Have your videos, engagement pieces, processes and personality come through in your advertising to attract new clients.

Your competitors are not serving the clients in a manner that you can. If you do not advertise, your offer to them and convince them your service or product is better, you are doing them a disservice.

Once set up, this perpetual lead machine is sending you clients daily, allowing you to grow and scale, leaving your competition behind. So what are you waiting for?