Unlike traditional advertising, whose types and methods of influencing consumers have been studied and improved for decades, the “young” online advertising is still developing as a direction. However, now it is safe to say that it has two huge advantages – the ability to immediately and flexibly respond to user requests and just as quickly monitor the effectiveness of advertising actions. It is the ability to be in constant contact with the consumer (real and potential) and accurately monitor statistics that makes online advertising the most effective and cost-effective means of modern marketing. The influence of online advertising can hardly be overestimated: the target audience lives on the Internet, both in the B2C sector (business consumer) and in the B2B sector.
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Types of Internet Advertising
A user who is searching for the necessary information, relatively speaking, sees and hears audiovisual messages (for example, commercials), but most often he writes the request and reads its results. Therefore, the first and one of the most important types of online advertising is search engine optimization.
SEO (search engine optimization)
According to digital marketing agency Los Angeles, it has the highest percentage of target audience and conversion rate. Ideally, this should be a simple scheme: the visitor’s search query — the content of the site’s content matches the request (presence in the TOP) —the site’s visit — the transaction (purchase, order). At the same time, it is both impossible and unjustified to make the site content relevant to absolutely all search queries. The goal of search engine optimization is not to bring as many visitors as possible to the site. The main thing is to bring high-quality visitors to the site focused on a particular product or service. For this, there is a set of measures for SEO-optimization of the site: the study of search queries; compiling a list of effective and selling queries; the study of search engine algorithms; compilation of the semantic core and bringing the site content in line with the data obtained. The result – the presence in the TOP and the arrival of more than half of high-quality visitors only thanks to this type of online advertising.
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Contextual advertising is more targeted. In this case, it is not so much about the visitors who started the search, but about interested potential customers studying the results of their search. Placement of contextual advertising is specific: it appears only in response to a specific search query: either on the results page in the search engine itself, or on a thematic site. A short text message (sometimes with graphics) and a mandatory link (path) to the main site is the usual form of such online advertising. Its goal is, if not to “lure”, then surely redirect the visitor in the right direction. The effectiveness of contextual advertising is high and allows you to accurately determine the profitability of advertising investments: payment is made according to the number of users who clicked on the ad.
Display advertising is not as informative as the above types of advertising on the Internet. But its purpose is different: to make the brand recognizable and give it a positive emotional coloring. The advertising material – a bright graphic banner – contains very little text, but recalls the name of the company, has a direct link to the site and an appeal (to buy, order, get a discount, etc.). The effectiveness of display (banner) advertising directly depends on the number of impressions. But even with a small conversion, the banners still successfully cope with their main task – they remind of the brand. Interesting image advertising will ultimately lead the visitor to the site.
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Social marketing (promotion in social networks, forums, blogs) can bring a high percentage of conversion due to the wide reach and precise orientation of the target audience (for example, in thematic Internet communities). This method of advertising justifies itself in order to attract new customers and create a positive attitude towards the company (products, services) among all visitors to the forum or blog.
E-mailing is extremely effective under one condition: having a reliable database of email addresses of potential customers. In this case, the newsletters also pay off as an incentive to return existing customers. However, massive unauthorized email newsletters (on a thematic base of addresses without the consent of the subscriber) are spam. In addition to the low spam efficiency, this form of advertising is unethical and illegal in a number of countries (including Belarus and Russia).
