Time for some digital marketing basics. As our world is spending more and more time online, digital marketing has become one of the best ways to grow your business. Digital marketing allows you to access a wider audience. It consists of a range of services that help promote your business online. Businesses are increasing their budgets for digital marketing, and experts like Jamie Turner, from 60secondmarketer.com, are agreeing that it’s well worth the spend.

Jamie states, “If I were to provide one tip to people who are using social media, it would be this — don’t be afraid of paying for social media reach and clicks.”

One of the biggest benefits of digital marketing is that ROI can be easily tracked and results can be monitored. It’s not easy spending money when you’re not able to see how well ads are performing. That’s the drawback of traditional media channels—there aren’t advanced data analytics that can track the effectiveness of your ads. Digital marketing through companies like Facebook and Google gives users access to advanced analytics. This allows local businesses to know that they will be getting a return on their investment and that the ads are positively impacting their business.

The important factors that determine the success of an ad will vary case by case.

Digital Marketing Basics for 2020

For the most part, the success of an ad is indicated by one of the following factors:

• Impressions- the actual number of views on the ad
• Clicks- the actual number of direct clicks on the ad
• Engagements- social clicks and landing page clicks
• Results- results mostly come in the form of a phone call or a store visit

The Best Places to Advertise

It is the general consensus in the digital marketing space that the best places to invest your advertising dollars are Google and Facebook. Digital marketing doesn’t only give you access to an audience, but it gives you access to the right audience. This can be accomplished through the advanced targeting that Google and Facebook offer. Advanced targeting puts local businesses in front of customers that are more likely to convert. In 2020, Google will account for 23% of total ad spend and Facebook will account for 13% of ad spend!

Why advertise on Google?

In terms of reach, Google is the largest search network in the world, and customers are using it every day to search for local businesses. Google’s massive network capabilities enable digital marketers to find ideal prospects and get in front of them when they are actually looking for their products and services.

In the digital age, people are no longer watching television commercials or listening to radio ads to find local businesses. They are searching for a service when they need it and locating your business online.

It is imperative that your business is on Google since well over 3.5 Billion Google searches are conducted every single day on a variety of trending topics, and customers are looking for local businesses on Google.

Google is great in terms of flexibility. Companies are able to spend whatever they want, whenever they want on ads. Since Google is so flexible, you can test what works and doesn’t work for your business. You can experiment with smaller budget amounts in order to see how well a campaign is performing before investing larger amounts for greater prospect reach.

Why advertise on Facebook?

The audience on Facebook consists of an average of 1.32 billion daily active users (DAUs), increasing at 17% each year. As a local business, you cannot deny that Facebook is a great place to find prospective customers. If you aren’t convinced by the amount of daily active users, let’s talk about how often people are using social media. According to a recent study by Nielsen, the average person spends 35 minutes every day on Facebook alone. The audience on Facebook is huge, and they are using Facebook a lot. 

Facebook’s Ad targeting is a powerful marketing tool. The ability to focus on users on a microscopic level gives you access to valuable information about your potential customers. You can target users by age, gender, interest, behaviors, location, and other stats that their Facebook profile might reveal about them including their profession. Although the Facebook algorithm has brought some changes to advertising locally, it remains one of the best platforms for local businesses to promote themselves!

Conclusion

By using Google and Facebook, your local business can take your advertising game to new levels, take in new revenue, and have access to data that backs up your investment.