Getting More Customers – Using Display and Social Ads

Jul 27, 2017 Getting More Customers – Using Display and Social Ads

Display ads are those ads that appear on websites all over the internet and often appear at the top or side in a “banner” area often referred to as banner ads.  Social ads are the ads that appear on social sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook.

The biggest use of display and social ads is to improve the awareness of your brand or keep your brand top of mind.  Top of mind is important for companies that rely on repeat customers (e.g. stores) as well as companies that you only buy from occasionally (e.g. car companies, flood damage repair).  Sometimes these ads are used to elicit an action such as signing up for an email or to begin some other customer engagement.

Most display advertising is purchased from advertising aggregators that gather up (buy) advertising space across thousands of websites and sell it to companies like yours.  The big names are Google’s Display Network, Advertising.com, Tribal Fusion, Conversant and the like.  I happen to use adroll.com.  There are other ways to place ads such as on niche ad networks that focus on specific audiences or by going directly to site owners and ask to place an ad on their site for a fixed price.

The best thing about this type of advertising is that it brings brand and sometimes product awareness to people not really looking for it at that moment.  This of course does not mean that they might not want or need what you have in the near future.

Social ads are used to start a conversation with potential customers, engage them and eventually to convert them to actually be a customer.  For this you need compelling content that people actually want to read and share.

The major social sites are of course Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Foursquare, Tumblr, reddit, and YouTube.  LinkedIn is very useful for business to business marketing.  In fact, you are most likely to be reading this because you saw this posted on LinkedIn.  Foursquare allows small local businesses to target a hyper local population.