Online advertising (digital advertising) is a powerful digital marketing technique used to promote brands on digital platforms. We used the word powerful because you can almost reach half the world by using main ad platforms such as Facebook, Google, LinkedIn!

Digital ads are sorted into three main categories; paid social, search engines, app store ads. Each type of ad might serve slightly different purposes, but the logic is the same; advertisers pay to an ad publishing platform to reach their target audience.

Fortunately, all ad platforms are equipped with ad types that serve a wide variety of businesses, therefore, various business goals. Whether it’s a nail salon looking for new bookings or a fortune500 company seeking social media reach or engagement, various business goals can easily be met. That’s why in this article, we will list a few common business goals and tell you how to hit them using digital ads.

If you are ready, let’s mix and match your business goals with online advertising!

Online Advertising for 7 Different Marketing Goals

1. Boosting E-Commerce Sales

E-commerce has skyrocketed over the last decade, and with the coronavirus pandemic, it has yet reached its peak, reaching $4.2 trillion globally. Digital advertising is a brilliant tool to boost e-commerce sales, especially for everyday items with low basket averages.

The sales funnel is rather short with everyday goods, such as fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and textiles. The reason is consumers for this kind of goods know what they want and search for it. Their searches often include a brand name. So when that happens, your ads must be there to welcome them.

Tactic 1: Kick-off Google Ads, target brand keywords, and a few other generic terms that best represent your services, taking your leads directly to your product pages.

Tactic 2: If you are a new brand, kick-off brand awareness ads on Facebook & Instagram to raise brand awareness along with tactic 1. (Use learn more as CTA and include your website)

Tactic 3: Setup retargeting and send your website visitors to your product pages again. Consumers are busy; that’s why we have to follow them up with our retargeting ads.

2. Collecting Leads

Lead ads often refer to targeting a highly relevant group of potential buyers and getting their contact information such as e-mail or mobile. The use of online advertising to collect leads is most effective when the basket average is rather high. The trick is to warm-call those leads immediately. Lead ads are costly, but here are a few examples of industries lead ads might work like a charm: cosmetic surgeries, automobiles, B2B software, one-on-one coaching such as life coaching or personal trainer. Here is a small tip that can make all the difference with your lead ads; keep it simple and only ask for the contact info, discussing other details on the phone in person.

3. Acquiring Website Traffic

Traffic ads are one of the commonly used ad types simply because marketers always want more traffic on their websites. However, these ads are often misused even by a lot of experienced marketers. How so? Well, in reality, this ad type is originally tailored for websites that are generating Adsense income. It makes perfect sense to run website traffic ads towards a content site and get more ad revenue. Marketers without the ad revenue goal, on the other hand, must first identify their funnel steps, hitting those using conversion ads. For instance, if we are talking about an e-commerce store, traffic to a website ads are not the most effective ad type. Actions such as add to cart, payment page visits would be much more meaningful, and marketers can hit these goals with conversion ads.

4. Growing Social Media

With digital ads you can also help marketers grow social media following, drive engagement and distribute content. This is important because social media is a key lead nurturing method in digital marketing. Most small businesses can start out by boosting their posts by using Instagram. But if we are talking about a business with loads of content creation possibilities, Facebook ads manager must be used. Because Facebook ads manager allows marketers to use far advanced targeting options, also, advertisers can choose different objectives to grow social media such as reach, engagement, brand awareness, and conversions.

5. Driving Store Visits

Both major ad platforms, Facebook & Google, allow us to drive store visits. When your target group is searching for your local store, you could show them your ads. As you can imagine, this could be a highly efficient ad type for local businesses. Especially if your storefront is not on the main streets, you might need to teach your exact location to your first customers. Therefore, driving store visits can bring brand awareness and sales at the same time. In Google, these are called local search ads. If you are bidding and someone initiates a search such as “coffee near me,” your business featuring your physical destination will be shown both in Google Maps and Google Search.

In Facebook, you could achieve the same results by choosing the store traffic objective. Use a store locator map card and call-to-action buttons like getting directions to encourage people nearby to visit the closest store. Facebook suggests using the reach objective, though if you aim to increase foot traffic to a single store, targeting people nearby with the help of map targeting.

6. Receiving Phone Calls

Marketers could leverage this ad type to get more orders or reservations. For a local pizzeria or a holiday resort, these types of ads can greatly increase the number of high-value calls within business hours. Facebook and Google both offer call ad types within their ad management panels, and this ad type is rather easy to set up. You don’t have to write a fancy copy and create a stunning creative. Being direct works the best! What’s great about this ad type is that it’s easy to calculate the ROAS since you know your daily ad spent and revenue from those calls. This allows for full control over your ad spent if that’s what you are looking for.

7. App Downloads

The startup culture and the mobile app market have grown vastly due to Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store in the last decade. App marketing is a whole different topic, and we don’t intend to dive deep now. But we know for sure that getting app downloads for developers is mission-critical. To promote an app on Apple App Store, Apple search ads are used. Advertisers choose keywords and cost per tap (CPT), and ads start showing in the app store’s search. As you can imagine, Google Play store mobile app install ads are controlled by Google Ads. Advertisers choose the ad type, match their developer profile with their google ads account, and start promoting their ads.

As you can see, online advertising can be a sophisticated digital marketing technique. In this article, we introduced you to the different ad types to give you an overall understanding. If you are a digital advertising specialist, we strongly recommend you master each type and get certified.

But if you are a business owner tight on time, get in touch with Olivetree Marketing because we got you covered with online advertising as well!