With over 28 million small businesses in the US, it’s more important than ever to make an effort to differentiate YOUR products from the competition. Marketing is about showing the value of your product, creating content that shows potential customers why they should choose you over the competition. And with digital marketing mediums growing at an unprecedented rate, it’s easier than ever for small business owner to market their product online with a relatively small capital investment. Below are some of my favorite online advertising methods.
Facebook:
With over 2.32 billion people using Facebook at least once a month, this platform has a huge footprint. And if you have a business page, you can easily create ads that target your goal demographic with just a few clicks. You can narrow down ad recipients based on age, gender, location, and more. This is invaluable, as it allows you to create truly curated advertisements.
Page interaction can be found with likes and engagement on your Facebook page, shares, and ad clicks that drive up traffic for your website. There are a variety of formats your ads can take, from video to canvas ads, which are interactive and only available on mobile devices. Not only that, Facebook has collection ads which allow users to scroll on a carousel to showcase multiple products.
Instagram:
With over 1 billion active users a month, Instagram is a hugely popular mobile-based app. 41% of users are 24 or younger, and it’s the preferred social media medium of US teens. With high engagement and an extremely visual medium, it’s perfect for online advertisements.
Like Facebook, you can narrow down the recipients based on age, gender, and geographic information, as well as more nuanced demographic information. Instagram has ‘story’ ads, which interject into viewers stories, photo ads, video ads, carousel ads, and collection ads.
Twitter:
Twitter has over 326 million users. And much like Facebook and Instagram ads, users can create ads that are targeted through demographic information, interests, keywords, and more. Users also have the opportunity to get creative with their brand voice, with companies like Denny's and Wendy’s going the nontraditional route and utilizing ‘weird Twitter.’ Weird Twitter is subversive and absurd, with brands often trolling themselves and competitors. It allows brands to create engaging content that users want to see. Check out Wendy’s Twitter account for a stellar example of weird Twitter.
Creating a Marketing Mix:
When creating an online ad, it’s important to create a marketing mix. To do that, you have to segment your market, target your goal customers, and position your product in a flattering light for your potential customers (STP analysis). Successful marketing requires intent- if you pull together a haphazard and unfocused campaign, it won’t be successful. And it may even confuse and damage your brand.
Segmentation can be done in many ways. This is essentially breaking down your customers into chunks so you can create content that resonates with their wants and needs. Some of the easiest ways to segment customers is by gender, age, and location. Further work can be done to create a psychoanalytical profile of the desired customer base, but that requires more time, and commonly, more money.
Targeting is the next step. You should look at the segments you made, and evaluate the likelihood they’d become your client (and if you’d even want them as a client!) You can select as many segments as you want, but it’s important to evaluate the cohesiveness of the targets you chose. You don’t want to confuse your brand.
Positioning is the final step. You have to create a brand that resonates with the goal segments, and content that reflects your brand values. It’s also extremely important to emphasize the differences, the relative gains, your brand has over the competitors. Show your product and/or service’s desirability!
So, there you have it. Digital marketing made easy! There’s my favorite online marketing mediums and a quick ‘how to’ create a marketing mix. Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions down below!
