It’s the most perfect metric going around 😎

What is ROAS?

ROAS stands for return on ad spend — a marketing metric that
measures the amount of revenue your business earns for each dollar it spends on advertising.

How is it calculated?

It’s actually super simple.

ROAS = Revenue/Advertising Spend

Why is it important to track?

Return on ad spend helps you determine the success of your advertising efforts. It helps you make decisions around profitability, and if there are opportunities to scale.

You can calculate your ROAS automatically within Facebook Ads Manager as long as you have the Facebook Pixel and purchase event installed😉

#roas #socialmedia #metric #eds #marketing #revenue #advertising #digitalmarketing #socialmediatrends

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Focus on just one to two platforms and stick to it. There is more to your biz more than just your social media.

And honestly, if you’re really ready to step up your biz game, this task should be off of your plate. 🍽

We’re happy to answer social media biz Qs! Comment down below and we will help you. ⬇️

#socialmediapresence #onlinepresence #eds #brandmarketing #socialmediaforbusiness #socialmediabusiness #businessstrategies #internetbusiness #businessplanning #socialmediagrowth #socialmediacoach #socialmediastrategy #socialmediamanagement #instagrammanager #instagramtipsdaily #instagramtipsformarketers #digitalmarketingexpert #digitalmediamarketing #socialmediastrategist #instagramgrowthtips #instagrammanagement #womenbiz #socialmediamanagers #socialmediaservices #socialmediatip #marketingexpert #digitalmarketingstrategy

https://eds.ae/social-media-marketing-company-in-uae/

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https://eds.ae

The post ARE YOU USING CONTENT PILLARS YET?? 🤑 appeared first on EDS FZCO.

Creating valuable and consistent content will attract and retain clearly defined audience and ultimately, to drive profitable customer action 👌⁠
⁠
⁠#contentmarketing #onlinemarketing #eds #socialmedia #onlinemarketing #marketing #digitalmarketing #instagtam #facebook #linkedin #uae #facebookad #business #branding #mondaymood #quote

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✨ Personalize Your Messages: Such as (It’s not “Dear Value
Customer”, but “Dear Steven”)
✨ Segment Your Subscribers.
✨ Send Mobile Friends Emails.
✨ Test Copy, Design and Buttons: Testing your home page and landing pages.
✨ Automate Email Campaigns when Possible.

#emailmarketing #strategies #loyalty #twittermarketing #analytics #eds #socialmedia #marketing #freewifi #network #uae #digitalmarketing #dubai #facebook #instagram #radio

https://eds.ae/email-marketing-in-dubai-uae/

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When your customers are using your restaurant free Wi-Fi network and log-in easily and quickly, using social media account or email address, their benefits will be: free internet access, simple log-in process and personalized offers.

In return, you acquire your valuable customers data for effective and targeted marketing. Yes, Wi-Fi Marketing is good for you AND your customers.

Here are 4 ways to actively apply those insights into your restaurant:

✨ Track your busiest times.
✨ Tailor your events on the language: You can track the language distribution of your Wi-Fi users.
✨ Different ages, Different needs.
✨ Pull off gender-themed nights: To get from your social Wi-Fi analytics regards the gender distribution of your guests.

#socialwifi #analytics #eds #socialmeda #marketing #freewifi #network #uae #digitalmarketing #dubai #facebook #instagram #radio #wednesday #promoting #engagement #insights

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Stop your opt-in launches that compel visitors to stay on your site. Here’s how you can do this!

✨ Set user’s On-Site Activities and Other Actionable.

✨ Product Views:
Demonstrates that the visitor finds value in the products your website is offering, and they would benefit from your notifications.

✨ Opt-ins to pop after a visitor reads an article or a post.

✨ Automate the opt-ins to appear after a visitor has reached a certain session count or when they’ve spent a set amount of time on your website.

✨ Raffles: A chance to Win Flight Tickets or Other Goodies.

#pushNotification #eds #strategy #digitalmarketing #android #ios #socialmedia #marketing

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Before engaging in any ‘#trollmarketing’ campaign it’s important to weigh up the risks versus the potential rewards for your #business.

These days #consumers are bombarded with so many marketing messages that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for a brand to stand out, yet there are so many companies trying different methods to make an impact. This is easier for big corporations that spend fortunes on marketing, but not so easy for startups and small businesses with limited budgets and reach.

This is why sometimes the risk of causing a controversy can be worth the reward of getting your brand noticed – especially for smaller challenger brands.

Best of luck and don’t blame us if you make a mess of it!😉

#socialmediamarketing #marketingstrategy #socialmediatroll #trolls #negativemarketing #riskmarketing

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Pay-per-click marketing can be a powerful tool in your promotional arsenal. If your goals are to grow your online visibility, drive traffic, generate leads, and increase sales, pay-per-click (PPC) can help you accomplish all of those things.

But before you can reap these benefits, you need to have a full understanding of how pay-per-click marketing works and how to best optimize your ads to fully utilize your budget and attract your ideal audience.

The rest of this post will help you grow your knowledge about pay-per-click marketing so you can set up high-performing PPC campaigns. This post will look at:

• The definition of pay-per-click advertising
• The most popular PPC providers
• How PPC works
• How to use Google Ads
• When to use pay-per-click marketing

What is Pay-Per-Click Advertising?

Pay-per-click advertising, also known as PPC or search engine marketing (SEM), is a tactic where a brand places an ad online and pays each time a user clicks on it. There is no cost to place the ad. The cost is only incurred when users engage with the ad.

Pay-per-click marketing can be broken down into two categories:

• Search advertising: Ads that appear as search results on search engine results pages (SERPs)
• Display advertising: Ads that appear as graphics, videos, or paid posts typically found on social media feeds and other third-party websites

This post will mostly talk about search advertising PPC campaigns.

The Most Popular PPC Platforms

While there are multiple platforms for pay-per-click marketing, most marketers use Google Ads for their PPC search ad campaigns.

Google Ads, formerly Google AdWords, is the most popular PPC search advertising provider.

Because most people use Google for search, it’s the ideal place for placing paid search ads. These ad results show up on SERPs and include an “Ad” designation that shows they are paid, not organic, listings.

Google and the Google logo are registered trademarks of Google LLC, used with permission.

Other popular pay-per-click marketing providers include other search engines and also social media sites such as:

• Bing Ads
• Facebook Ads
• Twitter Ads
• Promoted Pinterest Pins
• LinkedIn Ads
• Quora Ads

Many of the social networks use a form of display PPC. This is an example of how a display PPC ad would appear on Facebook:

But again, this guide is about PPC search ads and will primarily focus on ads that appear as search results on SERPs.

How Does Pay-Per-Click Work?

As its name implies, PPC is an advertising method where a brand sets up an ad and pays each time a user clicks on that ad. A simple explanation of this process looks like this:

1. Through keyword discovery, a brand identifies relevant, popular terms that its audience regularly searches for.
2. A brand creates a search result ad that will be visible to users when they search for the target keywords.
3. A user searches for one of the keywords, sees the ad on a SERP, and clicks on it.
4. The brand is charged for the user clicking on the ad.

Here’s a more specific pay-per-click marketing example:

1. Dropbox sees that its target audience regularly searches for “cloud storage.”
2. The company creates a PPC search ad to show when users search for “cloud storage.” Dropbox pays nothing to set up the ad campaign through Google Ads.
3. A user searches for “cloud storage,” sees the Dropbox paid search result, and clicks on it.
4. Dropbox is charged.

Google and the Google logo are registered trademarks of Google LLC, used with permission.

This breakdown explains how the ad process works. Now, let’s dive deeper into how to set up pay-per-click marketing campaigns on Google Ads.

Using Google Ads for Pay-Per-Click Marketing

If your goal for PPC is to show paid search results to users, Google Ads is your best bet. It is the most popular search engine with the most users.

Understanding Your Google Ads Account

Before we look at how to set up your pay-per-click marketing campaign, familiarize yourself with some Google Ads terminology and tools.

Campaigns are the top-level organizational structure of your account within Google Ads. They are usually organized to reflect a specific theme related to your business. You can have one or more campaigns within your Google account. Guidelines you set within a campaign include budget, language, location, distribution for the Google Network, and more. Within a campaign, you can have one or more ad group.

A shoe store may have campaigns for men’s shoes, women’s shoes, and children’s shoes.

Ad groups are the next level of organization within your plan. You can have more than one ad group within a campaign. At this point, you can get more specific about a theme of your business. Each ad group contains one or more ads.

Within its women’s shoes campaigns, the shoe store may have ad groups for heels, flats, and sandals.

Keywords are the terms targeted within your campaign. You select the terms you think your audience will search for. When users search for those terms, they may see your search ad on SERPs.

The women’s shoes, heels campaign may include keywords such as: blue high heels, platform heels, and strappy heels.

Ads are made up of the actual content and copy that users see on SERPs when they search for your target keywords. You have multiple options for how these ads look and what information they contain. Text ads always include two headline sections and a description line. They can be expanded to include sitelink, callout, phone, and location extensions and more. (You can also create rich product listings and image ads.)

Google and the Google logo are registered trademarks of Google LLC, used with permission.

Defining Google Ads Campaign Settings

Now that you know the basic structure of a Google Ads account, let’s look closer at the settings you can control within each of your pay-per-click marketing campaigns.

Campaign types are the options you have for where you want your ads to appear. There are multiple campaign types, including display network, shopping campaign, and video campaign. The campaign type that you would use for PPC lead generation is called a search network campaign. Ads created in a search network campaign appear as text ads in SERPs.

Device targeting gives you options for which types of devices will be able to see your ads. You have options to target desktops, tablets, mobile devices, or a custom combination of the three. Depending on your ad types, you may want to focus on one device type. In general, search ads work well on every device.

Location targeting gives you options to target specific geographic areas. You can select this by multiple options, such as city name, zip code, or mile radius. This setting may be used by local businesses that only want to connect with people who live near their business.

Budget is the amount you want to spend on your campaign. You use this to specify how much, on average, you’d like to spend each day. Later in this post, we’ll look closer at how to choose a budget and set bids for your ads.

Setting Up PPC Ads on Google

Now that you have the language and knowledge to navigate your Google Ads account, let’s look at the best ways to set up and optimize your campaigns.

Organize Your Account

When you’re ready to launch a pay-per-click strategy, start by organizing your business into categories. As mentioned earlier, your Google account has a structure of campaigns and sub-groups of ad groups within those campaigns.

Create a structure for how you want to organize that information. For example, the shoe store could have the following structure.

• Campaign #1: Men’s Shoes
  • Ad Group #1: Sneakers
  • Ad Group #2: Dress Shoes
  • Ad Group #3: Sandals
• Campaign #2: Women’s Shoes
  • Ad Group #1: Heels
  • Ad Group #2: Flats
  • Ad Group #3: Sandals

It will be easier to set up your account once you have this structure. Planning out your ad campaigns will also help you create more relevant and targeted ads with your Google ad groups.

Perform PPC Keyword Research

Once you have your campaign structure, look for the keywords to use in your ad group. Perform keyword research to identify the top keywords in your industry.

To find the best keywords for your PPC campaign, use Alexa’s Keyword Difficulty Tool. Enter a topic related to your business, brand, or offerings and discover terms to use for your campaign. Look for terms that have a high keyword popularity score, which indicates that users frequently search for these terms.

In your keyword research, it helps to know which search terms are popular among users. It also helps to know which search terms are targeted by your competitors.

Knowing which PPC terms your competitors are targeting can help you see which search phrases are performing well and which terms may be too expensive to compete with. You may also find relevant keywords you hadn’t thought of, but your competitors are already getting traffic for.

To get a look at how your competitors are using pay-per-click marketing, use Alexa’s Competitor Keyword Matrix. Enter up to 10 of your competitors to get a look at which terms they are targeting within their own paid campaigns.

Once you determine the keywords you want to target, you can then base the rest of your campaign strategy on targeting those terms.

Set Your Pay-Per-Click Marketing Budget

The pay-per-click marketing cost in Google Ads includes two methods for setting your budget: daily budget and bidding.

• Budget is the total amount you’re willing to spend on a campaign per day.
• Bid is the total amount you’re willing to spend for a specific keyword (how much you will pay when a user clicks on an ad that showed when they searched for the target keyword).

When you’re starting out, you may want to spread your budget across all of your campaigns. As you start to see results from your campaigns, you can decide to focus your budget on higher-performing keywords and campaigns.

For bids, you should select a budget based on keyword competition. Choose a bid that will give your ad a desirable ranking while still staying within your budget.

Manage and Optimize Your PPC Campaigns

Once you set up a pay-per-click marketing campaign, your work is not over.  To get the most out of your campaign, you should continue to monitor and optimize your account in a few ways.

Your goal is to improve your ads so Google gives them priority and you can get the most out of your budget. To accomplish that, you need to consider Quality Score and Keyword Relevance.

• Quality Score: Google considers factors related to your ads (such as ad content, keywords, and landing pages) to give a Quality Score to your ads. Higher Quality Scores can lead to better ad placement and lower cost-per-clicks.
• Keyword Relevance: Your keywords should be closely related to the content on the landing page it is driving traffic to. This factor will increase your Quality Score.

Here are some tips for managing and optimizing your PPC campaigns so you can improve your Quality Score, get better ad placements, and pay less per click.

• Monitor conversion rates. Keep an eye on your campaigns and look for trends that show which settings, keywords, and ads are converting and which are not. Adjust accordingly to get the best results out of your ad spend.
• Add keywords. Continue to identify and add search terms and phrases to your campaigns that are relevant to your business and regularly used by your target audience. This process helps you find more keywords you may have missed while setting up your campaign.
• Remove negative keywords. Identify terms in your campaigns that aren’t converting and remove them. This process can improve your Quality Score and help you avoid wasting money.
• Remove costly keywords. If you’re paying a steep price for specific keywords but not seeing very much return on your investment, remove or turn off those terms.
• Split up ad groups. Break ad groups into smaller, more relevant groups. By having more targeted ad text and landing pages, you can improve click-through rates and your Quality Score.
• Improve landing pages. To create a landing page that converts, make sure you continually optimize it using conversion rate optimization best practices. The more your pages remain relevant and match search intent, the more likely they are to convert.

Should You Use Pay-Per-Click Marketing?

Just because you know how to set up a pay-per-click marketing campaign doesn’t mean you should jump into Google Ads right away.

Like all good marketing strategies, you should start by looking at your goals and then choosing the best tactics that will lead to your ideal end results. In this case, you need to review your marketing objectives and decide if paid SEM or organic SEO will help you reach your goals.

We recently put together a post and infographic on understanding the difference between SEM vs. SEO. You can check out the whole post or consider these main factors to help you decide which is right for your brand.

How much competition is there for your target keywords?

• Consider PPC if there is a lot of competition for your target keywords.
• Consider SEO if there are a lot of organic content gaps to fill in.

How well do you know your market segment?

• Consider PPC if you don’t know it well yet and want to test your idea, product, or service.
• Consider SEO if you already know it has long-term value and demand.

How long are your customers’ average buying cycles?

• Consider PPC if your customers typically know what they want, search for it, and immediately buy it.
• Consider SEO if your customers research for days, weeks, or months before buying.

What’s the average cost-per-click in your industry?

• Consider PPC if your cost-per-click is low and within your budget.
• Consider SEO if the cost-per-click in your industry is very high.

How old are your business and website?

• Consider PPC if your business is new and you have little to no online presence.
• Consider SEO if your business and website are established and already have some online authority.

What’s the current state of your website’s SEO?

• Consider PPC if your website needs a lot of work to improve its current organic SEO factors.
• Consider SEO if your website is already fairly optimized and currently performing well in organic search.

These factors will help you determine if pay-per-click marketing or organic SEO will help you reach your goals faster and with better results.

Related: SEO & PPC: How to Use PPC Insights to Boost Content Marketing

Build a Powerful Pay-Per-Click Marketing Campaign

Pay-per-click marketing is an on-demand way to grow your digital visibility, increase website traffic, and drive sales. It’s also one of several great lead generations strategies. But to get the best results from PPC, you need to take a strategic approach to setting up your campaigns.

You need to target the right keywords and continually update your strategy to improve your campaigns and get the most out of your budget.

With the information in this post and pay-per-click marketing guide, you’re now better equipped to set up strategic PPC campaigns.

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Learn how to use advertising to build a magnetic brand that attracts customers, establishes a following, and generates revenue.

When you hear the word advertising, what comes to mind?

Do you think of banner ads on your favorite website? Those hilarious Super Bowl commercials? The billboards along the highway or posters in the subway stations?

While most of us have a pretty good idea of what advertising looks like, we often struggle to nail down exactly what it means — and how to do it well.

From the printing press to pop-up ads, advertising has certainly changed with the times. Despite this, though, the need for advertising hasn’t changed, and neither have the techniques and best practices that make for quality advertising. That’s what we’ll cover in this guide.

Good advertising is designed to be extremely influential, memorable, and, at times, risqué. But, how does advertising actually work?

How does advertising work?

Advertising works by breaking through the clutter and noise of everyday life, disrupting the viewer’s attention, and demanding their focus.

Depending on the goals of your ad campaign, advertising can go to work for your company in a variety of ways:

• To raise awareness of your brand
• To drive potential customers to your business
• To promote sales for both new and existing products
• To introduce a new product or service to the market
• To differentiate your product from your competitors’

Advertising can also be executed in various ways. Radio commercials, billboards, branded t-shirts, and social media endorsements all count as advertising — as we’ll discuss later on in this guide.

What are advertisers?

Advertisers are the people at a company who are responsible for advertising a product or service. “Advertiser” can also refer to a company or organization that’s paying for advertising on a billboard, in a magazine, or through a website or mobile application.

All advertisers are marketers, but not all marketers are advertisers. Let’s dig deeper in the differences between advertising and marketing.

Advertising is a subset of marketing, which is the umbrella term for communicating with your audience.

Marketing includes a number of different channels, such as social media, email marketing, public relations, SEO, and paid advertising.

Alternatively, advertising is just one component of marketing.

A company’s overarching marketing strategy will typically include an advertising plan. The advertising portion zooms in on the specific process of creating and publishing the persuasive messages to get customers to take action.

A Brief History of Advertising

Advertising is one of the oldest segments of business, save for currency and trade. Once products and services arose, so did the need to make them known.

The oldest confirmed piece of advertising dates back to 3,000 B.C. Technically, it was a print ad from ancient Egypt promoting the capture and return of an escaped slave.

Incidentally, the ad also mentioned the slave owner’s shop — a rug business — which inherently advertised his storefront, too. The slave was never caught, but the rug owner did discover a brand new method of bringing in traffic: advertising.

Let’s fast-forward about 4,000 years. Here’s a brief look at the past five centuries of advertising:

1472: The first poster advertisement is placed on church doors in London.

1650: The first newspaper ad — a reward for 12 stolen horses — is published. (What’s with these reward-based advertisements?)

1704: The Boston News-Letter prompts its readers to place ads in its paper.

1870: The Powers style of ad copy is born. This style packed a punch — it was short, to-the-point, truthful, and convincing. Powers said the focus should be on why the consumer should buy your product or service — a message that still resonates for good reason today.

1880: Postcards become one of the hottest new ways to reach customers.

1902: Unilever creates the “longest client-agency relationship in advertising history” when it hires J. Walter Thompson Company to advertise its Lifebuoy Soap.

1902: Mellins Food advertises its brand on 25 airship flights, becoming the first brand to take this approach.

1904: The Campbell’s Kids are created, piloting the change in advertisement focus from a single ad to an entire campaign.

1922: Radio ads are born, and businesses purchase 10 mins for $100. Two years later brands would increase their investment by sponsoring an entire radio show, a concept that would eventually become known as “sponsored content.”

1925: Advertisers start to appeal to emotions, focusing on what pleasure customers would receive from their product or service. This old Ford ad exemplifies this perfectly.

1975: VCRs are introduced, and consumers begin to record shows and, therefore, skip advertisements.

1990: Computers become more popular and accessible at home, with over 5 million homes connected to the internet.

1994: The first email spam campaign launches. Banner ads are also introduced.

1995: Search engines like Yahoo! and Alta Vista are born. Ask Jeeves and Google would follow in 1997 and 1998, respectively.

2005: YouTube and Facebook (for college students only) launch.

2008: Brands start to realize the importance of having an online presence for their potential customers. Procter and Gamble pilot the concept of the content hub with BeingGirl.com.

2012: Online videos reach almost 170 million viewers.

2013: Sites like Pinterest and Instagram join the social network scene.

2020: Advertising soars on digital platforms including social media, podcasts, pay-per-click (PPC), and more. Customer data plays a larger role in advertising targeting and retargeting. Lastly, a rapid increase in mobile devices sees a boost in mobile ads and SMS marketing.

History teaches us that advertising is an ever-changing concept, just like shopping habits and how and where consumers spend their time.

Whereas almost 140 years ago, postcards were the newest form of advertising, brands today are building chatbots for Facebook Messenger and integrating artificial intelligence into their marketing and sales platforms.

Things in the advertising world move fast. Now, let’s take a look at how advertising methods have changed and what marketers and advertisers are using today.

Advertising Methods

1. Print Advertising
2. Billboards and Public Transit Ads
3. TV Commercials
4. Radio
5. Event Advertising
6. Direct Mail
7. Digital Advertising

Advertising can look like many different things. Here are the different formats and channels that advertisers have been using over the years.

1. Print Advertising

Print advertising refers to posters, bulletins, flyers, and other physically-printed promotions. It also refers to newspaper and magazine ads.

How we design and consume print advertising has changed over the years, but it’s been a steadfast advertising medium — especially as digital advertising has evolved (which we’ll cover next).

Unlike digital media, print advertising can’t be tracked and analyzed as clearly. Fortunately, brands have found brilliant ways to incorporate print advertising into broader digital campaigns.

2. Billboards and Public Transit Ads

Billboard advertising encompasses print advertising on a much larger scale. Due to their size, the design, placement, and cost of billboard and public transit ads are different than typical print advertising.

For example, billboards are typically designed with few to no words so that viewers have time to process the message while passing by in a car or train. Also, these ads are used for brand awareness, so they usually only include a brand name or phone number (versus a website).

3. TV Commercials

TV commercials are short advertisements developed and paid for by companies and organizations looking to capture the audience of a TV show or network program. TV ads have been around since the invention of the television and have since changed drastically with the birth of streaming TV.

TV ads have a wide reach (millions) and provide viewers with a multi-sensory ad experience — something print ads and some digital ads can’t quite do. Alternatively, TV ads are expensive, avoidable by your audience, and hard to target as accurately as other channels.

4. Radio

Radio advertising refers to spoken advertising spots aired on radio channels between music and other programs. This method dates back to 1920 when commercial radio first aired.

Radio advertising is particularly powerful for local and regional advertising. Nowadays, podcast advertising is a similar but more effective method, especially for national audiences.

5. Event Advertising

Events (both in-person and virtual) are opportunities to connect with your audience while promoting your brand and products. You can host your own event (as HubSpot does with INBOUND) in the form of a conference, webinar, roundtable, or luncheon.

Another form of event advertising is by sponsoring an event or purchasing a booth at a conference or trade show. This is less expensive than hosting your own event, but you still get to engage audience members and promote your brand.

6. Direct Mail

Direct mail advertising includes postcards, pamphlets, and catalogues mailed directly to the homes of your target audience. A direct mail advertising strategy is more personal than others on this list, but it’s also very costly. (Consider the cost of postage alone.)

Another direct mail strategy is electronic mail, typically through the form of email newsletters or promotions. This overlaps with our next section — digital advertising. That’s what we’ll unpack next.

Digital Advertising: How to Advertise Online

As of today, there are over 4 billion people using the internet. This number is up 300% from 2005. Point being, internet usage is skyrocketing, and it’s not stopping.

If you’re not advertising online, you’re behind the curve. Not only does the internet offer you direct access to more than half the global population — including more than half of your target audience — but it also provides so many different channels on which to advertise.

Here are the most common ways to advertise online:

Paid Search Advertising

Whether Google, Yahoo, or Bing, all search engines have their own paid advertising. This is referred to as pay-per-click, or PPC, and involves bidding on keywords and placing ads at the top or sides of search results.

When someone performs a query using one of those search engines, advertisers have the ability to display ads above organic search results. That’s what makes PPC so powerful — it gives your advertisements prime real estate in front of people already searching for relevant topics.

Here’s an example on Google:

The top listings in the red box are advertisements. Organic search results, those that came up as a result of SEO, were below the map snippet.

Social Media Advertising

Social media platforms know how valuable their content is, and that’s why they offer the option to sponsor or boost posts. Social media ads put your message in front of your target audience and encourage them to engage, click-through, and buy.

More and more, social media sites are prioritizing ad space over organic content because, well, it brings in more revenue.

Whether you’re a budding or brand new business, consider running some social media advertisements. These will not only advertise your products and services but also promote your social media pages and grow your following.

Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter each have their own version of ads like these.

Here’s how they appear on their respective feeds:

Facebook

Instagram

Download our free guide to learn how to run Instagram ads, define goals, moderate engagement, and measure success.

LinkedIn

Download our free guide on How to Run Successful LinkedIn Ads.

Twitter

Native Ads and Sponsored Content

Sponsored content has been around since 1922, when brands would sponsor entire radio shows. Today, sponsored content refers more to native ads and blog or article content subsidized by brands.

Have you ever read a Buzzfeed article that heavily referenced or recommended a certain product or service? It was likely sponsored by a certain brand.

Check out this article, 10 Reasons To Put Away Your Phone On Your Next Trip, promoted by agoda, a hotel or destination booking site. Does it blatantly promote agoda’s services? No. Its primary purpose is to entertain and inform, although agoda is referenced a few times throughout the content.

At the top, the byline reflects agoda’s sponsorship, just before the content starts. And, as you scroll down the page, another ad sits within the content.

Sponsored content is a great way to promote your brand in content your audience is already familiar with.

Banner and Display Ads

Banner and display ads are an extension of search ads and follow a similar PPC model. But instead of a text-based ad, consumers see a more visual advertisement.

Banner ads are typically the horizontal boxes on top of a web page, whereas display ads are smaller in nature and shown on the side (like in the screenshot above).

Whether you opt for traditional print ads in magazines or subway stations or choose online promotion on social media or search engines, there are a few rules that make for great advertising. Below are some advertising best practices to apply to all your ads.

Advertising Best Practices

There are a lot of best practices, tips, and tricks when it comes to advertising. It’s an art that’s been perfected over the years, and with the rise of modern advertising and new media, best practices continue to manifest.

In this section, though, we’re going to cover five famous advertising concepts that still work today — regardless of what advertising method or medium you’re using.

When used correctly, these advertising techniques will do wonders for your brand and products.

Appeal to emotions.

While you may not consider the ASPCA a business, their unforgettable Sarah McLachlan commercial is the perfect example of using emotional appeal to entice people to take action.

For most of us, the images in that commercial are hard to watch — we may even turn away. But since it tugs at our heartstrings, we’re more likely to donate to animals in need after seeing the horrors they’re going through.

Studies show that people rely on emotions, rather than information, to make brand decisions. Emotional responses to ads influence a person’s intent to buy more than the actual ad content.

Whether you try to evoke happiness, sadness, fear, or anger, appealing to emotions can help your target audience feel your message — not simply read or hear it.

Create positive associations.

When consumers associate your product with a feeling of happiness, state of achievement, or accomplished goal, they’re more likely to take notice, remember your product or service, and make a purchase.

Actually, you’ve probably been on the receiving end of this before without even realizing it. Have you ever seen your favorite celebrity or Instagram influencer posing with a product or brand and found that you wanted to be, do, or look the same? Companies create this subconscious connection in advertising hoping that you associate your positive feelings with the product or service they’re promoting.

Catchy songs like “Nationwide is on your side” is an example of helping people associate friendliness with the Nationwide brand. Coca-Cola has a brand advertising campaign that associates their product with friends, family, and fun. When you consider what refreshments to serve at a party or bring on a picnic, Coca-Cola wants you to think of them.

As you create your advertisements, consider what feelings, desires, or goals with which you want your brand to be associated. Weave these feelings or goals into your advertisements through stories or videos. Look for influencers who align with your brand’s core values and demeanor and include them to promote positive association.

Establish a bandwagon effect.

People want to fit in. It’s human nature. Neither you nor I are immune to it.

And it’s this base human desire that makes the bandwagon effect so effective. People don’t want to be left out. They find value in their peers’ opinions, and they certainly don’t want to be the only ones not using the latest and greatest product.

Brands like Maybelline understand this concept well and use it to their advertising advantage. One tube of their top-selling mascara is purchased every two seconds, a statistic that establishes social proof and further supports their claim of “America’s Favorite Mascara.”

Use customer testimonials, survey data, or shareable content to advertise your brand as one worth following or buying into. Take another approach by promoting a discount for sharing your brand with a friend or family member — so your audience will do the selling for you. Either way, use your advertising to create an inclusive environment people will want to join.

Focus on benefits over features.

Features and benefits are two very different things. Features are the details of the product or service you’re selling, such as the measurements of a couch or the ingredients of a protein bar. Benefits, on the other hand, explain why a person should buy a couch or protein bar from you and how their life would, well, benefit from such a purchase.

Advertising should focus on the benefit your product or service brings, not explain what you’re physically selling.

Consider how Southwest Airlines advertises. Instead of explaining, line by line, what a Business Select ticket offers, Southwest paints a picture of what life would be like if you made a purchase. In this advertisement, they focus on the benefits.

Rather than wasting precious ad space on your product specifications or service details, talk about the ways a purchase might positively impact your customers. If you do it right, your creative, benefit-packed advertisement would then inspire them to research the features on their own.

Leverage storytelling.

Not unlike our desire to fit in is our penchant for a good story. Storytelling helps paint a bigger picture of a brand or company, not simply promote a single product or service. Also, when stories resonate with someone, it’s far easier to motivate him or her to take action.

Storytelling is the one technique you should try to infuse in all your advertising. In fact, if you haven’t started crafting your brand’s overall story, you should definitely do so. Research shows that stories that illustrate a brand as “necessary, believable, and integral” are the most effective for engaging and influencing consumers.

Dove employs storytelling in its campaign partnership with Operation Homefront. The videos feature real stories of military men and their families being reunited. The advertisements don’t directly promote Dove products but instead tell the Dove brand story (and pull on a few heartstrings, too).

Determining your brand story will help you learn how to best discuss your brand in all marketing efforts, not just advertising.

Next, let’s take a look at some of the most memorable ad campaigns, a few of which put these best practices in action.

Five Memorable Ad Campaigns

The best advertisements are the best teachers. Whether it’s the copywriting, design, medium, or target audience, well-executed campaigns can always teach you something new about advertising or positioning.

(Consider Westinghouse Electric’s “We Can Do It” ad …)

Here are five campaigns that left a noticeable mark on advertising history.

1. Nike: Just Do It

In the late 1980s, Nike launched its “Just Do It” campaign.

At the time, Reebok was outselling Nike, and Nike needed to act fast to compete against the sneaker conglomerate.

But it wasn’t just the three-word phrase that earned global attention. Their new ad campaign also focused on real people wearing and working out in their products, as opposed to simply featuring clothes and sneakers themselves.

This powerful combination of people plus product helped Nike go from $800 million in 1988 to $9.2 billion just 10 years later.

2. The Absolut Vodka Bottle

Did you know Absolut’s “Bottles in the Wild” ad series is the longest uninterrupted campaign in history?

The campaign was Absolut’s attempt to grow their name internationally, especially throughout the United States. It featured the Absolut bottle in different cities and countries worldwide.

It launched in 1985 and ran until 2000 — lasting an impressive 25 years.

Absolut’s campaign helped grow the company from a tiny slice of the vodka market share (2.5%) to over half the U.S. imported market share.

To this day, the Absolut brand is the fourth largest spirit company, thanks to its focus on the overall story, not just the product itself.

3. Miller Lite

The folks at Miller Lite used differentiation to reach their goal: to get “real men” to willingly drink light beers. With their “Great Taste, Less Filling” campaign, they maintained a leading position in the light beer market for several decades after this first campaign aired.

4. Volkswagen

Though Volkswagen has officially discontinued its production of Beetles, its iconic “Think Small” campaign will be forever ingrained in advertising history.

Doyle Dane & Bernbach (DDB) advertising agency knew it had to change the mind of consumers if it wanted to compete with industry leaders. So, VW admitted that though the Beetle was, in fact, tiny, it was still a force to be reckoned with and worth a purchase.

Authenticity and honesty went a long way in this seemingly small campaign.

5. Dos Equis

With its edgy, cool, and sophisticated aesthetic, it’s no surprise “The Most Interesting Man in the World” campaign put Dos Equis on the map.

This campaign created a positive association between the Dos Equis beer and the feeling of sophistication and poise. Sales quickly jumped by 22% after the campaign launched.

Even more impressive was how Dos Equis found success in a time when craft beers grabbed a foothold in the market and imported beer took a 4% hit. This campaign was a major component of that success.

To learn how to grab the attention of your audience, learn from the professionals. These campaigns are a great example of how brands have used real stories, real people, and real talk to grow their businesses.

Advertising Helps You Grow Better

Equipped with a dense, dynamic history, advertising is an incredible tool to add to your marketing tool box.

Between print ads, radio sponsorship, TV commercials, and social media promotion, the opportunities to advertise and promote your brand are endless.

To best connect and engage with your audience, speak your customer’s language, appeal to their emotions, and tap into their desire to be a part of a community, create a clear and authentic brand story to illustrate how your brand aligns with their values.

By applying these tried and true practices to your advertising, you’ll build a magnetic brand that attracts customers, establishes a following, and generates revenue.

Do this and your brand will grow into a household name that stands the test of time — just like advertising itself.

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