You want to promote your business, brand, company, or maybe even yourself as a public figure; but where do you start? How can you get your name out there on the web to grow your brand? By now, you’re probably aware of the terms “online marketing” and “online advertising,” but what’s the difference between the two, and how can you increase your online presence to reach your desired audience?

In this digitized world and information globally accessible to online users, consumers have the upper hand in their purchasing power. With many products and services easily found in as quick as a Google search, consumers have the tools to compare your brand against your competitors, so standing out with a strong business strategy as well as marketing message is key to breaking the barrier in reaching your target group.

Understanding how to apply online marketing strategy and tactical advertising is key to help your business grow visibility. Let’s dig a bit deeper.

Online marketing uses strategy while online advertising executes

In traditional offline business, marketing is the strategy of how to launch and bring the value of your product or service to the right markets while advertising is a pillar of executing a marketing strategy- it fits within the “Promotions” P of the marketing mix. Online marketing includes the following pillars: SEO/SEA, social media marketing, content marketing, email & mobile marketing, affiliate marketing and online advertising. Financial professional Neha Mehta offers another way to differentiate the two: digital advertising is an activity while digital marketing is a process; digital advertising is sales centered while digital marketing is audience psychology centered.

Online or digital marketing applies marketing strategy to different channels across the web via digital content and technology. With online marketing, deciding which channels to promote on- such as social media, SEA, sponsored content, and YouTube- or deciding what type of content to push are examples of what goes into your online marketing strategy. Before getting to online advertising, setting your marketing objective and what business goals you want to achieve are the steps to cover.

Online Marketing vs. Online Advertising

Building your marketing message and targeting your buyer persona

Once you’ve defined your business goals and marketing objectives of how to get there-whether it’s growing your website traffic by 90%, getting 1,000 weekly subscribers to your newsletter, or, supporting your sales team to convert your leads into customers- be sure to identify your buyer persona. Before even starting to create an ad, it’s important to clearly understand who you are trying to target on the web to achieve your goals. Are you looking to sell your brand to young female working professionals who don’t have enough time to prepare everyday healthy breakfasts on the go? Which devices are your target group mainly on- mobile, or laptop? What problem is your product or service trying to solve, and for whom? The more specific you get, the better chances you will reach that exact target group through online advertising. Based on that, you’ll be able to create a strong marketing message that will manifest in your ads and campaigns.

Types of online advertising

Compared to offline advertising such as billboards, posters, and flyers, online advertising offers new advantages to brands and companies to promote their business. Online advertising is flexible, low cost, efficient and measurable. Thanks to programmatic and AI technology, we can set exact targets of who we want to deliver online ads to and measure exactly who and how many users online interacted with your ad. The best part? With the right online ad vendors, technology allows you to push relevant ads to your target consumer based on their online behavior and interests, improving higher user acceptance while decreasing ad block. 81% of people welcome relevant ads if it sparks interest or answers to their needs.

Here are the types of online advertising to consider when promoting your brand: 

Here at plista, we offer all these types of online advertising, which are suitable to your fulfilling your marketing objectives along the funnel. When thinking about ways to attract, engage, convert, and finally retain your customers, consider choosing the right ad formats for your creative.

How to work with online advertising pricing models

Whether you’re utilizing Facebook, Google Ads, or sponsored content ads such as plista solutions, you’ll face different pricing models that fit the metrics of your chosen ad type. Once you define your campaign budget, it’s important to think about how you want to allocate that budget, such as how much ad delivery per day and for which ad placement.

Let’s take the example of sponsored content ads such as Display, Native, and Video Ads, often found on publisher or editorial sites and placed within their articles. The two most common ad pricing models are cost-per-click (CPC), and cost-per-mille (CPM).

CPM pricing is where you pay whatever price you set for every 1.000 impressions or how many people are shown your ad online. This model is suitable for the brand awareness objective and ads which serve the relevant KPIs, such as number of impressions, dwell time, video views, user engagement, and website traffic. Meanwhile, CPC pricing is where you pay whatever price you set for your budget every time a user clicks on your ad. Ads with these pricing models, such as Native Ads, answer to performance objectives, where you want to measure users clicking to subscriptions, completing the shopping cart, or even simply submitting to your contact form. A strategy itself, deciding how much budget you want to spend and when in the duration of your ad campaign (i.e., longevity and daily delivery) certainly affects where your ad will deliver, especially when optimizing through programmatic buying.

Where to advertise online

Beyond social media, online advertising is accessible to everyone. These days, if you have a laptop, an online marketing strategy, creative content to advertise, and some budget, you can easily advertise with various AdTech vendors in the market. Here at plista, we grow your online visibility by placing your ads on publisher sites with our custom digital advertising solutions. Are you ready to advertise and jump right in without breaking your budget? You can get started right away in booking your first campaign in only five easy steps on our Self Service advertising platform- give it a try!