4 easy steps to advertise online

Search engine marketing is a uniquely powerful option for your business, it’s simple, but effective. Today, we are going to discuss how it works, how to identify effective keywords, how to write ads people will click on, and much more.

People search for things they want

When you go to a local market, it’s common to see sales store right? Now, let’s go deeper, how do the store owners get your attention? They display their products; prices and they even call you – they pay to place their product where they are. It’s nearly identical to what happen when you advertise online. You pay to appear where you audience looks for information.

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Practice Test

What can you learn from that case?

You can be a real magician in your industry like Louis but to get found online. You have to be easy to find. How? Thanks to online advertising. Don’t worry as usually, we are going to show you the way to advertise online by yourself. Advertising online can be tricky if you don’t know the basic steps :

Keywords choice

A “keyword” doesn’t have to be just one word - it can be a phrase as well. According to Moz, Keywords are ideas and topics that define what your content is about. So how can you research keywords before adding them to your campaign? Well, you have a few different options here. The first thing to ask yourself is: is this keyword relevant? Or in other words, does this keyword closely describe your products or services Keywords that indicate a person looking to hire a Web designer in Douala are clearly relevant. However, keywords that suggest a person looking to do their own website, or that suggest community management workshop, are far less relevant.

If a keyword is relevant, and gets quite traffic, your competitors are more likely to be using it too. For instance, when it comes to the keyword “Build a website”, there’s a good chance that every Web designer is bidding on that keyword.

That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t include it. But you should look for keywords where the relevance and traffic is high, and competition relatively low.

Perhaps a keyword like Web Designer in Douala would be less competitive, because it’s more unique to your business. So, when you’re thinking about which keywords you want to include in your ad campaigns you’re going to want to remember relevance, traffic potential and competition.

Creating ads that stand out

Hey! Have you ever noticed when you search for something online, most of the adverts that you see in the search results look similar? Let’s start by doing a search for “hire a web designer” and having a look through the ads that appear.

The first thing you might notice is: there are a lot of platform displaying experts online. You are probably asking yourself “how can I rank higher on the search ads?” To tell you the truth, your focus should be on:

• Relevance: you can use Google Trend to design your advert’s headline in order to match the searcher’s words as closely as possible.

• Timely: Creating the sense of urgency can be useful; as it is said in military studies “if you don’t have a due date, then it’s not important”.

• Be specific: Tell visitors what you want them to do on your website.

Get found by search engine

As we are discussing about online advertising, let’s go back to our 1st example “hire a web designer”. As you can see, below, we divided the search results in 2 categories:

The links on the red square are called “organic” results. It costs nothing to appear here. This is where search engines show relevant results. To get listed there, you should have a powerful SEO management strategy and be patient, because it takes time have authority even for Search Engine. The results on the blue square are called paid results. To get listed there, you have to advertise online.

How to advertise online like an expert?

Choose a goal for your advertisement: You have a wide range of goal setup, that’s why you should do your best to align your ads goal to your business and customer behaviors.

1. Write outstanding ads as we discussed above: Think about your unique selling points and your current customer value; people buy value not a product only.

2. Add a call to action: It’s your way of encouraging potential customers to interact with your ads.

3. Relevant landing page: Using a website is wonderful because each page can have specific contents. That’s why by sharing the page related to the offer, you ease the customers’ visits on your website.

4. Targeting: Geography, social position, interest and even age groups and sex should be defined when you build your online ads. Put your money where your mouth is: Set a budget to cover your online ads. According to the clicks’ strategy chosen by you, the results can be different. Most ads tools today show you an estimated ads reach based on both your budget and target.

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Credit Sources:

• Neil Patel

• Moz

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