Quick And Simple Online Advertising Tools To Help Boost Business

No, this isn’t a get-rich-quick kind of deal where you can just pay your way to success. This is a small part of what should be a large marketing campaign. We would never suggest to simply rely on advertising tools to boost your business, you also need to consider your websites search engine optimisation but also the web design aspects of your website.

If you’ve done all of the hard work up until now, but have not considered any advertising, then this may be the way forward for you. Below are a handful of places you can successfully advertise your business, without having to spend hours doing it.

Reddit Advertise

Now, this is not for every business. This is the kind of advertising platform that should be used for mass market products rather than specialist products or services. The way the ads work is fairly simple, but you do indeed need to have a Reddit account to be able to advertise with them. Reddit suggests you use a company name as your username, as it will help to build respect with the advert.

Once you click the button “create an ad” you’re met with a page that asks for a title, a post type and a URL. These are all basic, the title needs to be the headline of the advert effectively so you need to make it catchy. It’s more common to use a URL to a product page or an engaging blog post, but should you wish to advertise with text you can do that also.

If all of these are filled in correctly then you can click “next” and move onto the next step.

You’re now met with the Creative Dashboard where you can personalise your advert. I have left a screenshot above so you can see what your advert will look like unedited. You then have a choice of targeting people via interests or via specific Subreddits. If you’re new to Reddit, or if there is no appropriate Subreddit, then you should choose people via interests.

You can then schedule your post specifically with specific budgets, At the very bottom Reddit will give you an estimated number of impressions your post will make with the advert you’ve created. If you’re happy with your advert then you can carry on to publish it. If you’d like to add an image to your ad then you need to click the “edit creative” button which you can see in the screenshot above. Once you’ve clicked this you can then add an image of 140 by 140 pixels.

And there you go! The ad is then created and you receive an email to confirm it. The only issue we have found with this form of advertising is that you do not get any kind of invoice for the payment.

StumbleUpon Ads

Once you have your very own account, you simply login and you’ll be taken to the Paid Discovery Dashboard. This is where you can create your advert, quickly and easily. Start by clicking the “Create a New Campaign” button. You’re then brought to a page where you can create and finish your entire advert in one hit.

Above is what you’ll first be greeted with, just like with the Reddit ad, you’re going to enter a URL to an online page you wish to share (whether that be your website homepage or a blog post). The campaign name is solely for your own use, but make sure it is specific in case you create other campaigns in the future. So, for example, if you’ve made a blog post about soap, you should call it “Soap Blog Post” or something similar.

Next is targeting, which you should be using to reach only those who are your core audience. Don’t set it to all ages and everyone in the country, or your budget will be spent in seconds on the people who do not matter! There are various options here, so go for the ones you’re comfortable with.

Lastly you come to budget, this again can be tailored so that it runs over a few days or one day and if you’d like to evenly spend the money throughout that time or spend it as soon as it’s live. You can change the price per stumble, however you may want to leave this be (as you’ve already put your max budget in). Then press “submit” and vwala! Your advert has been created. Once your advert is finished you can check how well it did back in the dashboard.

Twitter Ads

With Twitter being the most popular social network of all time, it’s no surprise that you can run your very own adverts through your Twitter account. As long as you have a company Twitter (which you should have) you’re ready to get going! Just sign into your Twitter, click the little profile picture in the top right corner next to “Tweet” and select “Twitter Ads” from the drop down menu.

You’ll then be taken to a separate window where you will be met with a dashboard (quite like the one used for StumbleUpon). In the top right hand corner you will see a button labelled “Create New Campaign”, which you will need to click. You’ll then need to choose the aim of the campaign from the drop down menu, the most popular choice is “Followers” and “Website clicks or conversions”. If you want to build up your Twitter presence then choose the first option, but choose the second if you’d like for people to visit your site.

As you can see above, you’re met with 2 rather simple requests which are a name for the campaign and when you want to run the campaign. The name, like with StumbleUpon ads, is only for your own reference. Once you have done this you move onto the “creative” box where you compose your tweet. The tweet is not the headline, it’s almost like a long sub-headline. You can also add an image and a URL here, which are crucial to the ads success. You can also select a tweet you have already made, if you like.

Next is your targeting, which is a little more complex than the previous 2 websites. You can as always select a location and gender but here you can also select specific languages and devices to target. They even go one further and give you the option to target with keywords, followers, interests and TV targeting (which is where you can target people who watch specific television programs).

Lastly you move onto budget, putting in a daily budget and even adding a budget cap if you’re on a limited budget. All you need to do then is save your campaign at the very bottom of the page and there you have it.

Facebook Advertising

As with Twitter, you will need to have a business account/page to be able to use the adverts. You can get to your adverts manager by visiting the link above and clicking “Manage Your Adverts” which will take you to an adverts dashboard. This will be empty if you have never created an advert before, however if you’re taking over a business account from someone else you may find some adverts in here.

To create a new advert all you need to do from the dashboard is click the “Create Advert” button in the top right hand corner of the screen. Just like Twitter, you need to let them know the objective of the advert. I am going to choose “send people to your website” as it is the most popular. You then need to enter a URL, there is no need to press “continue” as it should take you straight to an advert creator page.

Above is a screenshot of what you’ll be met with when trying to first create the advert. As you can see, you choose who you wish to target first and on the right hand side you will see a dial showing you how good your advert is in the eyes of Facebook themselves. Keep an eye on this when creating the advert. All are self explanatory, however there is a section called “behaviours”. This is a little different from interests, it’s slightly more specific such as “mobile device user”. You can choose advanced connection targeting, but we suggest leaving it as “all” if you’re new to this.

Next you’ll be choosing how much you wish to spend and will be making a schedule (aka choosing the days it is shown). Again, there are more advanced options but for a quick advert with no fuss you’ll want to skip this. With Facebook you can actually save your audience for later, which helps when creating a new advert later down the line.

Lastly you’ll need to choose an image you wish to use for your advert. It will automatically pull in an image from the URL you provided, but you do not need to use this. Then all you need to do is check over the advert in the very bottom box where you’re given a real-time image of the advert. Make sure you add your headline and text (this needs to be carefully written to engage your audience). Once you’re happy, click “Place Order” and it’s all finished and ready to go!

Outbrain Advertising

Possibly my favourite of all, we leave with Outbrain. This is an extremely quick and simple to use website that can seriously help to boost your business through content. By content we mean articles and blog posts, not product pages or homepages. They do this by sharing your content on hugely respected websites, for a very brief moment in time, which results in clicks. You must sign up to Oubrain, however it is 100% free to use. Once you login you’ll be met with your dashboard, which will be very useful once you’ve added in an ad or two.

To create a campaign you’ll need to select “My Campaigns” from the menu on the left hand side of the screen. This will be empty, but once you have a few campaigns you’ll be able to see at a glance how they are all doing. To create a new campaign you’ll need to click “Create New Campaign” in the top right hand corner. There are two options, one for RSS feeds and one for URL’s, for now we’ll stick to putting in a URL. Once you’ve inserted the URL, click next to tailor.

Unlike social media advertising, Outbrain does not tailor the audience, but does show your content to hundreds of thousands of people. It’s great for worldwide brands, but for a local dentist this isn’t perhaps the best way to get noticed. Above you can see that you only need to name your campaign (for your own reference) and select how much you’d like to pay per reader and what your daily budget is. You cannot go below £10. Lastly you need to select when the campaign is run, if you’re all done then click “next”. Your content will the go under review, you’ll be emailed once it has been accepted. And that’s that!

Of course nothing can replace pay per click advertising as a more professional and successful option. Pay per click does take a little more time to figure out and plan for, however the results speak for themselves as your adverts appear in Google Searches for related terms. If you’re stuck with your PPC or want to learn more about what you can do with your advertising just drop us a message via our contact form.

Feature Image Credit: Flickr