Picking the Right Digital Advertising Platform for Your Budget
Reading Time: ~3 Mins | Written By: Cheryl Goeres
Digital advertising has become an important part of a business’s growth and success. With more and more companies allocating portions of their marketing budgets towards online advertising, it’s crucial to choose the right platforms. With a wide variety of digital advertising platforms in the industry, choosing the right one for your business can be a daunting task.
In this post, we’ll walk you through how to pick the best platforms for your budget.
Define your advertising goals
Before you begin advertising or selecting a platform to advertise on, you need to determine your advertising goals. These are typically closely related to your business goals. Defining your goals will help you determine which platforms would be the best option. Are you looking to drive website traffic, generate leads, increase brand awareness, or boost sales? If you’re looking to drive website traffic or brand awareness, a platform that offers display ads would likely be the best fit for you. If you’re looking to generate leads or boost sales, a combination of display, text and shopping platforms could be best for you.
Identify your target audience
Knowing your target audience is one of the most important factors when selecting a digital ad platform. Different platforms cater to specific demographics and interests, and you want to make sure that your ads reach your target audience. Using data from your website, social media, customer list, and other digital platforms, you can identify your target audience’s age, gender, location and interests.
Determine your budget
It's important to have a clear idea of how much you can afford to spend on digital advertising. Some platforms have higher costs than others, and you want to make sure that you choose a platform that fits within your budget. For example, if you intend on advertising on Google, use their Keyword Planner to get an idea of how much it could cost you per click on potential keywords you would be using. Keep in mind, that depending on your advertising goal, the lower down the funnel your advertising strategy is, typically the higher the cost.
*Note: this table is a generic base to go off of for overall averages. Ensure you incorporate industry benchmarks, and internal returns to determine your budget.
Know the advertising platforms
There are a variety of digital advertising platforms available, including Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Pinterest Ads, TikTok Ads, and Spotify Ads. Make sure you understand the audience who uses each platform as well as how they use it. Each platform will allow you to reach different audiences. Google Ads are great for capturing an audience who are in-market for specific products or services. LinkedIn is a great platform when you need to target an audience by Job Title or Industry. Pinterest is seen as the go to platform when targeting women in specific age groups. Whereas Facebook, TikTok and Spotify have very large audiences and targeting abilities, but all with large audiences of specific generational groups.
Test and optimize
Once you have selected a digital ad platform, it's important to test your ads to see what works best. You can test different ad formats, targeting options, and messaging to optimize your campaign's performance. Regularly monitoring and adjusting your campaigns can help you maximize your ad spend and achieve better results.
When it comes to choosing the right digital advertising platform, it’s important to always know your goals, target audience, budget, and the platforms you have to choose from. Using the above as a guideline, you can make an informed decision that will help you reach your target audience, achieve your advertising goals, and maximize your ROI.
To gain further understanding of digital advertising platforms, check out Jelly Academy’s Digital Marketing Bootcamp.
