‘Digital Advertising’ 

The phrase marketers, brands and businesses use constantly. A phrase that carries so much weight—and yet, so much confusion. As Digital experts at Boston Digital, we hear from clients all the time, “We need to do digital advertising.” But they’re unsure of where to start, what exactly digital advertising entails, how to implement it, and how to budget for it.It’s often seen as a line item on a media budget or gets tossed around as a channel they should be investing in. But really, digital is no longer a medium to plan for, but behaviors to plan with. Digital is an all-encompassing word for mobile, social, web, and technology – aspects integrated into our everyday lives and habits.

Have I cleared things up? Probably not. So let’s keep going.

The truth is, digital is nearly impossible to narrowly define. But based on ten years of watching marketing evolve and digital transform year over year, the best way I can define it is:

Digital advertising is a marketing strategy that targets audiences through digital platforms such as websites, search engines, social media, email, mobile apps, etc. The promotion of products, services, or brands typically involves using a variety of online ad formats like display ads, video ads, native ads, or sponsored content to target specific audiences and drive desired actions.

But there isn’t one set strategy that works for everyone, and one set strategy won't work for you. The truth is, it's constantly evolving and changing. So, if you want to keep up and stay competitive, your strategy has to be constantly evolving too. How can you do it effectively? By honing in on the key components of a successful digital advertising strategy.

Let’s break it down.

Understanding Needs:

Crafting a well-defined target audience plays a crucial role in successful digital advertising. When producing ads, knowing your audience allows you to truly connect with consumers and drives them to engage with your brand. By zeroing in on who they are, you can tap into their desires and interests, thus making your digital advertising campaign all the more powerful. Remember, it's not just about traditional demographics; successful digital advertising digs deep into the minds of your customers, uncovering their needs, wants, and how your brand/product/good can fulfill a void better than the competition.

At Boston Digital, we excel at strategically identifying your most valuable prospects and helping you create a laser-focused target audience. We don't stop there – we also guide you in determining where that audience lives online, what the most effective channels, messages, visuals, and strategies are that will bolster your brand's presence like no other. Understanding the secrets of what makes your audience tick is the first key component in a comprehensive approach to digital advertising.

Delivering the Right Experience

Crafting pertinent ad creatives and curating engaging content can significantly enhance the success of your campaigns, ultimately leading to higher conversion rates. It's crucial to focus not just on delivering any experience, but the ideal experience specifically tailored to your target audience. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for creating the right customer experience - every customer's goals and buying processes are different. But that’s the beauty of digital advertising, embrace digital's limitless possibilities to connect with your customers. With a myriad of channels such as social media, mobile apps, and websites, etc. at your disposal you can get even more granular within each of those realms to further customize and refine your approach.

Success in digital advertising isn't about mere presence- spreading yourself thin across all platforms or picking channels because your competitors are doing so. Instead, it's about strategic positioning – being present at the exact moment and place where your customers are seeking you out.

To achieve this, you must align your digital ads with both your customers' desires and your overall objectives. Remember that an experience doesn't merely exist as a fleeting moment; it's our responsibility as marketers to meticulously follow your customers' unique journeys while seamlessly guiding them through our sales funnel in a manner that feels authentic and meaningful.

Keeping Up

This key principle may sound familiar if you’ve read our article on the Set Up, Ramp Up, and Keep Up strategy. This key component focuses on continually refining and improving your digital advertising strategy. Like we mentioned above, your strategy has to evolve alongside technological advancements, consumers changing interests, and your business growth. This phase is an ongoing process as you continually analyze customer interactions across all channels to uncover pain points, monitor trends, uncover potential new opportunities, and ultimately craft an ideal experience tailored to each individual user. As the phase continues the focus shifts to creating a balance between staying consistent with the strategy while still allowing the flexibility to respond quickly to changing user needs. In order to do so, continual testing needs to be done with existing strategies as well as new experiments—this will ensure success moving forward as technologies and user needs evolve. Digital Advertising is the ability to make sense and draw reasonable assumptions from data. While marketers use a mix of insights and intuition, it’s all about making an informed hypothesis based on patterns or commonalities in people’s behavior, the landscape, and the competition. It’s then testing these hypotheses by activating in-market to figure out whether or not you are following the right patterns.

At Boston Digital, we break down digital strategy even further to include three core elements to delivering that “right” experience: Lead Generation, Capture and Nurture. If you're looking for tactical ways to implement digital keep reading here: https://www.bostondigital.com/blog/what-digital-marketing-3-basic-components