Advertising is an essential part of marketing your online business, but it can become expensive. Before you forge ahead with an advertising strategy that will see you part with much-needed cash for your business, here are three great tactics you can employ to reduce your advertising costs today:
1) Research where your customers hang out
Ever been advised to advertise on Facebook by someone who has had massive success in doing just that? We’ve all been told that more than once. But the reality is that there is no one solution for every business.
The key to successful, low cost advertising is to do your research first. If you can understand as much as possible about your target customer, and where they hang out online, it means that you’ll be advertising to a much more appropriate audience (thereby reducing your overall advertising
spend).
This SlideShare [or infographic if you prefer that version] outlines the demographic profile of the major platforms:
If your target audience is female, for example, you can see that they dominate Twitter and Pinterest.
Here’s what to do:
- Start by writing out a detailed profile of your ideal customer. Think
about their demographic, and think about what they do in their spare time. - Think about how they interact with people in their lives: family, friends, and even work associates.
- You’ll start seeing a clearer picture about who you plan to advertise to. Once you have a detailed profile, you can begin looking online to see where they hang out:
- Do they regularly post to forums?
- Are they on cutting edge social media platforms, or are they into the more mainstream?
- Do they rely heavily on search engines for their information, or are there websites they are particularly loyal to?
The more research you do, the better your advertising campaign is going to perform.
2) Target methodically
Even when you’ve gone to the trouble of figuring out where your ideal customer hangs out online, don’t let your work stop there. Use your ideal customer profile to put in place some extremely detailed targeting when you launch your advertising campaign.
Target specific celebrities or gurus your customer followers, online magazines or blogs they read, or retailers they like.
Here’s what to do:
- Fully research the targeting options on your chosen advertising platform. Some platforms will give you better options than others (Facebook, for example, having acquired such detailed information on their user base, can give you a huge range of options about your customers
preferences and likes) - Narrow down your targeting until you are advertising to a very small, very specific group. Not only will this help your testing efforts (see point 3), but it will also reduce the amount you are spending as you’ll only be advertising to a very small but highly targeted group of people.
3) Test repeatedly
Always track your advertising campaign performance, and test repeatedly to improve your results. At the very minimum, you should understand exactly what your ROI is for each dollar you are spending on your advertising, and testing will allow you to work on improving this.
Here’s what to do:
- Have a small budget set aside for testing very small campaigns. When a campaign is successfully, increase your budget to expand your campaign.
- Try testing a variety of different variables in your campaign to see what impact they have on the overall performance:
- Different images
- Headline text
- Targeting
- Keywords
- Landing pages
- Offers
Keep repeating your testing until you start to see an improvement in your ROI. The more you test, the better your campaign will perform in the long run.
These are just three of the ways in which you can improve your advertising performance and reduce your overall advertising costs. In such a competitive online environment, the time and money you spend doing this can sometimes mean the difference between success and failure. So before embarking on your next advertising campaign, remember to do your ground work. It could make a fantastic improvement to your business.
Latest posts by Lauren Lambie (see all)
- Three Ways to Reduce Your Online Advertising Costs - February 14, 2015
Impressive!The best way for marketing search in forums .You can able get more audience or you can use online resources like free classifieds site submitting
Nice to see someone else’s opinion. But is it really possible to reduce advertising cost? Sometimes you have to spend a certain amount to get certain work done. That said, it is hard to find a direct correlation between advertising and exposure. Been trying to not get too involved in doing advertising for my page ( http://www.moneylenderreview.com.sg ) but I think I’m about to give up because it seems almost impossible to bring awareness to the site without spending much money on it. Sigh
it really is essential to know basic prospecting of clients and I must agree about observance of the customer’s usual routine. it is sure hard work but definitely pays off! thanks for sharing this!
KimberlyGayeta would love you to read ..Tips on Using LED Billboard for Advertising Your Event
Hi Lauren,
I have something to clarify, regarding of forum – is it really effective to advertise in forum? As I know, Google hates building discussion from forum sites. I don’t really get the idea! But anyway, thanks for the insightful post. One thing I know is, as long as you already determine bunch of targeted audience, it will be easy to create an effective campaign
Ellie would love you to read ..Most Visited Places in The World
Hi Ellie,
I’d recommend you use forums to research your target customer. There’s no need to start your own discussions on there. Just use it to find out what people are discussing already (and what their key pain points are). Hope that helps,
Lauren
This is a great blog for anyone wanting to grow an online business, or for just making extra money online or getting more traffic for whatever reason. There is a wealth of information here from Advertising to Web Design. Definitely worthy of a bookmark!
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Thank you very much..This is exactly what I need for my new campaign. This checklist may not show everything you need to know if you’re starting in business, but it’s a great starting point. Keep it up!
Hi Lauren,
What a nice tips for reducing the advertise cost.
I am really so glad to read this article.
Thanks for sharing..Please keep posting such useful post.
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Thanks for these tips. I have dipped my toes into the waters of advertising, but it hasn’t gone well so far. Hopefully, I can use some of these ideas to take a more focused approach.
We’ve all had our bad campaigns Dave. I’d suggest taking time to look at the metrics and seeing what specific elements weren’t working for you e.g. low click through rate, low conversion, and start tackling that bit first to improve your next campaign. Good luck!
Lauren Lambie would love you to read ..10 Exciting New Tools On The Market That Make Life Easier For Online Entrepreneurs
This tips very nice and easy to understand and i am one of the seo analysis so this article useful for me to advertise my sites with low cost .
Hey thanks for sharing these ideas..i recently started my website and those ideas are really helpful for me.Thanks again!!!
Have a nice day!!
Good luck with your new website. Advertising early on is a great way to gain momentum before you have an ‘organic’ online presence, so I hope you find this tips useful.
Lauren Lambie would love you to read ..10 Exciting New Tools On The Market That Make Life Easier For Online Entrepreneurs
Hi,
Thanks for sharing three great ways to reduce your online advertising costs. Follow this ways we save our advertising cost.Its totally helpful for me.
Have a great day!
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Hi,
Thanks for sharing great information .
Great tactics described in post like research where your customers hang out, target methodically etc.
Have a great post.
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These tips are really interesting, I think I can reduce my advertising cost by using these tips.This post was really helpful. Thanks a lot for it.
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Hi,
Thanks for advising. My huge budget was wasted in advertising. Now using these tricks my advertising costs will be controlled
It can be so frustrating when that happens Diana. Good luck with your new campaign and I hope you see some great results
Lauren Lambie would love you to read ..10 Exciting New Tools On The Market That Make Life Easier For Online Entrepreneurs
The best ways to reduce the advertising costs is to use targeted audience and also most searched topic on search engine mainly the online shopping would be less chargeable to use the advertising costs
Hi Asif – yes a highly targeted audience can be very effective. In addition to searching topics on Google I’d also recommend looking at topics in areas such as forums. This can give you a great idea about the types of questions your target customer is seeking answers to – if you can tie that into your ad headline then it can help your ad perform exceptionally well.
Lauren Lambie would love you to read ..10 Exciting New Tools On The Market That Make Life Easier For Online Entrepreneurs