As more companies turn to ads, competition for ad space is intensifying, leading to a sharp rise in costs. While marketers watch their cost-per-click soar, their CTR and ROI are declining. It may be tempting to blame the platform, but the real issue is often the ads themselves.

In times of increased competition, it’s easy to consider giving up, but that would be a mistake. To thrive, you must adapt.

In this article, we have compiled a list of 5 available and effective channels for advertising, sorted out their pros and cons, and showed what can boost your small business.

Where can you place digital advertising most successfully?

What kind of advertising is effective? If you formulate the question this way, without clarification – you are at the beginning of the path. You can overcome it alone or with a guide (agency or remote freelancer).

In both cases, the more specific you are at the start, the less likely you will be disappointed after the first test. If resources allow it, you can try any advertising platform. Use several channels simultaneously and achieve synergy so that one enhances the effect of the other.

Effective digital advertising tells your product’s benefits to the largest target audience. So, all you have to do is leave a compelling CTA. Profit.

For example, a young website might have a mix of channels like this:

• SEO – the traffic you get after optimizing the site.
• Contextual advertising – traffic that includes commercial, competitive, and high-frequency queries outside the scope of SEO.
• Affiliate advertising – traffic is a little colder but cheaper than from search engines. You cover sites and apps that your target audience visits. 
• Targeted advertising – you reach an audience that has not yet articulated a need but fits your target audience.
• Remarketing – visitors who, for some reason, did not buy, although they were already interested in your offers. You can return them with an ad with additional arguments about the product. 

There is no shortage of ways to deliver digital advertising. Everything rests on resources. And it’s not just about money – each channel has its own rules, interfaces, formats, and analytics. 

To not waste budgets, you need to determine which channel has a larger target audience, which channel responds better to advertising, and where there is less competition. There is no unique solution – each business decides where and how much advertising to place. 

What type of digital advertising to choose: the most effective channels to boost your small business

So, let’s talk about the types of digital advertising.

1. PPC

Users see advertisements in the search engine results. The system searches for keywords in the query and shows users an ad. The format is good because you do not need to create demand from the audience.

PPC ads appear before the organic search engine results. The ad block contains a link to the site, headline, and subheading, as well as links with additional information.

Pros of PPC advertising:

• Large coverage.
• The audience has a formulated request.

Cons of PPC advertising:

• High competition in some areas.
• Professional skills are required for effective customization.

Shows are formed according to the auction results. If you have the highest bids, then your advertising will be seen by the target audience. 

2. Contextual advertising

You can start advertising on sites, applications, and video hosting sites with blocks for displaying ads. This advertising can be set up through Google Ads. Contextual advertising has several formats: graphic, text-graphic, and video. The main thing is to make a bright, creative ad with relevant text.

Pros of contextual advertising:

• Huge audience coverage.
• Different formats and sites.
• The cost of clicks and displays is lower than in contextual advertising.

Cons of contextual advertising:

• The audience has developed banner blindness.
• These ads are less trustworthy.
• You are not immune to accidental clicks and junk traffic.
• Not all sites are of high quality.

In other words, contextual advertising is aimed at increasing reach and brand awareness rather than direct sales to a hot audience. While advertising on search engine results caters to established demand, contextual ads may reach users who are not yet in the buying phase.

To better manage and optimize your ad campaigns, you can use an ad server. It helps deliver your ads to the right audience by automating placements and allowing more control over where and when your ads appear. 

This ensures that your ads are displayed on high-quality sites, reaching the most relevant users. For small businesses, an ad server can be a game-changer. It allows them to stretch their marketing budget further by:

• Targeting specific audiences
• Avoiding low-quality sites
• Focusing on placements that deliver the best results

Even with limited resources, small businesses can run highly effective campaigns, track performance, and make data-driven decisions that maximize return on investment. This level of control and optimization helps smaller advertisers compete with larger brands.

3. Targeted advertising in social networks and messengers

Targeted advertising is shown to the target audience based on the information in personal profiles. To show ads, experts set several requirements:

• Socio-demographic data – gender, age, marital status, income.
• Geography – country, city, region, street, or radius on the map. 
• Time – days and weeks, time of day.
• Interests – subscriptions, history of visiting pages, and accounts. 
• Devices – desktop, mobile devices, browsers, and OS.

You can also use look-alike audiences – social networks’ algorithms will select users who are most similar to your customers. Targeted advertising in social media also has many formats – there are graphical ads, text, video, and publications in the feed.

Pros of targeted advertising:

• Reaching the target audience.
• Many formats and adaptive ads.
• More audience due to look-alike audiences. 

Cons of targeted advertising:

• Each platform has its moderation, and rules are constantly changing.
• Effective advertising will require fine-tuning. 

Targeted advertising generates user demand even before the user decides to search for something specific on the Internet. Flexible settings allow you to select segments and test various hypotheses on them.

4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

It is a relatively free method of promotion. You perform actions that increase the site’s position in the search engine results. This is necessary to attract as many users as possible.

Work on SEO is a whole set of versatile tasks, which includes:

• Technical optimization of the site. It should load quickly, look good on a smartphone screen, and the pages correctly respond to queries.
• Working with content. All headings, subheadings, and texts in the blog or product cards should correspond to the keywords used by users. Content should be updated to keep it in search results. Also, there should be no duplicate pages on the site. 
• Link building. Post information about the organization in directories and review aggregators with backlinks to your site. Respond on forums or write articles for third-party sites. 

Pros of SEO:

• Conditionally free – SEO does not require the same investment as contextual or targeted advertising.
• More trust – people rarely go further than the first page of the search results and open links from the top of the output. 

Cons of SEO:

• It’s long – you can’t predict how quickly SEO will have a tangible effect.
• Few guarantees – because search engines constantly change the rules, you may not be at the top immediately.

To make it easier, you need to use special services for SEO specialists. If your site isn’t SEO-friendly, you will not succeed.

5. Remarketing

This is a strategy to return users who have already been interested in you. Retargeting is used for remarketing. For example, people opened the site, added products to the cart, and clicked on banners.

With remarketing, the business solves the following tasks:

• Returns users who abandoned the cart and did not place an order.
• Tells existing customers and those who haven’t bought before about new products.
• Sells related products. 
• Alerts about the start of sales and promotions.
• Warms up the audience and reinforces the image of the company. 

Pros of remarketing:

• You continue to reach out to an audience that already knows about the company. 
• There’s a chance to get additional sales to existing customers.

Cons of remarketing:

• Remarketing does not take into account the possibility that the user could have bought the product offline. Accordingly, advertising is irrelevant for him.
• Advertising of the same products can irritate users.

5 Tips to Accelerate Your Small Business Growth with Online Advertising

Here’s how you can harness digital advertising to grow your small business.

1. Choose the Right Platform

For instance, if potential customers are young, then it would be appropriate to use Instagram or TikTok. However, if it is a professional demographic, LinkedIn can be the place where you have been looking to go.

Study what kind of people use the respective platforms to ensure that your ads are smartly invested.

2. Have Clear Goals

Before starting any campaign, define what you want to achieve. Would you bring in website traffic, drive e-commerce sales, or build brand awareness?

Having clear goals will help measure ad success and make necessary changes toward better performance. Without goals, it is very easy to mess around, spending time and money on strategies that don’t yield growth.

3. Target Specific Audiences

Digital advertising will enable you to reach an audience based on age, location, interests, and even behavior. That is just an advanced level of targeting, implying that your ads are viewed by people who are most likely to show interest in your product or service.

4. Leverage Engaging Creatives

Success largely depends on the visual or text used for your ad. Eyes hang on bright images, catchy short videos, and succinct, impactful copy.

Avoid generic stock photos that don’t do their job to convey your brand’s personality; use real images that show your product in use or give a sneak peek into customer testimonials. Messaging should be clear and direct, giving potential customers a reason to click.

5. Monitor and Optimise Your Campaigns

Utilize analytics brought to you by platforms like Facebook Ads Manager or Google Ads to stay current with your campaign’s performance.

If some ads aren’t delivering, then rework them. Whether refining your audience, adjusting your budget, or changing up the ad creative, don’t be afraid to experiment until you find what works.

Conclusion

One tip for each type of advertising discussed above:

• PPC advertising – be sure to set aside time to test and analyze competitor ads before launching ad campaigns.
• Contextual advertising – this format is outreach and works for brand awareness, so don’t expect a sale right away. 
• Targeted advertising – instead of studying moderation rules in Instagram and Facebook, run ads through Epom. It’s faster and more convenient. 
• SEO is a long game; be patient and check the dynamics of indicators at least once a month. 
• Remarketing will bring the best results if you set up omnichannel communications. Then, you will exclude people who buy offline after making contact with advertising.