Deciding whether to use search ads vs display ads for your online campaign can be a difficult decision to make. It’s important to make the right choice in order to maximize the potential of your paid advertising budget, which is why we’ve outlined everything you need to know about choosing search ads vs display ads to promote your business.
Search Ads
Paid search ads are a form of pay per click advertising. You can have your ad displayed above or below the organic results of popular search engines, like Google, when your potential target searches specific keywords. There are three main components that make up every search ad, a headline, a display URL, and description text, and they are designed in the hopes that the user will click on the link. You get to determine how often the ad will appear, its ranking, and the cost per click based on how much you bid using an auction-based model.
Reasons to Use Search Ads
- Supplement Organic Traffic: Search ads can bring the target directly to your site much more quickly than organic results, which are reliant on comparative content. It’s important to remember that not all businesses can afford to wait for SEO to yield results.
- Capture High Quality Leads: Paid search ads allow you to choose which keywords activate your ad as well as which ones won’t so that you can align with your desired target’s search intent.
- Short Sales Cycles: If your service or product has a short sales cycle, you should be using search ads because you don’t need to keep advertising to people who already engage with your brand
- Promoting Emergency Goods and Services: You should use search ads if you are marketing a product or service that provides emergency service, like service technicians, because of how people search for those services. If someone’s furnace fails or they lock themselves out of their home, they’re going to search for services that can help on their mobile device, and they are more likely to choose your company if your ad is located at the very top.
Display Ads
When you are deciding between search ads vs display ads, remember that display ads are considered to be a form of “pull” advertising, whereas search ads are “push” advertising. The idea being that display ads pull in potential customers and clients based on a variety of targeting parameters. Unlike paid search ads, display ads can appear in more than one location. They can be implemented on social platforms, appear as banner ads on web pages, or even on the target’s personal email as text-only ads that expand when opened.
Reasons to Use Display Ads
- Visual Products: You should use display ads if your product or service relies on visuals to fully convey its benefits. Display ads can utilize photos and videos to gain your target’s attention, and people are much more likely to click on a visual than plain text.
- Awareness: The core idea behind display ads is that they target people who are still in the awareness stage as they research their options. These ads are great for grabbing user’s attention and creating a demand instead of answering one.
- Longer Sales Cycles: Display ads are an excellent choice if your target doesn’t usually make a purchase on the first engagement. When executed properly, display ads ensure your product or service stays in the minds of potential customers using digital strategies like cross-channel marketing, omnichannel marketing, and re-targeting.
Bottom line is that SUCCESSFUL online (PPC) advertising has become more challenging than ever. Most businesses doing it on their own encounter many challenges, including with Search ads – pacing budgets so that they run throughout the day and not just in the early part of the day until the budget is used up. – Competition for keywords has driven costs per click so high that the CPC (Cost Per Conversion) is beyond the reach of many businesses. Running online advertising is a full-time, data based enterprise, requiring a combination of experience, software and data analytics knowledge and the combined application of all together to OPTIMIZE your ROI.
Unsure how to best optimize your business’s search or display ads?
The experts at idig can help!
idig Marketing is a full-service digital agency that generates meaningful website traffic and drives high value leads to your organization. By optimizing organic content with paid advertising, our custom methodology is adapted to meet your requirements and exceed your objectives.
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