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Within this five-part marketing series, we’ve discussed why a digital marketing strategy is essential and explored online search behaviors for tent rental. We’ve covered how to be found in Google, how to reach your ideal customer and how to create and distribute valuable content to customers. All of these concepts make up the building blocks of a successful digital strategy. They form the framework that supports your digital advertising efforts, positioning you as an expert in the tent industry, which will in turn help to increase your customer base and revenue. Much like installing a tent, the frame needs to be built first, the creative details are second and then, lastly, it’s time to invite guests into the party!
The world of digital advertising offers many “vehicles” to deliver your messaging. Each vehicle uses a different strategy to motivate the user to take action. The primary differentiator between them is where you are looking to reach consumers within the purchase funnel. Whereas display advertising may reach consumers early in the research phase and accomplish a branding goal, Google AdWords™ reaches consumers as they search for tent rental specifically, an indicator that they are ready to take action. All solutions have their place in the advertising mix, but matching your campaign goal with the right solution will help ensure greater success.
The first step in choosing a digital advertising product is determining what you want to achieve from the campaign. Is your goal to increase traffic to your website? Would you like to increase email subscribers to your quarterly newsletter? Most commonly, do you want potential customers to contact you about your services and products?
Once you’ve set the campaign goal, you will decide which advertising tools will accomplish that goal most efficiently. Some solutions may be implemented internally with an existing employee taking the reins, and others may require help from an external partner, such as a media company or marketing agency. Factors that weigh into that decision include the costs to implementing the campaign, the resources and knowledge you have in-house and your campaign timeline. Small- to medium-sized tent rental companies often have limited resources. Passing the responsibility off to an external partner could be advantageous if the costs don’t outweigh the benefits.
For companies that want to take on marketing themselves, social media campaigns offer a variety of objectives and low investment requirements, creating a good entry point for marketing newcomers. With Facebook’s advertising platform, users can create ad campaigns that extend beyond their followers and track specific goals such as brand awareness, traffic and conversions. The campaign can target a particular demographic of people, such as professional wedding planners or women ages 25 to 45 who are engaged. The budget is customizable, and you can instantly see what your estimated daily reach will be. Facebook has done a great job in making its ads platform user friendly so that everyday users can access it with relative ease.
Advertising solutions that will most likely require a partner agency include targeted email and retargeting. Both of these solutions harness the power of targeted data to reach your perfect customer and deliver ad messaging in different formats. Where retargeting is the term used to describe display ads served on websites to users based on search behaviors, targeted email is delivered right to the in-boxes of users who fit your desired demographic. Although both tactics reach people most likely to be in the market for tent rental, retargeting reaches consumers at a lower point in the purchase funnel than targeted email—that is, retargeting is appropriate for consumers who are closer to making a purchase.
There are endless ways to deliver your messaging to consumers, and new solutions are introduced often. As targeting capabilities evolve, so do the options for data use. The important thing to remember is that no one business can do them all. Every business has to identify its goals, match a solution to those goals, evaluate what it can handle itself and find resources for solutions that require outside support. Although digital advertising can be complicated, and the rules change often, basic marketing principles don’t.
Kate Doty is sales and marketing strategist for Morgan Murphy Media of Madison, Wis.
Doty is available at kdoty@p3da.com.