How to do DIY online advertising

Online advertising goes through three channels: search engines, website banners and social networking campaigns. The rules of self-promotion on the web

Having an up-to-date and well-maintained website and social network channels gives businesses an excellent online presence, but just "being there" is not enough to expand the number of customers. To make themselves known and improve brand awareness, businesses need online advertising, which doesn't have to be handled by agencies or professionals: you can also easily set up and manage a do-it-yourself online advertising campaign.

Over 90% of the Italian population, almost 55 million users, use the Internet every day to do research, consult news and social networks, and even watch online videos or listen to streaming music. Whether it's online search, banner advertising or social networking, the first thing to do is to know the available channels on which to launch your advertising campaign and choose the best one to achieve your goals, without neglecting the others. In order to set up a successful advertising campaign, in fact, it is essential to choose a multi-channel strategy: from the website with SEO-optimized content, to social media marketing, up to paid campaigns on search engines, so as to bring the potential customer on its channels, to discover its brand and then retain it.

Online advertising: know your audience

Online advertising offers a great advantage over traditional channels such as magazines, radio and television, namely to segment precisely the target audience to which the business wants to address. In order to segment the audience and propose the best advertisement for the desired target, it will be necessary to take a step back and get to know your audience better, that is, the people the brand addresses or for whom the service has been designed.

The first step for an online advertising campaign is to make a small market and context analysis, to understand the age groups, gender and other parameters that can create an ad hoc audience segment to be addressed with advertisements and spots.

In this way, it will be possible to set up a do-it-yourself online advertising campaign referring directly to potential customers who are really interested in the product and service, with the possibility of obtaining a higher conversion rate and therefore reaching your goal.

Online advertising campaign: the available channels

There are several channels to choose from when you decide to launch an online advertising campaign, which can be grouped into three macro-areas: search engines, display advertising and social networks.

Appearing among the first search results, sponsoring your website, is certainly the most effective way to advertise, but in recent times a role of increasing importance is played by social networks.

Ad campaigns on Facebook and Instagram can reach a large number of potential customers, but above all offer the possibility to surgically segment your target group.

Display advertising, with dedicated banners that appear on various websites and are managed by giants such as Google, Amazon and other lesser-known companies, should not be forgotten.

Online advertising campaigns: multi-channel strategy wins

Once you have identified your audience and understood which channel is right for your business, all that remains is to design and launch your online advertising campaign. The winning strategy is definitely the multichannel one, where you cover at least two of those already mentioned between search engines, display and social networks (especially Facebook and Instagram).

In this way, you will have a greater chance of reaching your audience and increase the number of potential customers for the brand.

To create a multichannel campaign you must first of all have a landing page, that is the page that we want to show to the potential customer after he clicked: for example your website or a fanpage on social networks, or your Facebook and Instagram profiles.

Identify the audience, then create ads that describe the products of the brand or the service offered: ads that are engaging and accompanied by images and possibly video.

After defining your budget for online advertising DIY, it will be divided by the various channels and used to sponsor the various ads. Analizzando i report, sarà possibile capire quante conversioni sono state ottenute, se la campagna pubblicitaria lanciata è efficace e qual è l’ottimizzazione da fare per ottenere il massimo dei risultati dalla strategia multicanale in atto.

Ideare, progettare e lanciare una campagna pubblicitaria online fai da te può sembrare difficile, ma ci sono strumenti specifici che ci aiutano a farlo e ad ottenere i risultati sperati. Ad esempio, la piattaforma Pubblicità fai da te di Italiaonline, che consente di creare e gestire campagne multicanale in autonomia.

Si potrà avrà accesso a un pannello di controllo semplice e intuitivo in cui trovare immagini e materiale per creare le proprie inserzioni pubblicitarie e diffonderle sui canali desiderati, oltre che strumenti di analytics per monitorare l’andamento delle campagne in tempo reale e decidere come ottimizzarle.