Digital Ads for the Tech Industry

Let’s talk about advertising for a minute. Many marketers are shifting towards a content-focused approach, hailing that you must provide value to your audience in order to get their attention. While we agree with this principle, in the tech industry you must not discount the value of good old advertising.

Let’s take a closer look at a few types of digital ads and how to make the most of each one.

Google Ads

While digital ads have gained enormous popularity in the last few years, there’s still a lot to learn about how to reach the ideal consumer in the digital space.

Digital advertising is extremely broad. There are Google ads, social media ads, in-app ads, newsletter ads, retargeting ads… we could go on and on, enough to overwhelm anyone.

But here’s the deal. Learn the basics and then explore.

• Google Ads – Google offers a suite of advertising options to reach anyone that’s ever been online. The beauty of Google ads is that you can target very specific audiences by their demographics, interests and/or activity online. Here are a few Google ads options:
  • Text ads – these are the ones you see on top of Google search results. They look just like the real search results, with the only caveat that they say Ad insmall print. These are a lot more complex than they seem. They take into account your SEO, keywords, budget spent, etc. To get the most out of these ads and make sure you’re not just giving money away to Google, you’ll want to work with a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) expert.

• Display ads, the ones that you see when you visit some websites. These can be text, with images, or even video.
  • Retargeting ads – “Remember that pair of shoes you left in your shopping cart?” These are the ads that seem to spy on you and then follow you around wherever you go. You can choose to target people based on their online activity. For example, if you sell speakers, you can target people that have visited your product page but didn’t purchase or those of a competitor. You can also target people that have purchased a product, offering a complementary product to increase revenue per customer.

Social Media Ads

Social media platforms get a big chunk of business from their advertising options. Here are three of the most popular:

• Facebook – Offers a suite of advertising and segmentation options. You can target people by demographics, geographical region, interests, the company they work at, relationship to your business page… you name it, you can probably do it.
• Instagram – Is a bit more limited than Facebook but has the added bonus of being highly visual and engaging.
• YouTube – You know those short videos that play right before the video that you actually want to watch? If you’ve ever been annoyed by these, you might have noticed that there are different lengths, and some have the option to skip after a few seconds while you have to watch others till the end.

Newsletter Ads

We’ll give you a hint. Industry publications know exactly who reads their stuff. If there’s a publication that’s well-respected among your target audience, get in touch with their advertising team to discuss options. Many publications offer a variety of advertising options, such as featured articles, website banners, and ads in popular email newsletters (that may or not look like ads). This is a surefire and simple way to reach new customers.

These are just a few options in the digital advertising world. Stay tuned for our next blog post in which we’ll discuss how to create a winning ad.