Content marketing is more than simply advertising, as it provides a fantastic way to create and hone the voice of your brand. Blogs, vlogs, and social media posts are all classic content marketing examples. Keep in mind when creating such content that while it should reflect your brand’s products or services, it should not market them directly. Content is about providing your customers with value instead of forcing your brand on them. If you sell pet products, for example, create blogs centered around pet care tips, such as the right toys for a puppy or what kind of food benefits an aging cat. Save the marketing for the byline, assuming you use one at all.
Influencer marketing is one nifty way to advertise online. It involves partnering with similar brands or people who work in your industry and helping each other out. Let’s say you produce auto parts and connect with a famous racecar driver on Twitter. If you can get the driver to endorse your products on social media that is one heck of an advertising win.
Method #3 is all about search ads, or those ads you see on web pages in response to specific search queries. These ads appear on other published content as well, such as blogs and online articles, and provide another way to market to your target demographic without harassing them via endless emails and the like.
As with content marketing, display ads come in many forms. You advertise on websites using a variety of formats, including images, text, flash, audio, and video options. These ads appear on websites your target audience visits and provides them with both general advertisements and specific messages from your brand, such as an exclusive discount or special happening over the weekend at your brick and mortar store. Display ads on Google Search, for example, generally contain a headline, two lines of ad text, and a link to a website, landing page, social media page, etc.
Rounding out this list is social ads, or those ads you see on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and so on. These highly-targeted ads promote products or services, and are usually based on users’ social media habits. They are specific in that you can apply behavioral and demographic filters, and offer remarketing options such as tagging site visitors with cookies and using display ads. Social ads are a type of paid content, such as a one-off promoted tweet or full-blown campaign featuring sponsored posts on Instagram.
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