Every business needs an effective marketing strategy. Without one, they’re doomed to fail. Gone are the days of going through yellow pages to find local businesses. With everyone’s eyes glued to their screens, marketing has evolved.

To thrive in today’s marketplace requires learning how to promote digitally and capture their attention. The rise in two-day shipping, instant notifications, food delivery, and other digital advancements has resulted in consumers having shorter attention spans than ever. Brands that can capture that attention will gain the lion’s share of the market, while businesses that don’t won’t.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ads

With 5.6 billion searches daily on Google, a search engine is a marketing machine. Businesses can run “pay-per-click” ads where advertisers only pay wherever a consumer clicks on the ads. The benefit of PPC ads is that you are only paying for results. Although they aren’t guaranteed purchases, it guarantees that the visitor at least lands on your website.

Customers can choose to target specific keywords to display their ads on. For instance, a digital marketing company might rank for keywords and phrases centered around words like “leads” or “sales” or even “marketing.” The idea is to choose keywords with a high search volume, meaning many people are searching for that particular keyword. However, the higher the search volume, the more competitive it is, which raises advertising costs.

When a business finds the balance between search volume and competition, PPC ads work great for any business. Since advertisers have to pay for every click, it’s best used as a part of a direct response marketing strategy, where businesses are getting visitors to take action immediately.

Social Media Ads

In fact, 33% of digital advertising will be spent on social media, which only demonstrates its growing demand. Social media ads are advertisements that display on a particular social media platform. There are many platforms that allow for advertising, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and others. These platforms allow advertisers to leverage data sources to hyper-target their audiences and deliver personalized contrasts.

For example, local businesses may use social media ads to focus on consumers that live in their geographic region. Conversely, a women’s e-commerce clothing brand may target women of a certain age range with particular interests. Social media ads are great for all types of businesses. Like PPC ads, social media ads give advertisers the ability to retarget consumers. Let’s say a visitor went to a clothing store online, added clothes to the cart, but didn’t checkout. The brand can retarget the visitor on social media or with email follow-ups, thus making the brand omnipresent to their audience.

Press Releases

Press releases have been around for ages, but now they can be leveraged with digital audiences. Instead of sending content to a physical newspaper, a company can send PR statements, news, or content to a large media company online. Press releases work well because they leverage another entity’s audience. A new start-up company may want to send PR statements to the large newspaper and media organizations such as New York Times, Forbes, Huffington Post, and others. These organizations may receive hundreds of thousands of readers daily; thus, it’s advantageous for a business to use their audience and gain attention through press releases.

Outdoor Advertising

Outdoor advertising consists of any advertisement that is visible to the consumer outside of their home, such as digital signage, billboard ads, transit ads, and feather banners. Although outdoor advertisements aren’t great with direct-response marketing, they are well-suited for brand awareness or for networking at trade shows.

Just think of all the McDonald’s billboards you see around bus stops, train stations, malls, and any other public venue. It likely won’t redirect a customer to get Mcdonald’s immediately. But when they’re deciding what to eat, they may recall the latest Mcdonald’s menu item.

Well-placed outdoor advertisements, especially in areas with lots of foot or car traffic, can garner thousands of views per day. Outdoor advertising is great for local businesses such as restaurants or gyms that want to quickly capture attention or large businesses that want to gain brand awareness, so they become top of mind for consumers.

Stay On Top of Advertising Trends

There are a variety of ways to promote a business nowadays. While many marketers and business owners debate about “the best platform” or “the best strategy” for marketing, what matters is how a business can connect with its audience. However, as a business owner, it’s important to stay on top of the latest advertising trends. Where are people tuning into, and what’s the best way to get a product in front of them? Advertising can feel complex and overwhelming, but learning the right marketing strategies can help businesses grow their audience, get more customers and build brand awareness.