How Online Advertising Works?

Advertising, whether online or offline has a number of objectives:

• Building brand awareness and increasing share of voice in the

market place.

• Reaching new customers and creating consumer demand.

• Informing consumers of the advertiser’s ability to satisfy that

demand and develop brand loyalty.

• Driving direct response and sales.

Building brand awareness:

Making people aware of a brand or product is an important long-term goal for

any marketer. Once customers know about the brand, the marketer has taken

the first step towards gaining the customer’s trust and patronage. The better

known a brand is the more business they can do. And the ultimate goal is to do

more business and sell more of the product or service.

Online, creative advertising or banner advertising is largely visual, making it

an ideal channel for promoting brand collateral. The visual strengths can be

communicated well through this medium.

Creating consumer demand:

Creating consumer demand is a three-step process: inform, persuade and

remind. Consumers can’t want what they don’t know about. Advertising needs

to convince consumers about what they should want and why they should want

it. Modern online advertising provides a great way to communicate the unique

selling points (USPs) of a product, thereby helping stimulate demand and

reminding consumers about the product and why they want it.

Satisfying consumer demand:

Once the consumer is aware of and wants a product, they need to find out how

to satisfy that desire. If brand building has been effective, they will know that

a particular brand exists. At this point it is important for the marketer to show

the consumer how their particular brand or product will best meet that need.

Driving direct response and sales:

All forms of digital marketing need to drive traffic and sales in the long-term.

However, the immediacy of online advertising also drives traffic and sales

in the short and medium terms. Unlike traditional media advertising, online

advertising can turn the potential customer into an actual customer right there

and then. What’s more, it is possible to measure accurately how effective the

online advertising campaign has been in this regard.

The key differentiator

Online advertising is able to drive instant sales and conversions. Unlike other

advertising mediums, the consumer can go from advert to merchant in one

easy click. Because of the connected nature of the Internet, online activities

are highly trackable and measurable, which makes it possible to target adverts

and to accurately track and gauge the efficacy of the advertising. Each display

advert can be tracked for success.