How to advertise your business online

What is digital advertising?

Digital advertising is a subset of digital marketing and it comes into play when you use the internet and digital channels to advertise your products or services or business or brands. It leverages mediums such as social media, email, search engines, mobile apps, affiliate programs and websites to show advertisements and messages to audiences.

Social media sites, like Facebook and Instagram, and other digital advertising platforms have made it easier than ever to start promoting your products or services online. With just a couple clicks, you can boost an Instagram post and start reaching new audiences. Sounds easy, right? But to be effective in the digital ad space, it helps to do your homework and make sure you’ve got the right pixels in place to track your ads and set up campaigns that will actually move the needle.

How can you advertise your business online?

So, where should you start? Start with Google Analytics, Google Search and Facebook.

Google Analytics

Even if you aren’t planning to run ads, have your Google Analytics pixel in place is a must! The process for setting it up will depend on which CMS you are using, but in general Google recommends that you do the following:

Create or sign in to your Analytics account by going to google.com/analytics and doing one of the following:
- To create an account, click Start for free.
- To sign in to your account, Click Sign in to Analytics.
Set up a property in your Analytics account. A property represents your website or app, and is the collection point in Analytics for the data from your site or app.
Set up a reporting view in your property. Views let you create filtered perspectives of your data; for example, all data except from your company’s internal IP addresses, or all data associated with a specific sales region. Or, you can also use the default view, just to get started.
Follow the instructions to add the tracking code to your site so you can start collecting data in your Analytics property.

Google Search Console

Having your site verified through Google Search Console is another best practice whether or not you are running ads. Like Google Analytics, Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor and manage how your site shows up in Google Search results. Although you don't have to sign up for Search Console to be included in Google Search results, using Search Console can help you better understand how Google “sees” your site so you can potentially improve your Google Search rankings. Once set up, you can use your Search Console tools and reports to do the following:

Confirm that Google is crawling or “seeing” your site.
Fix problems due to how the site is categorizing your site (Google calls this “indexing”).
See how often your site appears in Google Search, what people searched for when you site was shown, and how often searchers clicked through to your site.
Receive alerts when Google encounters indexing, spam, or other issues on your site.
Show you which sites link to your website.
Troubleshoot issues related to speed, mobile usability, and other Search features.

Go to search.google.com/search-console to get started.

Facebook Pixel

A Facebook Pixel is a small snippet of code that gets inserted into your websites Header to help Facebook track user behaviors on your site. If you aren’t running ads, setting up a Facebook Pixel won’t do much for you. However, you might want to set it up anyway in case you do want to run ads in the future. The reason for this is because it can only start tracking once it’s installed and one of the reasons to have it is for retargeting.

What is retargeting? Retargeting (also referred to as “remarketing”) is a method of advertising that helps keep your brand in people who have previously engaged with your content. For example, you can retarget to people who have clicked an ad or even visited your site, but never purchased. Or, you could choose to retarget to people who purchased from you in the past. The reason retargeting is important is because, for most websites, only 2% of web traffic converts on the first visit. While there is no clear agreement on the number of times someone needs to see an ad before they convert, there is general agreement that many users will need to see it more than once.

From Facebook: “When someone visits your website and takes an action (for example, buying something), the Facebook pixel is triggered and reports this action. This way, you'll know when a customer took an action after seeing your Facebook ad. You'll also be able to reach this customer again by using a custom audience. When more and more conversions happen on your website, Facebook gets better at delivering your ads to people who are more likely to take certain actions. This is called conversion optimization.”

To get started with setting up your Facebook PIxel, you’ll need to go to your Ads Manager. You can get started here: https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/facebook-ads-pixel

Pro Tips

Here are links to instructions for three popular CMS (Content Management Systems) options: