The definitive guide to digital advertising

How digital advertising can benefit you

Today, digital advertising expands beyond banner ads with basic targeting. It’s now possible to zero in on prospects based on specific demographics, intent, their stage in the sales funnel, and engagement patterns. These insights can then be used across display, search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO), social media, native ads, pay-per-click, retargeting, affiliate, mobile marketing, and more.

Digital advertising has created a world in which you can—and must—develop a holistic plan to find and engage with your next customer, then keep in touch with them until they’re ready to buy. In 2019, eMarketer projects that U.S. advertisers will spend 54.2% of their ad budgets on digital ads, and by 2023 that figure will reach 66.8%. That’s a lot of competition, so you need to know how to make your media spend count.

The good news is that once you take the plunge into a more sophisticated approach to digital advertising, the benefits will outweigh the cost of change. Increased relevance turns into increased engagement, both in terms of attracting and nurturing leads until they are ready to become customers.

Sneak peek: One of our case studies shows how one customer used cross-channel campaigns to increases leads per click by 850%.

What’s in the guide?

• What is digital advertising?
Digital advertising spans across channels, including email, display ads, App Store, mobile advertising, SEM, and paid social ads. Learn about the progression of digital advertising and how you can reach larger audiences in real time to drive sales.
• Digital ad strategy
Learn how to develop the foundation of your digital ad strategy with our step-by-step process to create goals and persona segments for your campaigns. You will also learn cross-channel methods for acquisition, nurturing, building customer loyalty, and branding.
• Digital ad types and ad design
Break down the differences between pay-per-click (PPC), display, and social ads as well as the benefits and best practices for each. Find out how to write relevant ad copy, headlines, lead generation forms, and calls-to-action (CTAs). Also learn about relevant imagery content, including cinemagraphic, video, flash, banners, pop-ups, and mobile ads.
• Digital ad landing pages
No matter how much time or money you spend on a digital advertising campaign, if your landing page doesn’t resonate with your audience, they will leave. Optimize your forms, ads, and landing page design by platform, and set lead generation and social media goals to ensure a seamless and personalized experience for every visitor.
• Ad targeting
Discover various ways to reach your target customers, including ad content, geographic location, behavioral and buying patterns, audience behaviors, specific demographics, and more.
• Digital ad pricing
Develop a comprehensive understanding of different bidding and buying price models for digital advertising, and what these models mean for your personal strategy. Cover manual and automatic bidding, cost per click (CPC), cost per thousands (CPM), dynamic cost per thousands (dCPM), cost per acquisition (CPA), cost per lead (CPL), manual buying, programmatic buying, and real-time bidding.
• Digital ad technologies
The maze of ad technology can get complicated. This resource will break it down by examining the major players: Data management platforms (DMPs), demand side platforms (DSPs), supply side platforms (SSPS), and ad exchanges.
• Ad testing and optimization
Start with our seven steps to analyze the effectiveness of your digital ads as well as what to test for, then apply best practices for A/B and multivariate testing for your landing pages, pay-per-click, display, and social ads.
• Ad measurement
We’ll cover front-end metrics like impressions, reach, clicks, click-through rate (CTR), engagement rate, conversions, CPL, effective cost-per thousands (eCPM), as well as back-end metrics like return on investment (ROI), return on ad spend (ROAS), first- and multi-touch attribution, and lifetime customer value (LCV).

We can teach you the best methods for navigating, launching, and optimizing your digital ads with effective messaging, so that you can become a leader in this high-impact, high-demand space.