Managing an online advertising campaign for small businesses

Running a small business itself is a hard job. You know everything about the things you’re selling and understand the value of your business, but it’s also important for your potential customers to know why your products are great. Even if you’re doing all the right things with your business, having a good consumer base is key. Without customers, there’s no one to share your product with.

Managing a small business while finding ways to advertise for it can be difficult. Thankfully, an organized online advertising campaign can help you manage your advertising goals through a few simple steps. Advertising online is the best way to spread the word about your company, especially if your business is new. By using proper advertising tools along with an established agenda, you can form a complete advertising plan that allows you to market your brand with ease. Read on to learn more about creating an online advertising plan for your small business.

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What's an online advertising campaign?

To put it into simple terms, an online advertising campaign is a digital advertising plan that you create for your business. How you want to go about with your advertising plan is up to you. Some things that can go in your online advertising campaign include budgets, goals, and timelines for your plans. While running an advertising campaign may seem technical, you don’t need years of professional marketing experience to do it.

Traditional advertising vs. online advertising

Traditional advertising is any advertisement that isn’t online. Commercials on TV, newspaper ads, billboards, and phone ads are some common examples of traditional advertising. While traditional advertisements work to catch people’s attention, there are many ways in which online advertisements are better for reaching your target audiences. Traditional advertising methods are often more expensive to run than online advertisements, and it’s more difficult to track how often people engage with traditional advertisements. Additionally, traditional advertisements cannot reach people the same way online advertisements do. Despite their differences, the two methods can successfully work together for a campaign.

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Why is it useful to have an online advertising campaign?

When it comes to targeting people with online advertising, the sky is truly the limit. Online advertising gives you much more control to target the right people and enables you to engage with your potential customers. It's also convenient to use online advertising techniques if you’re looking to expand your reach to global audiences. Your ads can reach millions of customers overseas and generate interest worldwide. Plus, online advertisements help businesses grow over time, are cost-effective, and can be managed easily. You can track how often people are engaging with your advertisements and make any quick fixes with your phone or laptop. Learn about more benefits of going digital with online advertising solutions from Microsoft Advertising.

How to set up an online advertising campaign for your small business

There’s no right or wrong way to set up an online advertising campaign, but there are a few beginning steps that may be helpful to take. Use the steps below to help kickstart your campaign, and refer to the help center for creating campaigns to find additional tips.

Step one: Identify campaign goals

The first thing you should establish when setting up your campaign is a list of goals. Some goals you can focus on are to get more customers, spread the word about your business, or increase revenue. Knowing what your campaign’s objectives are will determine why you’re running your campaign. If you need inspiration on what to base your campaign off of, you can find more advertising goals and solutions from Microsoft Advertising.
Step two: Set up a budget

Your ideas can only go as far as how much you’re willing to pay. Creating a budget for your campaign will help you know what you can afford. You can use the automated billing tool to help maximize your spending while focusing on your campaign goals.
Step three: Establish your target audience

Finding the right audiences to target will help you draw the right people to your small business. When targeting audiences, it’s important to know your current customer base and who’s most likely to interact with your ads. To make it easier to target audiences, use Microsoft Advertising’s audience targeting tools to connect with customers the way you want to.
Step four: Finding the right platforms for your ads

The internet is a big place, and there are many platforms for you to present your ads on. Popular platforms for online advertisements include social media platforms, websites, and search engines. You can also take a look at the Microsoft Audience Network to find unique audiences on traffic-heavy websites.

Keep track of your small business’s online advertising campaign with Microsoft Advertising

There’s a lot of different factors to manage in an online advertising campaign, and using the right tools to keep you organized can help. The following online advertising tools from Microsoft Advertising can help you manage your campaign easily:

Conversion Tracking

Measure the impact of your online advertising campaign with the Conversion Tracking tool. This tool will help you find better matches to your ads and improve your overall campaign performance.

Microsoft Advertising Editor

Another benefit of using an online advertising campaign is that you can easily make changes to your ads. The Microsoft Advertising Editor tool allows you to quickly make changes to your ads and upload them with one click.

Competition Tab

Evaluating how your competitors are doing can help you improve your performance and any target groups that you may be missing. The Competition tab allows you to gather valuable information on your competitors and make changes based on their performance.

Campaign Experiments

Always know if you’re making the right moves with your campaign tactics. The campaign experiments tool allows you to try out changes and see how they perform in comparison to your original campaign. If you like the results, you can easily create a whole new campaign that works best for your business.

Start an online advertising campaign for your small business with Microsoft Advertising

Running a good, organized online campaign will allow you to focus on your small business needs and help your company grow. You can learn more about maintaining the advertising side of your business with Microsoft Advertising for small businesses.

Get started with Microsoft Advertising today or visit our blog to learn about more advertising techniques to try.