Online Ads & Paid Search

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Online Advertising are two sides of the same coin that make up a well formulated digital marketing strategy. SEO is predominently the process of both website optimization and strategic content creation that signals to Google and other search engines that your website is the best source of information for a given user's search or topic of interest. The better and / or more relevant your content, the higher these search engines will rank your page and thus the more organically visible your business will be.

SEO is unfortunately a long term process, but one that pays dividends when the hard work begins to payoff. Once your page has organically reached the first page of a search engine it'll be tough for competors to push your back down the ranks.

Paid search on the other hand gives you the ability to instantly ensure that your business shows up when and where your target customers are looking. These digital paid advertisements come in many forms, but the most popular are Push Based Ads: Search Ads (Google, Bing, Yahoo) and Video Ads (Youtube), and Pull Based Ads: Social Media (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) and display advertising.

With push based ads, you are trying to bring your products to your customers. Just as the name suggests, you are trying to "push" a particular product or serivce in front an audience that fits your target demographic.

With pull based ads, things look a little different. Your customers already know what they are looking for and are seeking the product or service you are offering. In this case, the user engages much more with the product or serivce before they purchase as they go through the process of searching for information actively. Eventually the goal of your pull based ad is to drive the customer from a keyword search to your landing page, business listing, etc.

The primary channels of Push Based Ads are social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram as well as other forms of display based advertising. Push based ads quite literally push your content, product or service in front of an audience of your choosing. It's very likely that you've like scrolled past one of these ads in your news feed before and you may even have clicked on one.



With this form of advertisement marketers create channel specific content (e.g. a facebook post) and then define the target audience for the advertisement. Setting a target audience ensures the ad will only be displayed to users who are likely to click on the advertisement and convert. These targeting tools allow marketers to specify information like target age, location, interests, geo-fences and much more. Moreover, these channels allow you to create multiple versions of a given advertisement to ensure you can split test (A/B test) your marketing approach and in time select a winning advertisement and produces the best conversions.

Traditionally the payment structure of these ads are impression based. That meaning, you will pay for the number of eyes that see your advertisement. With that said, there are advanced strategies that exist where you can pay only for conversions and / or clicks on your advertisements.

Facebook and Instagram ads simply appear in a given user's news feed where as other types of display advertisements can appear as banner ads across a network of websites.

The primary channels of Pull Based Ads are Search Engines and Video Marketing with Google and Youtube being the standout channels in these spaces. Pull based ads are created to pull customers into your business by appearing where your customers already searching for your product or service.

Imagine your business sells coffee makers. A well formed pull based ad would appear in circumstances where customers are searching for keywords that indicate their interests in purchasing a coffee maker (e.g when a customer searches for "Black & Decker Coffee Maker" on Google).



The first type of pull based ads are search ads and they are, more or less, exactly what they sounds like. When a user searches for a given phrase or keyword within a search engine, a business can bid to have their advertisement shown first in the search results. In this form of advertising, you pay for the number of clicks on your advertisment as opposed to impressions.

When bidding on these search terms and keywords, you will be up against every other businesses that is also keen to have their ad placed at the top of Google's search results. As such the bidding process can at times become quite complicated and challenging to navigate. Working with an experienced digital marketing partner to formulate a well planned keyword bidding strategy can help your online advertising budget reach significantly more potential customers and eliminate wasted ad spend.

The other primary channel of pull based marketing are video advertisements. These are the video ads that show up before and during the video you're watching on platforms like Youtube. Similar to search ads, these platforms analyse both the search terms that a given user has entered on the platform, the type of videos the user is consuming as well as other online behaviours to determine where and when to display a targeted video advertisement.

The reality is that with a bit of work, any can set up their own digital marketing campaign. Maximizing the results of your online ad campaign however, can become a long and expensive learning process. As such the primary motiviation for working with an experienced online marketing partner is really to leverage their expertise and expierence so that you can see immediate results and ensure you're getting the bang for your digial advertising buck. You worked hard to earn your money and online marketing partners are there to help ensure your advertising budget doesn't get wasted on ineffective marketing efforts.

Traditionally, these partners will charge a monthly management fee to set up your online advertising, analyse and optimize your the performance of your advertisements, perform keyword research and provide monthly insight and reporting on the success of your advertising spend. In addition to the management fee, you will define a monthly ad spend that the marketing partner can then divide amongst the most optimal marketing channels for your business based on their research.

At VRG Interactive we work directly with our clients on a month-over-month basis to ensure we're exceeding thier expectations and providing them with the best results for their advertising budget. We perform extensive research prior to launching any form of digital ad campaign and continue to refine and optimize each month as we learn more about the campaign's performance.

In addition to our experience and know-how we also make use of industry leading, specialized software services to perform on-going research and analysis of your campaigns. These services allow us to analyse what keywords your competitors have or are currently targeting and identify the best performing keywords for your industry, target demographic, etc. With this information we define an on-going keyword bidding strategy aimed at maximizing conversions and minimizing bidding wars with your competitors. In so doing we ensure you're getting the most cost effective impressions and clicks on your digital advertisements.