Self-Serve Ad Platforms for Small and Midsize Businesses

Our parents recall the days when a newspaper ad for home appliance repairs or a TV spot for grocery store discounts heavily influenced their consumer choices. TV and print gatekeepers conferred confidence. Word of mouth was deeply persuasive, too. Today, the internet is a channel with far less exclusivity, but one in which word of mouth is delivered regularly, in real time. Its biggest players, such as Google and Facebook, offer self-serve digital ad platforms for businesses — even brick-and-mortar retailers like Walmart and Kroger have entered the game — but is it simple to build and manage your own campaigns? And don’t consumers still consume traditional TV and print products?

While whole marketing campaigns take time and expertise, by partnering with a data-driven marketing agency, you can give your business the benefit of synchronized traditional and digital campaigns that reach the exact audiences you’re wanting to target.

TraDigital™ Is Original

MHP & Team SI’s TraDigital™ omnichannel marketing plan is an original path forward for small and midsize businesses. It offers expertise and management inside these self-serve ad platforms even as it fosters owners’ and executives’ self-determination. It bears all the assets of digital ad campaigns but explores opportunities for traditional advertising and public relations in a blend of the two marketing methods.

Self-serve ad platforms allow any business or organization access to space without a broker, but they don’t manage or tweak campaigns, and they don’t build on successes. Our digital media buyers focus on awareness and conversions for our clients’ campaigns. They work with clients to fashion marketing segments that distinguish one city, even neighborhood, from another, as well as young from old, women from men, even first-time prospects from returnees. Better yet, digital marketing is 100% trackable and reportable.

Traditional media buyers will tell you their product has legs, too, and public relations professionals measure and report their successes. "Earned” media — free “publicity” such as news features and TV segments, even user reviews and organic social media content — can be exponentially valuable. It’s showcased across channels after the fact, and because it bears the imprimatur of being endorsed by a third party, it has heft. Paid advertising across traditional media channels also reaches key audiences, often where they’re most receptive, and after a tacit assurance that the message is worth seeing and hearing.

This is the TraDigital™ frontier.

Ad Buyer Beware

How does digital media buying work and does an ad buy manage itself or can it be retargeted after early results come in? Managing the data, interpreting it and campaigning tactically requires time and expertise.

The benefits of self-serve are clear:

—You can start today, and on the world’s biggest platforms, such as Facebook, YouTube and Google.

—You can buy 1,000 impressions (potential views) on a budget!

—You can target audiences using search term parameters. Find shoppers searching products and services like yours. Targeting audiences by their “intent” is what separates search engine marketing (SEM) from broadcast and print advertising.

So, what’s the catch? Like any self-directed experience, you perform as well as can be expected. With our TraDigital™ omnichannel marketing plan, expect more.

A Pennywise Pursuit of New Prospects

Your competitors have the same access to self-serve ad portals from global platforms as you do. Are you a cut above?

With any media, you’re paying for awareness, but where does that exposure go? How have consumers responded and is it aligned with your business?

Gathering and interpreting metrics is the greater share of marketing success. Without it, you may be increasing visitors without seeing conversions. Interpretation, adjustments and minding strategy is the greater part of marketing.

These are decisions TraDigital™ representatives like ours can make for you inside of these self-serve ad platforms.

Each self-serve media portal has idiosyncratic guides, prohibitions and functionality that align with their own strategic aims in the marketplace. But these may or may not align with your business.

Google’s algorithms will connect “People in, or who show interest in, your targeted locations,” but will all of those people be truly valuable? How many international users will happen upon your website? Google’s proprietary algorithm, in this sense, is rewarded by generating great returns on exposure, but maybe not sales.

TraDigital™ representatives partner with your business to bring sales home, to match pennywise marketing dollars with ad platform engagement that cultivates new prospects.

Immediate Impact

Media buyers have been calling for more transparency from the biggest online media outlets, but Google Ads can be a challenging portal when it comes to gauging success.

What if you could spend a little more to make your marketing dollars result in much greater exposure and greater conversions? What if you could learn more about the new and the old way of converting awareness into sales?

We have a TraDigital™ media department standing ready to maximize value by collaborating with your business to tailor your digital campaigns, and uncover opportunities for traditional messaging that’s effective.

Get the ROI that blended media campaigns deliver by partnering with an agency that will take you across the finish line.

Bobby Ampezzan