Ever seen a Strong-Garner-Bauer PC ad on Weather.com or heard a Guaranty Bank ad on Pandora? Here’s how it got there: It targeted you.
Previous websites visited and demographics such as age, gender, income and location all play a part. These pieces of each potential consumer add up to buying power. That’s digital marketing strategy at work, and it’s expected to overtake TV advertising spends by the close of next year.
According to Interpublic Group of Cos. Inc.’s (NYSE: IPG) media insight division Magna Global, digital ad spending grew 17.2 percent in 2015 to nearly $160 billion, and is expected to grow another 13.5 percent in 2016.
So how does local advertising end up on national websites?
Strong-Garner-Bauer shareholder Neil Chanter said it starts with search engine optimization.
“More people from a wider demographic are using Google to find everything, so you want to be on the front page,” he said. “If your site isn’t optimized for their algorithm, Google basically drops you to the dark ages.”
Search ranking is key to getting clicks.
“If they Google it and it’s in the top 10, they think these are the top 10 providers, these are the best,” Chanter said.
Once the user clicks, the rest is automatic.
“It’s called remarketing,” said Angela Wearn, vice president of client marketing for California-based Internet marketing firm Scorpion. “Once a user visits a site, it puts a cookie in your browser and ads for that company or product will show up on other websites for 30 to 60 days.”
Specializing in law firms, Scorpion has worked with Strong-Garner-Bauer for roughly a year. After stints with other national and local marketing companies, Chanter said the firm finally is seeing the benefit.
“We’ve been really bad at tracking results, so I can’t quantify this, but I know we’ve seen more potential clients,” he said.
Declining to disclose costs, Chanter said the firm spends roughly 98 percent of its marketing budget online, a strategic move in an increasingly digital society. The billions worldwide spent in online advertising typically falls into four categories: remarketing, paid search, display network search and retargeting, a generalized form of demographic marketing, Wearn said.
“Strong-Garner-Bauer does all of the above,” she said. “We want to create a sort of holistic environment with advertising in whatever mode the user is comfortable interacting in.”
For many in the younger demographic, that mode is Internet radio. For more than a year now, Guaranty Bank has advertised on Pandora, a move Vice President and Director of Marketing Carlye Wannenmacher said is the result of much research.
“With terrestrial, or traditional, radio, you just broadcast a message to everyone,” she said. “Through Pandora, we can narrow it down and really target our best potential customers.”
Declining to disclose costs, Wannenmacher said the bank pays for a specific number of impressions during a certain time period, noting it almost always hits its impression goal.
Internet radio advertising has become one of the most popular options at ADsmith Communications Inc.
“About 80 percent of our clients do some type of digital work and Pandora saw the most growth in 2015,” said Morgan Nielsen, ADsmith vice president of digital services. “It’s sort of that traditional feel meets the digital world.”
While clients don’t always know what method they need or want, Nielsen said they know digital is key.
“Most people see hundreds of advertisements a day,” she said. “When most people Google everything, if you’re not in the right place at the right time, you’re forgettable. No business wants that.”
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