Simplifying Marketing for Small Businesses

The Traditional Advertising Partners

A couple of years ago, my wife started a home-cooked food business. She is a great cook, I must say, and so did her handful of customers. Although the business didn’t take off as she hoped, she gained valuable insights into business management, especially in digital marketing. This blog is for all small business owners out there—I have something that could revolutionize the way you connect with your customers. If you're short on time, feel free to skip to the last section, but I recommend reading through to fully appreciate the value.

My wife used Meta to run advertising campaigns targeting users in our town. If you are not familiar with Meta ad campaigns, think of it as having an advertisement published in your good old local newspapers, where you can be the creative mind behind what the ad looks like. There is a significant likelihood that all the readers of the newspaper will see your ad! Now, Meta ad campaigns are just the same, minus the grumpy manager of the newspaper and the wait for the newspapers to get printed! You reach your probable users in a matter of minutes with a few clicks and the payment (of course).

Google Ads with keyword targeting changed digital marketing, making it accessible for everyone. Then came Meta and other social media giants that further contributed to this ease of use and large-scale reachability to potential users at very marginal costs. These platforms allowed users to run ad campaigns very quickly and easily with no stress of understanding the technical processes and engaging in the bureaucratic processes involved in traditional advertising.

The Traditional Problems in Traditional Advertising

The good old newspaper, and their equivalent (Meta, Google Ads, etc.), are good, until they are not. I will simplify it for you. All these platforms have an ecosystem that includes a large base of users or readers. While the dynamism in the online platforms allows for more contextual targeting and placement of the ads, they have significant limitations eventually limiting the reach of your business:

Entertainment-Centric Platforms

The purpose of the users on these platforms is entertainment (social media), and thus targeting may still be non-contextual. For example, the case of my wife’s food business. Food lovers, when hungry, would not flock to Meta platforms to search for food. They probably might have seen an advertisement while being on the platform, but, if the users do not click on the ad right away, they probably will not visit the business website, ever! So, a better place for such an ad could have been on a food recipe website or blog.

Limited Configuration Options

These platforms allow limited configuration options such as cost per click (bid), date(s), and location(s). But, just being in the same city doesn’t mean the platform user would be interested in my wife’s food. Further customization such as time of the day, more controlled localization, or retargeting are some of the missing features. For example, activating the ad campaign when most people generally order food, postcode-level targeting, or targeting those users who have been to food websites or blogs in the past, etc.

The Solution, But…

The solution to all the above problems is something the techies call “programmatic advertising”. I call it a fancy term for all the good things advertising! It is essentially all configurable, sophisticated mechanisms for targeting just the right user for your business.

But, there is a caveat—such systems are meant only for very high spenders. Think hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of advertising budget every month. Given these entry barriers, there are media agencies and several other intermediary players who have occupied the space of that grumpy newspaper manager! What that means is that small businesses who do not have large budgets or would just like to try out the system miss out on the BEST way to advertise.

The Solution, The Real One!

What might have helped my wife’s business, and every other small business (including yours), was a platform that would give her the power to customize her targeting preferences in every way possible, across channels such as display, TV, and online videos, and at the same time with no minimum spend. She would have got to be herself, experimenting with her marketing strategies without being an expert, spending as little as she wanted, or going all out!

So, something did arrive, a bit later though.

Introducing ad:personam, a self-serve programmatic advertising platform. Don’t worry about the big words. The point is that there is something simple, cheap, and yet brings to you the best of the digital advertising ecosystem to market your business, to your most probable customers and not just a likely pool. And that’s not it, you can run video ads, get a report of how your ad campaigns did, and also get an AI assistant that can help you in planning your campaign. You can begin here to start for free or book a demo with us. And if you would like to go deeper into the understanding of the system, check out these blog posts by our CEO Ciro Scognamiglio.

Happy Advertising!