In the December issue of floriology magazine, this column discussed why it’s important to advertise online. In fact, it’s a must, due to the sheer volume of customers that rely on search when they shop online—and because if you don’t, competitors may bid on your business name as a pay-per-click keyword to steal business for searches, usually by your own customers, of your shop!
For this edition of floriology, I would like to discuss the various online advertising options, in order of priority, you should consider regardless of whether you are new at the game or a veteran advertiser.
GOOGLE IS STILL THE 800-LB. SEARCH GORILLA
Google Adwords is our top recommendation to invest online advertising dollars. It was an easy choice. For the month of November 2016, Google dominated desktop search market share at more than 75 percent. So, three out of four people used Google for search and were exposed to Adwords ads. The nearest relevant competitors were Bing and Yahoo, which hovered around 8 percent of share each.
If dominating desktop searches wasn’t enough, Google smashes the competition on the fastest growing search marketing platform: mobile devices. Google owns a whopping 94 percent of market share. It probably helps that Google is the creator for the most popular mobile operating system, Android, which of course uses Google for its default search.
If you’re new to Adwords, you could get started quickly using Google Adwords Express at www.google.com/adwords/express/. Be sure to bid on your own business name as a keyword, set geographic parameters as cities and zip to which you deliver, set a budget of at least $10 a day ($300 a month) and call the campaign “Brand Protection and Hyper Local.”
FACEBOOK IS ITS OWN INTERNET
Although search marketing will remain your main focus, our next recommendation can serve as a complementary ad spend. With more than 1.79 billion monthly active users, Facebook is truly its own online ecosystem. What’s appealing to marketers is the quality data Facebook collects about its users, and we’re not talking basic demographic information such as age, gender and location. We’re talking detailed interests, their network of friends, their activity on a weekly, if not daily basis and so much more.
What’s powerful about the Facebook Ads system is you can then precisely target ads on all (or some) of these dimensions, know exactly the potential reach as you drill down the demographics and know exactly how much you’ll be spending. However, the challenge with Facebook Ads are the many options it will present to you. Even if you just launched your Page and may be interested in building Likes, we suggest using Facebook to drive website clicks by choosing the option “Send people to your website” or “Increase conversions on your website.”
Also, opt to make your ad campaign specific to mobile users as more than half the social media’s visitors are using their mobile devices. If you choose this option, select “Reach people near your business.”
BEST OF THE REST
Beyond Google and Facebook, what other online avenues should you consider adding to the mix? Once you start building incoming web revenue through primarily Google, consider starting campaigns using Bing Ads. Yes, we did report Bing only had 8 percent of the market, but their advertising prices refl ect this reach as well. Bing also provides a wonderful tool that allows you to import Google Adwords settings so it should take no time to replicate successful campaigns you have running on Adwords on Bing Ads.
Our last two recommendations appeal to younger customers. When you were browsing through advertising options in Facebook, you probably saw the option to advertise within Instagram. Aside from having a massive reach of more than 400 million users, most of these users range from those attending prom to the upper reaches of the Millennial demographic.
Also consider advertising using Pinterest, especially if you want to build wedding business with brides, who still use this social destination to capture ideas for their big day. Rather than ads, advertising through Pinterest is done through Promoted Pins. Pinterest provides great detail on how to advertise at https://business.pinterest.com/sites/business/fi les/pinterest-ads-manager-guide.pdf.
Hello! I’m Renato and serve as Vice President of Digital Strategy and Education at 
