This week in my continuing review of PGB’s changes over the last year I will look at our launch of advertising online.
The big picture: digital ads work.
Christina, our website and ad manager, often describes ads on Google as the “yellow pages” and ads on Facebook/Instagram as “billboards”.
Both types of digital ads work well to increase sales and are fairly cost effective. Having spent ad dollars in the past on the old-fashioned Yellow Pages, newspaper ads, short elevator videos and real billboards, I’d say that those forms of advertising are both less effective and more expensive than digital advertising.
With digital ads, it is possible to get a real-time sense as to which ads are working well even to the point of conversion meaning that the customer followed the ad through to make a purchase online.
A couple of things that we’ve found to be important:
– Monitor the ads to see what people are responding to. For Google ads this means the search terms that we’re associated with, and for social media ads, it can be as simple as what topic areas get the best engagement. Baby shower-related photos are extremely popular across the GTA for us but in Markham, birthday party themes may have an edge
– Keep the ads “fresh” every couple of weeks
– Stick to the text character limits
– Use video or some sort of motion in the ads
So from a business perspective, it is all good. From a private citizen’s perspective, I find the debate about online ads really complicated and complex and who knows where society will end up on it. Political ads are just one of the many issues that need to be considered.
But over the last 12 months at PGB, digital advertising has been an effective way to raise awareness of our brand and some of the new things about us such as becoming a nut-free bakery.
Have a great week, everyone!
