Native Advertising: A Great Help for Small Business

Advertising is a big part of every business plan these days. If you’re going to compete on the internet, you need to get your message, product and company out there. However, when it comes to advertising, many small businesses simply don’t know how to get the job done in an efficient way. This is usually even more difficult for small start-up businesses that don’t have a ton of capital to work with. In such cases, you need to make sure you get the most out of whatever advertising budget you have.

One aspect of advertising that many small business owners simply don’t understand is native advertising. Native advertising may be the most beneficial type for companies that don’t have a massive advertising budget. Still, many small business owners don’t realize how they can utilize native advertising and why it’s so important. Use this guide to help you understand why and how you should take your advertising in this direction as soon as you possibly can.

Native advertising is fairly simple to understand, but it’s something that many small business owners are not familiar with. Simply put, native advertising is a type of online advertisement that takes the shape of the page that it is placed on. For example, if you visit a website you may find that there is sponsored content in the same form as other information is presented on the site. This is a very simple example of native advertising.

Most consumers say that native advertising doesn’t make the online experience any worse than if it wasn’t there – meaning that it really has no effect on how much they enjoy visiting a website or how they perceive a certain brand or company that advertises that way.

In fact, many consumers say that they look to content to learn more about products that they might be interested in buying. That statement should tell small business owners that native advertising can feel a bit less like traditional advertising, particularly to younger consumers who are used to native advertising as part of their content.

Many consumers are also willing to share content they find useful with friends and family members, regardless of advertising. Most consumers simply don’t see native advertisements as a hindrance – they see them as part of the content and part of the online experience that can actually be beneficial.

Another big part of native advertising for small businesses is that it can help consumers become familiar with your brand and begin to identify you as a company that they trust. You can’t underestimate the importance of customer brand recognition and trust, especially in a crowded marketplace where there are a lot of options for similar products or services.

Numerous studies show that brand trust and recognition is a huge part of why consumers choose a particular brand and stay loyal to them.

When you use native advertising, you’re aligning your brand with another’s – ideally one with the target demographic you’re looking for and interested in buying your product.

Brand recognition is a big part of why native advertising can work if your marketing plan is laid out properly and your ads are seen on appropriate websites. After all, consumers will see your ads over and over again and start to become familiar with who you are and what you do.

However, brand confidence is a slightly different story. If you’re simply running ads, consumers may start to associate you with a faceless, nameless company that doesn’t actually care about consumers and just wants to sell products.

When you choose native advertising, you’re part of something that has value to them. When your ads appear on valuable content pages, consumers start to associate your brand with value and worth, even if they had never heard of you before, they saw your native advertisements.

As content becomes more important and Google is working to make it more important in terms of search results, SEO is becoming more and more difficult. However, using native advertisements in content can result in more views of ads because of higher website rankings.

As a small business owner, you want to make sure that your ads are seen on valuable websites, not on ones at the bottom of the search results. Going native can make that happen for your company and the host site.