How Real Time Bidding Factors into Sales Strategies

In business, visibility equals interest and, with the right marketing, interest equals revenue. Real-time bidding, the practice of bidding for, selling, and buying ad space and displays in real-time, is quickly changing the way marketers think about advertising and sales strategies. The entire process begins the moment a consumer visits a particular website, and it’s essential in tailoring the advertising and marketing experience to each separate visitor.

Targeting User Statistics

Proxy advertising, or the act of advertising jewelry on a jewelry or fashion site, has a long and largely successful history. It makes sense to use like-minded websites as a proxy for your own brand or product. Real time bidding changes the game by allowing you to target potential customers in a brand-new way. Instead of targeting the websites, RTB lets you target the consumer.

With RTB, you bid for and hopefully win ad space in the time it takes a user’s website to load. In that time, you can also target that user’s statistics. Specifically, you can decide if the bid is worthwhile based on the user’s browsing history, age, location, interests, and similar demographics. You have the chance to decide if this lead is likely to convert into an actual sale, and you can use the entire process to analyze your own conversion rates.

Redefining Your Market

Real time bidding also gives you a unique opportunity to thoroughly redefine your target audience. You get to see if the consumers from whom you expect strong conversions actually pay attention to your ads. This can both save and make money:

- It saves money by letting you know when a particular marketing strategy, ad, or website niche doesn’t perform the way you expected.

- It makes money by making it easier to tailor your strategies in real-time.

If one website doesn’t work or if one ad falls short, you can quickly move on to more lucrative options.

Streamlining Your Budget

No business wants to lose money. With traditional marketing, it can take longer to discover a potential marketing failure, and by that time the money’s already spent. You’re at a loss, you’re in the red, and you’ve lost prospective customers in the bargain.

RTB takes some of the mystery out of the marketing game. It happens in real-time, so as you bid for ad space, you know your budget, you can see how much you’re spending, and you know your cash flow statements. The risk of wasting money decreases significantly, and because you can keep up-to-date on how much you spend and how worthwhile it is, you can quickly discover positive trends and identify successful websites and ad campaigns.

Improving ROAS

Because you have a clearer view of what you’re spending, what it’s worth, and what you’re making, your ROAS, or return-on-advertising spend, is better. You’re not wasting money on anything that simply doesn’t work. Unlike those maybe/maybe-not marketing campaigns, which can fail no matter how much time or money you spend testing them beforehand, you can change your strategies on the fly if necessary. You have instant access to your successes and failures, so you’re not nearly as likely to spend money on something that won’t make money.

Increasing Social Media Marketing

Recently Facebook came to an innovative agreement with Google. Thanks largely to the DoubleClick Bid Manager transparency, marketers can take advantage of the enormous potential presented by social media. Ad space on the big name sites is already at a premium, because for varying costs you can easily reach millions of people.

The ability to target that space in real-time while tailoring it to individuals based on their metrics is monumental. Technically speaking, you have the potential to reach every Facebook fan, or at least those whose demographics match your target. It’s not so much to assume that social media giants such as Twitter, Instagram, and even Tumblr will follow suit.

Up-to-the-minute bidding will change your sales strategies as you know them, and it will easily make your brand more successful. Targeting your potential customers directly can increase your reach and your sales, which translates into higher conversion rates and the possibility of way more money.

via Business 2 Community http://ift.tt/1gZu9sA