Aerospace marketers unanimously cite budget constraints as one of their most significant professional challenges. As many have been forced to re-evaluate how and where to invest their limited marketing dollars, paid digital advertising has become a viable alternative to traditional methods — and with good reason.

Digital advertising is often considerably more affordable, targeted, immediate and measurable than traditional advertising.

But is it right for our industry and your business? Let’s define three options and how to use them most effectively.

Pay-per-click advertising, or PPC, is widely used in aerospace marketing. In fact, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are all using it extensively.

In PPC, advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. Search engine advertising is one of the most popular forms of PPC, but it is not the only option available. PPC ads may be placed through website publishers, directly through social media (Facebook and LinkedIn) or through an ad network like Google Ad Words.

Benefits of PPC advertising include the ability to track conversations and the fact that you only pay for the actual website visits that occur. Additionally, most PPC platforms allow you to set a strict spending limit, so costs can be monitored closely.

In aerospace marketing, PPC is well suited for a specific campaign, like a new product launch. As opposed to SEO efforts, which may take more time, you’ll get instant recognition with targeted audiences through the use of specific, carefully selected keywords.

Bonus Tip: Purchase the names of your competition as keywords. If a prospect searches for that competitor, they’ll see your ad at the same time.

Here is more information to get you started.

Display advertising is the online placement of visual ads on targeted websites. Display ads may be purchased directly from a publisher or through an ad network like Google.

Before you purchase from an aerospace industry-specific publisher, explore ad network options. Many websites in our industry are overrun with competing ads in limited space, potentially diminishing the chance that visitors will notice and engage with you, and you’ll probably be surprised by the precise targeting that is possible with other options.

And while it has always been challenging to quantify the effectiveness of print advertising, digital methods offer instantaneous information about click-through and conversion rates of web traffic that comes to you as a result of a digital ad. Monitor and measure everything you do, and adjust your spending to support what works best.

Learn more about display advertising here.

Retargeting, sometimes called remarketing, is a type of display advertising and is an excellent tool for businesses with long sales cycles, where lead nurturing is essential. Retargeting works to bring visitors back to your website site over time by regularly showing them relevant subject matter ads when they visit other websites. For example, if a potential customer is doing buying research and visits both your website and that of a competitor, retargeting provides you an opportunity (that your competition may not be using) to lure them back with a clickable special offer or a promotion for interesting content.

Retargeting works as users visit your website, their machine gets cookied. This cookie passes important data to retargeting platforms like Google and AdRoll, signaling that the user has visited your website before. The list of cookied machines gets added to the retargeting list and will begin displaying ads for your website.

Learn more about retargeting here.

Measurement is an essential part of any digital marketing effort. The goals of each online campaign will determine which metrics you should track and analyze. Impressions can indicate the success of a branding campaign, clicks can show increased web traffic, and form fills or conversions represent increased leads or even sales.

It’s important to remember that digital advertising is a tool that should be employed strategically as part of an overall marketing plan. BDN’s digital media coordinator Savannah Ivanitski  works with our team and our clients to develop and deploy effective digital marketing strategies. Contact us to learn more.

You may also be interested in: Aerospace Marketers: 5 steps to establish or improve your use of social media…and the FTC regulation you need to know now