Have you heard of native advertising?

There’s a good chance you’ve seen – and even experienced – native advertising without realizing what it was called, how to use it, or why you should care.  In simple terms, native advertising “blends in” with the content that surrounds it.  While the concept of native advertising isn’t new, the platforms and strategies have changed dramatically.

There are three different types of native advertising you should be familiar with:

1. Closed – Platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are all closed platforms that allow you to put your content on them and promote them within that platform. For example, you add a piece of content to your blog. Then you add an update to your Facebook Page that links to your new blog post. Finally, you “boost” your Facebook post by placing an ad on Facebook that is only visible on Facebook.

2. Open – You place the content on your website and then promote it to other platforms, knowing it will send everyone back to your website.  In open platforms, you buy keywords that relate to your content, and then your content appears on other websites, increasing your reach and provides exposure to new audiences.

3. Combination – Uses a combination of the above, usually by installing a private platform that permits bidding from outside platforms.

These different types of native advertising come in the form of:

  • Search Ads – Can work both on and off your website. On-site search allows your website visitors to find content on your website and also introduces new content that your users can click on that will take them off your site. Conversely, if you bought those keywords, your content would appear on someone else’s website.
  • Contextual Ads – When you buy keywords, a publisher that uses contextual ads can allow links to your information to appear, and you can also allow the same on your own website if you desire to earn extra money. This isn’t really recommended for solely business websites though; instead you should be ensuring that your links appear on other publishers’ websites.
  • Content Dependent Ads – This is how all Google Ads work. They are dependent on the content that a publisher has on their site. If you purchase certain keywords and create display ads via Google Ads, then your information will show up on the right content across the web.
  • Promoted Content – When you write compelling content, you can promote it through various websites such as promoted posts on Facebook, Twitter, and if your content is a video you can pay to promote your post on YouTube for added viewers.
  • Sponsor-Funded Content – Some websites need content and will allow for paid sponsored content to appear on their site. Sometimes this is as simple as a guest blog post with a bio that links to your sales page, and other times it’s a full-on paid sponsored post.

Why you should care about native advertising:

Local business owners should be familiar with all these ways to use native advertising and consider adding them to their marketing mix. Why? Because native advertising puts your local business “on par” with big companies.  And…without native advertising your information may not be seen as quickly.

SEO (search engine optimization) works very well, but if you want to get a lot of visitors to your website, to sign up for an event, or walking through your doors, you’re going to do a lot better using a native advertising strategy.

Using a combination of native advertising along with sound SEO practices, you can take your local business to a brand-new level that you won’t see without using native advertising practices.