Take advantage of the power of online advertising to develop your business and create new opportunities, even on a small budget.
In this article, you'll discover the basics of online advertising and be able to identify opportunities for your business.
Use of social networks in Switzerland
According to the Statista 2023 study, Linkedin, the professional network, leads the way in terms of the number of users. Instagram and Facebook are close behind.

Online advertising expenditure in Switzerland
Investment in online advertising rose sharply in 2022. This increase is also due to advertising investment by SMEs. More than 2.8 billion were invested in Switzerland.

Questions to ask yourself before you start:
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- Have you identified your typical customer?
Who buys your products or services? Are they women? 24-30 year olds? and/or architects?
- Have you identified your typical customer?
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- Are your products or services aimed at businesses or individuals?
This question will help you choose the most appropriate distribution networks for selling your products and services.
- Are your products or services aimed at businesses or individuals?
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- Do you know how much it costs to acquire a customer today?
Many SMEs have no idea how much it costs to acquire a customer. They have salespeople they pay, they take part in professional networking clubs but they don't count their time. Do the exercise of adding up your costs and valuing your time to find out how much it costs to acquire a customer, and you'll see that the results are surprising. You can also do this for each means of communication. This technique will enable you to optimise your costs and concentrate on the most effective means of acquisition.
- Do you know how much it costs to acquire a customer today?
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- An assessment of my visibility on the Internet
Do I have a website? What is its purpose? Am I visible when people search for me? There are no good or bad practices, it all depends on your acquisition strategy. The most important thing is to ask yourself what your website is for, what its main objective is!
- An assessment of my visibility on the Internet
The benefits for my SME
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- Targeted advertising
You can display your advertisement only to people who correspond to your clientele. For example, you could display your advert only to men aged 25-30 living in the Canton of Vaud in Switzerland.
- Targeted advertising
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- Also suitable for small budgets
Even SMEs with a small budget can achieve great visibility, but bear in mind that you need to let your ad run for several days before drawing any conclusions. This is because the platforms gradually optimise your advertising campaigns thanks to the data collected on the users who interact with your ad. This learning phase is essential for a successful campaign. In general, you should allow at least two weeks for your social networking campaign.
- Also suitable for small budgets
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- Measurable results
We'll see later, but you can easily measure the return on investment of your ads. Expressed as a percentage, the CTR rate will tell you whether your ad is getting a good return on your landing page. It relates the number of times your ad is displayed to the number of clicks you get on your website. Many other techniques can be used to obtain interesting statistics, such as the conversion rate.
- Measurable results
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- Lead generation
With digital advertising you can put in place a genuine lead acquisition strategy. Add a form to your landing page and collect leads 24 hours a day at no extra cost and with no salesperson - the absolute dream.
- Lead generation
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- Remarketing / retargeting
You've all been targeted by remarketing. For example, you were searching for a hotel in Paris on Google and as luck would have it, after this search and consultation of a specialised site, you were inundated with numerous adverts offering you superb hotel deals in Paris. It's very powerful and effective. With remarketing, you can create specific audiences (list of people) based on actions taken by visitors to your website and display your ads to this group of people on different networks.
- Remarketing / retargeting
The different types of advertising, Push or Pull?

Push advertising tries to push the product onto the consumer to make them want to buy it, but the consumer has not asked for or looked for the product. In traditional advertising, billboard, TV and radio ads are all push ads. In the digital world, push advertising is displayed, for example, in the feeds of social networks such as Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok.
In Pull advertisingWhen consumers are actively looking for a product, company or service, the ads displayed are related to their search. Search engines allow this type of advertising by displaying sponsored ads based on the keywords used by Internet users. Pull-type advertising is very powerful in that you get qualified leads quickly. However, this type of advertising is often more expensive and highly competitive.
Search engine advertising (Pull)
You can buy keywords to display your website at the top of the search results. For example, if you have a painting business in Lausanne, you can buy the keyword ‘peinture Lausanne’.

Anyone typing in "painting Lausanne" will see your website at the top of the search results.
But as you'd expect, it works if you're the only paint company in Lausanne sponsoring the same keyword and you buy all the search inventory. Search engine advertising is based on a system of bidding and ad relevance.
You only pay when someone clicks on your link to access your website, but the price per click will be set according to the competition, your budget and the relevance of your ad. If you run a painting business in Lausanne and you place your ad in Paris, there's a good chance that your ad will not be displayed, or will only be displayed to a limited extent, to Internet users in Paris. This is because your ad is not geographically relevant, and any clicks will be much more expensive than in Lausanne.
It's important to choose the right keywords for people to use to find your business. One simple method is to start typing the keyword into the search engine and look at the keywords on offer:

Advertising on social networks (Push)
There are many different places and formats for publishing your ad on social networks. The main place is to publish your ad in the main user feed.

For this type of advertising, you need to work on your visuals and text to make web users want to take an interest in your product and click on your ad.
This type of advertising often costs less than pull advertising, but bear in mind that you need to create a buzz and that the web user is not looking for your product.
Display advertising (Push)
Display advertising is displayed on websites. There are many formats, in the form of images or html5 for animated and interactive advertising. These sites can be compared to posters in the street. Advertisers are looking for high visibility and repetition. This type of advertising is often combined with cross-media campaigns (TV, press, etc.).


Above is a 300×250 rectangle banner format and several formats on the www.blick.ch website.
Targeted advertising
« I'm aiming for women from 25-30 years old who are married for one year at Switzerland… «
It sounds incredible, but that's the great strength of Internet advertising. You can define to whom your advertisement will be shown. Gender, age, profession, education, region, etc.
Here's an overview of the targeting you can use depending on the platform:

The Linkedin platform is very interesting if you sell products to other companies. You can target your advertising at specific business sectors or executives, for example.
What happens when my ad is clicked?
When web users click on your ad, they will be redirected to your website or landing page. But what happens next?
We've talked about the advert and its distribution, but the post-advertising experience is very important.
Your ad must be in line with the content of your landing page. You need to ask yourself what the objective of your page is: to obtain an enquiry, to sell a product via e-commerce or simply to provide information about your product?
If the aim of the page is to obtain information requests or leads, you need to feature a form and encourage people to fill it in so that you can get back to them.

Some important terms
Here are some terms you need to know when you advertise online:
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- CTR (click-through rate in %)
This is the number of clicks/number of times your ad is displayed. It tells you whether Internet users are clicking on your ad. This is a criterion for determining whether your advertising is working.
The average CTR on Facebook in 2022 is 0.9% according to Wordstream.
More information on :
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/02/29/google-adwords-industry-benchmarks
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/02/28/facebook-advertising-benchmarks
- CTR (click-through rate in %)
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- CPC (cost per clic)
This is the price paid for a click
- CPC (cost per clic)
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- CAC (Customer acquisition cost)
This is the amount it costs to acquire a customer. It is obtained using the following formula: budget spent / number of leads
- CAC (Customer acquisition cost)
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- CPA (Cost per share)
You can define a conversion on your site, which can be a click, a lead, an order, etc. You can indicate the target price that must not be exceeded to obtain this action. For example, filling in a form to obtain a lead must not exceed CHF 15.00. The platforms' algorithms will therefore aim to “fill in the form for a maximum of 15.00”. Be careful not to set unattainable figures, as your ad will simply no longer be displayed.
We recommend that you first find out how much the desired action will cost you before setting a random price.
- CPA (Cost per share)
How do I publish an advertisement?
Each platform has :
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- its advertising manager
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- its ad formats
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- its specific locations
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- its billing system
It's complicated for an SME! That's why we created amplify.
We make it easy for SMEs to publish their ads, no need to know everything, amplify :
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- buys advertising space for you on all platforms
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- optimises your ads using our powerful algorithms
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- publish your advert on the networks you want
- supports and advises you on the success of your online campaigns