Clarifying Online Advertising Opportunities

Over the past two years, the number of online advertising venues has grown. Because of their pervasive nature and relatively lower cost, there has been increased interest in moving more marketing dollars to web based initiatives. We will outline many of the most popular ones and how best to apply them.

Banner Ads

Banner ads have been around since the advent of the Internet. However, the application of these has become more sophisticated. These are popular and useful because responses are highly measurable when “clicked”, and lead opportunities are very trackable. Banner ads are an excellent medium for targeting very specific audiences. For example, if you want to reach “Moms”, there are many websites frequented by women with young children, and the “appearance” of a banner ad on these sites can be further targeted with geographic or demographic parameters.

Banner ads should be used in conjunction with landing pages where additional and valuable information can be shared or collected before driving them to a general website.

Paid Search

Separate from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics to enhance a web site’s “organic” search results, Paid Search advertising is a bidding process to compete against other companies for the use of key words. Based on your strategy and budget, your advertisement shows up (usually on the right side of the page) when someone conducts a search using those key words. In your planning, you have the option to control when, where and how often your ad appears. And, generally, you only pay when someone clicks on your link.

If Paid Search is prepared correctly, the result can be a significant source of solid, qualified sales leads. If done poorly, the budget can be wasted quickly.

Besides the general paid search opportunities through major search engines like Google or Yahoo, you may want to consider some of the narrower, vertical paid search options. This utilizes search engines that are developed for specific targeted audiences. For example, sites like Business.com or ThomasNet.com are search engines used by businesses looking to purchase specific business-related products.

Social Media

Social Media sites are viewed as being “free” – and most do have a free application. But many of the social media sites also have paid advertising opportunities. Sites like Facebook or Linkedin do offer paid banner advertising with options to display your ads based on select criteria (such as geography or age), or allow you to control the number of impressions or clicks during a set time period. This is one more way to integrate a Social Media strategy into your traditional advertising plans.

Public Relations

There are several online public relations services which allow marketers to post press releases or articles online and on the news wires. It provides tremendous exposure to an array of publications with online/real-time analytics. Also, posting articles on the Internet with links back to your website can improve your organic SEO rankings as well.

Mass Faxing

Faxing may seem like “old school” technology, but web-based applications allow marketers to send out personalized faxes. And unlike the proliferation of emails that can be deleted with the push of a button, faxes aren’t subject to the same competitive clutter as emails. Faxes are still viewed as urgent messages, and are often placed prominently on the recipient’s desk or chair to make sure it gets read.

Email

We have already discussed many aspects of email marketing, but since it is considered an “online” advertising tool, and often is tied into social media or websites, we wanted to add email to our list of tools.

Email marketing has become more sophisticated by employing many of the same tactics that direct mail has followed for decades – especially in the area of database development, hygiene and segmentation strategies.

Rather than repeat ourselves, we recommend you check out our tips on email marketing posted earlier.

Mobile

The use of web-enabled mobile devises, such as Blackberrys, is growing exponentially. Marketing through this medium is poised to explode. Currently, this medium is self regulated and there are recommended “best practices” to prevent government regulation, but mobile offers such great promise as well. Mobile messages have tremendous intimacy (you have it with you all the time), immediacy (the average time from delivery to read is less than one minute) and interactivity (people respond with a simple click). As this medium develops, it will provide more opportunities for segmentation to deliver relevant messages to the right people at the right time in a very cost effective manner.

Next week, we will explore the best means to evaluate online advertising opportunities so you can make them even more effective.