How to Advertise on the
Internet
A
simple guide to Internet Advertising
There are many ways to
advertise on the internet. Most of the effective advertising methods are simple
and easy to do. Here is a quick guide to internet advertising.
Start
with a basic marketing plan
If
online marketing were a basketball team, here would be my starting five.
·
Natural
Search Engine Optimization
·
Pay
Per Click
·
Media
Campaigns
·
Newsletter
·
Promotions
·
Social
Media
Online
Advertising with Search Engine Optimization
Search engines are the number one way
to drive traffic to a website. There are a few components to having a site rank
well in search engines.
·
Build
a site that the crawlers can easily navigate.
·
Make
sure each page has a unique title tag, decription tag and lots of well written
unique content.
·
Build
one way links from topical sites.
Now there are entire
books written on this subject, but most of it is overdone. Stick to the basics
of a site that can easily be crawled, lots of good content, and links from
topical sites and you'll do fine.
Pay
Per Click Internet Advertising
Pay per click are
programs from Google and Yahoo where bids are placed on terms that show up in
the search results. Depending on your budget there are a few options. You can
hire a firm to do it or do it yourself. The key to a good pay per click program
is to understand your conversion rates. Tune your pay per click program by
bidding on words that convert and lower bids or drop them all together on terms
that do not convert.
Purchasing
Media
Similar to pay per
click options the key is to understand your conversion rate. Most media is
purchased on a CPM basis. That's the cost per 1000 impression of your ad.
Google offers a contextual advertising network and depending
on your budget there are many full service options available. Media for
performance based campaigns may be complex, but just be sure to make more than
you spend.
Email
Marketing
Collect email
addresses from your users to keep them up to date on specials and other
options. Email marketing is still one of the most cost effective and best ways
to keep in contact with customers.
Promotions
I have one friend that
makes his entire living off of an email list that he gives great promotions of
new products and services. It’s sort of an early adopters early adopters
program. Until I saw this, I never knew how effective they could be. Offer
something unique that your audience wants regularly on your site.
Social
Media
Social
media has become an important part of internet advertising. There are two main
components. The first is earned media via social channels like a blog and twitter.
By providing regular and useful information through these channels, you
"earn" a following and your voice gains credibility. Here you can
send a tweet with a promotion once you have a following.
The second component
of social media is having word of mouth over the internet about your product
travel from one person to the next. This can be done by getting your product
reviewed by influential internet users and by creating a facebook profile for
your business. The key is to keep these areas updated with fresh content and to
remember that bad behavior travels more quickly than good behavior online, so
you want to be extra good with social marketing.