Web Advertising
Web Advertising
Web advertising is great for your business whether you do all of your business online or offline. Web advertising will allow you to reach more people, tell them about your products/services, and potentially increase your income. There are a number of ways this can be done but social media is becoming one of the most popular ways.
Social Media
Social media and web advertising are like a couple that's meant to be. You have hundreds of millions of people who get onto social media websites every day to talk with friends/family, play games, and enjoy their time online. These people will spend more time browsing through these types of sites than they would a site they shop at so you have more chances to get their attention than with a normal website.
Some social media websites you may want to check out include:
- Facebook (500,000,000+ users)
- MySpace
- Identi.ca
- Youtube
- Flickr
- Digg
- Technorati
If you've been wanting to put out a commercial for your business but can't afford to have it aired on television, then Youtube would be a great place to go. It may be even better than advertising on television. Your traffic will be far more targeted and you can directly link viewers back to your website instead of giving them the URL and hoping they remember it long enough to get to a computer.
Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace will allow you to directly reach your potential customers. You can keep your web advertising simple by occasionally sending out messages with new sales pitches, website/business updates or changes, special offers, or anything else to bring in customers. If you'd like, you can talk to individual members and establish real relationships with your customers.
Facebook also offers ad campaigns. It is similar to Google Adwords but the process that you go through to get accepted is a bit odd. Your campaign is likely to be rejected although if you simply resubmit it then there's a chance it will be accepted the second time around. But once you're accepted, you're officially taken your web advertising to the website with the most clicks on the internet. There is a lot of potential with Facebook, especially if you utilize the ad campaigns and create a "fan page" for your business or website.
Websites like dig are great for web advertising because all you have to do is write a short post about your website or business with a link back to your website. Make sure it's catchy because people will be "digging" or voting on your submission. The more diggs you get, the more likely you are to be featured on the main page. Having your website featured on the main page of a website that gets a lot of traffic means that a good amount of that traffic will be passed on to you.
Blogs
Blogs are an interesting form of web advertising . If you set up a blog on a website like Blogger, you're going to need to pretend like you're not just there for advertising. For about a week or two, just write posts about whatever comes to your mind. After that it's unlikely that your posts will be monitored and you can begin advertising your website/business.
The key to getting people to read your blog is to offer something that will get their attention and make them want to read. It could be anything from shocking news stories to useful information. Just make sure it's related to your website/business enough to you can somehow link back to your own website.
If you want continuous traffic from a blog, you can't neglect it. If you don't post something new for a week or longer, people will stop reading. Try to post something new at least every other day. Avid readers will check in often or subscribe to your RSS feed to find out when you add something new. If nothing new is added for a while, they may get tired of checking and give up on your blog. Remember, there are millions of other blogs out there that they can read. If they're reading yours, do your best to keep them.
Ads On Another Website
Having your ads put on another website is more or less a classic style of web advertising . It's pretty easy to do, you just need to find a website that will put your ad up. Find websites that you would want your ad placed on and then contact the webmaster. You'll need to find out how much they would want to place your ad on their site (Yes, it's going to cost you. It could be weekly, monthly, or yearly) and how large of an ad they will allow. Consider the price carefully and determine if you feel it would be worthwhile. If you decided it would be, you need to create your ad.
Not everyone is a graphic designer, so you may need to outsource this one. Go over to Fiverr and find someone who offers just such a service. For $5, someone will make you an ad. Once your ad is made, all you need to do is email the ad to the webmaster and make your payment. From there the webmaster will have to add the ad to his/her website and then it's done!
Pay Per Click
Pay per click (PPC) is a very commonly use method of web advertising .
PPC is exactly what the name sounds like, you pay for every time someone clicks on one of your ads. Your ads are displayed around the web
on websites that are using some sort of advertising block by a PPC company. The biggest PPC companies are Google and Yahoo. With PPC you set up ads (as per the companies guidelines) and submit them to the company you are using. You then have to set up a campaign for your ad(s). You'll need to determine how long you want to run your campaign for, what keywords you're targeting, and how much you're willing to spend per click. If you're using Google Adwords then you can use the Adwords Keyword Tool to get an idea of what other advertisers are paying
per click for your keyword(s). The return on investment (ROI) is usually pretty good with PPC although it's not advised to run PPC campaigns for affiliate sites or made-for-Adsense (MFA) sites. Google is
not fond of either of these so you'll end up having your ads shown less
than normal websites and you'll end up paying more per click as well. Most internet marketers will advise you to use PPC as a method of web advertising if you want to draw in larger amounts of traffic.
