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 over done. 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
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
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 twittter. 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.
Return On Investment
The best thing about marketing online is almost all campaigns are measurable to a degree. All of these techniques for an online marketing plan should have a value associated with them.
For example, when we market HubPages on the Internet, our goal is to acquire new authors. Each campaign we run we calculate a value of the user we acquire over 18 to 21 months. So, if we spend $1.00 to acquire the average user, we project that the user will create a $1.00 of value over 21 months that pays us back. After 21 months, that is the profit we make.
