The internet is quickly replacing other forms of printed media such as newspapers, magazines, newsletters, etc. It is natural then that online advertising costs continue to rise because of the ubiquitous nature of the internet – it is basically impossible to avoid as the internet is now everywhere you turn. Whether it is in business systems, on our mobile phones or hotspots all over city landscapes, the internet is available at every turn.
Advertisers wants to spend their money where the people are getting their information. At one time in the not so distant past, that meant traditional print, radio and television advertising because that is where the eyeballs were. For example, in today’s world newspapers and magazines are reporting lower circulation rates and are seeing their advertising rates dwindle – advertisers do not want to continue spending top advertising dollars where they do not get a positive return on investment.
We are not saying that print advertising will disappear, it is simply a matter of advertisers becoming more selective about where to spend the money. Another example might be the yellow pages – why continue to invest in advertising space that fewer and fewer people are seeing.
The advertising opportunities with the internet are endless as the number of websites and quality of content continue to rapidly rise. There are almost endless ways to advertise and in the traditional sense of online advertising there are four different methods:
- Cost per click or pay per click – In theory this makes a lot of sense and many advertisers buy ads on the search engines. The advertising costs incur each time a search engine user clicks on one of the ads. This is very effective for companies that do extensive research on the search terms to target and for those that are willing to budget a lot of money. Be aware though, this can get quite expensive very quickly.
- Banner ads on high-traffic websites – These are typically priced on a per impression basis. While your ads might get a lot of exposure – and certainly some click throughs – banner ads do not seem to be an effective advertising model in today’s market, especially if they are delivered in pop-ups which are intrusive to readers.
- Cost per action ads – These are just what they say, there is a cost when a certain action is taken. That might be signing up for a newsletter, clicking through to a sales landing page and other call to action that results in some interaction with the prospect.
- Cost per lead ads – This is one of the most effective methods of traditional online advertising because at least there is a lead that comes out of the experience. Of course measuring the effectiveness of the lead generating strategy is very important to see if the leads that are generated are “good” leads.
From our perspective though, none of these online advertising strategies provide the best return for the online advertising costs that are incurred. Our preferred method is search engine marketing:
- Targeted prospects – If search engine users find your website because of a keyword search, you can bet that they are a warm lead. This is much better than someone randomly clicking through on a banner ad for curiosity reasons.
- Targeted message – Because the visitor finds your website through a targeted keyword search, you can tailor the message on the landing page that you direct them to. This allows you to provide a highly targeted message to highly targeted prospects which will certainly provide high value to the website visitor.
- Build branding awareness – Building a search engine brand is very important to your online marketing success. This is done by the keywords you target that are important to the industries that you serve.
- Long term value – The branding of your search engine presence builds long term value for your website because once you have established search engine position for your targeted keywords, you “own” that market. This will ensure that search engine users that want information on those keyword terms will continue to find your website and provide long term traffic growth.
- Lower online advertising costs – While search engine marketing carries some upfront start-up costs over the long term it provides the best value because you will have established your presence for the keyword terms you are targeting.
The possibilities with targeted internet marketing through the search engines are endless. The biggest benefit is that YOU control your own destiny with the online advertising costs you want to spend.
And now for the dirty little secret that most search engine companies do not want you to know – this is something that you can do yourself. But you will need a very good search engine marketing tool that helps you build your online presence, and that tool is known as the Vertetekk Platinum Control Panel.
To learn more, click through those links or click here to contact us for more information.
Ron Blackwelder
Carolina SEO Services
ron.blackwelder@carolinaseoservices.com
Office – 704-257-6905
Mobile – 704-562-2968
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