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19 Effective Offline Advertising Methods for Your Website

By David Jackson in Featured

With the advent of the Internet and the worldwide dominance and prominence of Google, Facebook and Twitter, one could reasonably assume the whole world revolves around the Internet. It doesn’t. There’s a great big offline universe out there with nearly 6 billion people in it that was here long before the Internet. And if you don’t have an offline marketing strategy to reach those billions of people, and complement your online marketing strategy, you’re missing out on a significant amount of traffic and income.

Following are 19 affordable and effective offline advertising methods that generate traffic to your website:

1. Bookmarks

Everyone has books in their home – some more than others. But I think that you’ll agree, just about everyone owns books. And what better way to get your marketing message in front of readers, than with a bookmark with your company name and website address printed on it? And distribution couldn’t be more easy! Simply get a bunch of bookmarks printed up and hand them out to everyone you meet. You can purchase bookmarks imprinted with your company name from Branders.com.

2. College Newspapers

Why market to college students? Because the college market consists of about 15 million people who spend over 120 billion annually. In addition, more than 79% of college students go online at least once a day and over 95% of college students have access to the Internet. (Source: NationwideAdvertising.com)

Understanding Web Advertising

By Jerry Bader in Featured

More money is wasted on advertising than any other business function. That is not to say businesses shouldn’t advertise but rather people should understand how advertising works. There are many ways to characterize ads, but for our purposes let’s make it simple and separate advertising into two distinct approaches: saturation and emotional.

One of the things I’ve learned over a long career is that business folk invariably take their lead from the wrong sources. Small and medium size businesses look to the mega corporations to learn their tricks and adopt their attitudes when they have little in common – advertising being no exception. Since our clients are mostly medium or small size companies we try to help put some of these issues into perspective.

If you’re big enough and have the money available, there are all kinds of marketing initiatives you can invest in, but if you have a limited marketing budget you need to be smart about how and on what you spend your advertising dollars. And the most effective and cost efficient place to spend those dollars is on your website. Yes you need to attract people to your site, but if once they arrive they find it lacks intriguing, engaging content, then you’ve wasted your money. So what tactical approach should you take to deliver your marketing message?

FTC’s “Do Not Track” Initiative Portends Major Impact on Online Advertising

By Chip Cooper in Featured

The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) publication earlier this month of a proposed framework for protecting online privacy portends a major impact on online advertising. If your website’s business model depends on advertising revenue, either directly from the site itself or via a smart, mobile device, you have a big stake in the outcome of the dialogue kicked off by the FTC report.

The FTC report suggests implementation of a Do Not Track mechanism – similar conceptually to the current Do Not Call list regarding annoying telemarketing calls – that would enable consumers to block the collection of online browsing data. Do Not Track, if implemented, will dramatically change the rules of the road regarding Internet advertising – with a potentially huge impact on relatively smaller websites that publish free content supported by behavioral ads.

The Target – Behavioral Advertising

Behavioral ads are targeted to a user’s browsing history, thereby increasing relevancy – and dramatically increasing conversions to sales. Behavioral ads are based on anonymous data collected on how a user’s computer browses the Internet, including websites visited, searches made, and content read. This data is used to create a behavioral profile that is linked to a specific demographic. The result is that the ads seen by the computer’s user are tailored to the user’s interests. Many industry advertising executives believe that the overwhelming success of behavioral ads is a significant factor in the growth of the Internet commercially.

Behavioral ads should be distinguished from contextual ads that are based solely on the content of the specific website page the user is viewing. Because contextual ads are generally not as relevant to the user’s interests as behavioral ads, contextual ads are less effective, and therefore less profitable.

Behavioral advertising is a big FTC concern regarding consumer privacy. Although behavioral data is essentially anonymous when collected, privacy advocates are concerned about where new data collection technology and methodology may take us. For example, the amount and depth of some data could lead to personal identification of users. In addition, even if users are not personally identified, the enhanced data about them could rise to the level of an invasion of privacy.

How Would Do Not Track Work?

Although it’s unknown at this time exactly how Do Not Track will work, one approach could involve a list similar to the Do Not Call list for telemarketers.

Another, more likely approach, would be for Web browsers to provide a built-in option for a persistent setting that would enable consumers to choose whether to allow or block the collection of behavioral data and behavioral ads. Users would have the ability to turn this option on an off. While on, the user would be able to surf the Web in a mode sort of like stealth mode.

Who Would be Affected by Do Not Track?

The effect of Do Not Track on ad-serving websites would be to lower revenues based behavioral ads. Relatively large websites that publish premium content would likely not be affected significantly by Do Not Track because the vast majority of their ad space is typically sold directly to marketers which may be able to rely successfully on contextual ads. This would not be true for smaller websites that typically rely more heavily on ad networks to place their ads. For this reason, smaller websites which publish free content supported by behavioral ads could face a significant impact on revenue from Do Not Call.

For consumers, Do Not Track could dramatically affect the quantity and quality of content they see on the Web. This is due to the fact that much of the free content on the Web is supported by ad revenue. Consumers operating in stealth mode would likely see limited or reduced content, plus ads would not be as relevant.

Conclusion

Some legal commentators question whether the FTC has the authority to unilaterally implement Do Not Track regulations. They argue that Congress must give them that authority. If Congress must act, it may be that the political appeal for Do Not Track would not be as strong Do Not Call. Many consumers understand the benefits of behavioral ads, and they may believe that behavioral ads are much less intrusive than unwelcome and annoying calls at dinner time by telemarketers.

In any event, the stakes are high for all websites that depend on adverting for revenues. The FTC has requested public comments on their framework report by January 31, 2011, for a final report later in 2011.

If you may be significantly affected by Do Not Track, it’s recommended that you strongly consider providing your comments before the deadline passes.

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Leading Internet and software attorney Chip Cooper has automated the process of drafting Website Legal Forms with his Website Legal Forms Generator. Use his free online tool – Website Documents Determinator – to determine which legal documents your website really needs. Discover how quick, easy, and cost-effective it is to draft your website legal forms at www.digicontracts.com.

Business Lessons Learned from Groupon and Other Items of Interest

By Debralee in Featured

A recent video posted on SPN Videos brings to light the dilemma many small businesses face, “When is too much advertising bad for business?” The need to to cultivate a continuous stream of new business is a constant worry for all business owners and they repeatedly try different marketing methods and advertising campaigns, with little or no success.

Enter Groupon – Small businesses are taking their advertising dollars and putting them to test with Groupon to help build their clientele and provide a service or product at a “group” discount to those individuals who buy-in on the deal. A certain number must be sold for the discount to apply, but, unfortunately, what has happened to some businesses is they have not set a limit to exceed and they are inundated with business. Too much? Yes, too much when customers complain and businesses loose customers rather than gain happy, satisfied ones. Watch the video…

Other Worthy Items of Interest

Check out this website I came across recently…Ben the Body Guard. Quite the avant-garde web design. Not sure what the product is yet, but a very interesting site. Your comments?

Here is a great article on a common problem all web designers face – Why Percentage-Based Designs Don’t Work in Every Browser posted on the webmonkey site.

An finally….Jerry Bader’s newsletter article on Friday, How to Deliver a Marketing Message On Your Website, got some rave reviews…if you haven’t read it yet – take a moment, it is definitely worth the time spent.

Regards,

Debralee
Editor, SiteProNews

Web Analytics and Your Website – What You Need to Know

By Enzo F. Cesario in Featured

When it comes to the web, information is king. Indeed, the web itself is information, a massive collection of articles, videos, blogs, news stories and photographs trying to convey a message to various audiences scattered around the world. The big sensation over the last year has been Twitter, a system built around condensing information to a mere 140 characters and broadcasting it out to interested users with a minimum of frills and features.

YouTube, a site where literally anybody can upload their videos for the appreciation of others, became the fourth most popular site on the Internet in less than a year. Compare that to newspapers and television, which both have been experiencing decreasing viewership in recent years. People need, want, and will seek out every conceivable sort of information, and the Internet is the place to find it.

Who Wants To Know?

Information isn’t just of use to the casual browser or dedicated auction enthusiast, however. Equally and increasingly interested are the very people posting content to the many pages on the web. Who is visiting which pages? How much traffic is your site getting, and how does it measure up against traffic going to similar sites? What has changed since you put up the big new advertising system last year? Necessity being the mother of invention, this increasing craving for varied and precise forms of information has led to the steady growth of a field called Web Analytics.

What Are You Looking At?

Put simply, Web Analytics is a system of study dedicated to collecting, measuring, and reporting on web and Internet data. This general idea breaks down further into two broad disciplines. The first is on-site analytics, which concerns itself with the journey of each user to a website, and is of primary concern to the owners of that site. It records information ranging from a record of which pages are being visited to a comparison of which pages garner more purchases from visitors. Off-site analytics focuses on information on the Internet as a whole, such as what websites more people are visiting, and what sites are being talked about most frequently. Both methods seek to answer the key question for any website operator – what are people looking at?

But What Does It All Mean?

Proper Web Analytics goes a step further than simple data collection, however. It also concerns itself with interpretation of the data in a context that allows the site owner to take appropriate steps. Let’s use the advertising campaign mentioned earlier as an example. Simple web measurement would be the collection of how many hits and purchases the site gathered before and after the campaign. A serious analytic comparison would explain how quickly purchases picked up after the change, what products and portions of the site drew more traffic as a result, and which pages remained unaffected. In short, web measurement is the gathering of the data; Web Analytics is the comparison and interpretation of that data.

The importance of the analytics field to the modern site owner can be observed in the sheer volume of material available on the subject. Sites offer free programs allowing users to set their own metrics, and others can be purchased, offering extra features and a professional interface. Hardcover and electronic format books have been published dealing with the material, and people have formed associations for the purpose of standardizing Web Analytics methodology and terms.

There is even a Web Analytics conference, the E-metrics summit, held in Santa Barbara, California and London, England each year. Going even further, there are listed job offerings in the field that offer salaries approaching $100,000 a year. Clearly this is not a passing fad, but a serious, vital step for any website interested not just in drawing an audience, but keeping it.

It’s All About Information

Of course this all begs the question – how does a user get started. Moreover, to what degree should they seek to implement Web Analytic tools and techniques? Perhaps a bit counter-intuitively, the quest for information begins with information. Site owners know what they want to accomplish with their sites, be it promoting a specific product or generating an audience for geopolitical discussions in a casual atmosphere. This information is the best place to start because it allows the user to begin understanding what information will help them pursue their goal.

For example, if a page is intended to promote an e-book series, then the user wants to know what information will help them do that promotion. They can then look for analytic tools that will tell them what pages are more successful at selling e-books, and what techniques are less successful.

Taking the time to sit down and think through the purpose that analytic information is ultimately intended to accomplish will make the search easier, and more fruitful from the beginning. With this basic framework established, the next step is the web itself. A simple web search on ‘Web Analytics’ or ‘Web Analytics for beginners’ will return a substantial amount of information. From there users can locate articles, videos, and e-books that will help them make the decisions they need to make their websites successful.

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Enzo F. Cesario is a Copywriter and co-founder of Brandsplat. Brandcasting uses informative content and state-of-the-art internet distribution and optimization to build links and drive the right kind of traffic to your website. Go to http://www.Brandsplat.com/ or visit our blog at: http://www.brandsplatblog.com/

Strengthen Your Advertising with SEO Copywriting

By Enzo F. Cesario in Featured

Advertising should be part of any growing business. Regardless of what your business does, customers have to know about your product or service in order for them to use it. As the Internet becomes a primary source for consumer knowledge and increasingly, purchasing, it’s imperative that your company gets its message out through this medium. However, advertising on the Internet works differently than traditional advertising in that the customer must find the business instead of a business coming to the customer.

Copywriting is the creation of text used in advertising, regardless of medium. This covers every aspect of an advertisement: promotional flyers, jingles, slogans, billboards, and web pages. All of these strive to put your product or service in the best light possible and are aimed directly at the consumer; except for web pages. With web pages there is another audience your advertisement must also target: the search engine.

Is Online Advertising – A Good Way for small companies to beat the credit crunch?

By Mike Gracia in Featured

The credit crunch is hitting just about every business, small or large, however, it is the smaller companies that are usually at most risk.

It is common practice for businesses to re-evaluate their expenses when times are tough, and this often includes marketing budgets. Indeed, recently many people have reported decreases in offline (print) marketing budgets, due, mainly to the credit crunch and financial turmoil that both the US and UK are experiencing.

It is interesting to note however that conversely, Online advertising spend is on the increase.

Why is this? What is the difference between online and offline expenditure, and why should one be on the decline due to a credit crunch, while the other is increasing?

Advertising ROI

The most rational and likely explanation for this is the huge difference between instant Return On Investment. Whilst print advertising can be a great way of developing brand name  and awareness, the financial returns for every £ or $ spent are known slow to arrive. This means that, during times of prosperity funds are freely available for Print based advertising.

Online advertising tends to see a much quicker and higher ROI, with either instant or swift results.

Advertising Budget, or Cost of Sale?

Some companies have even been quoted as saying that, although they are reviewing their Offline advertising, with a view to cutting costs, they now consider Online promotion to be more of a ‘cost of sale’ than an actual advertising cost.

It is easy to see why…

In a survey by iProspect, 68% of internet searches don’t look further than the first page of  Google for products or services they are looking for. This means that if you don’t appear on the first page, you are missing out on a seriously high percentage of your would be revenue.

This means that funds spent increasing a websites online search rankings are more or less guaranteed to increase the levels of sales that the website realises. This does imply that Online web promotion should be seen as more of a Cost of Sale than a straight advertising cost.

During financial hardships, it makes sense for businesses to cut advertising costs, so long as they can still achieve a level of income to keep them afloat. Thus, cutting funds from Offline advertising, which may well be seen as a brand awareness raiser that can presently be ill afforded, and allocating those funds to Online web promotion, which tends to give a much quicker return, is, perhaps good business sense.

One person we spoke to stated that they feel someone that is actually searching for a product on the internet is much more likely to convert to a sale, than someone that merely sees a company’s advert in a related magazine.

Forms of Online Marketing

Just like the offline advertising world, Online marketing has many sub divisions. The most popular are:

• Pay Per Click campaigns (such as Google Adwords),
• Banner adverts,
• Search Engine Optimisation,

Which is the most effective?

To a large extent, this depends on what you are trying to marker online, and how long term your goals are.

Let’s look at each Online marketing sub group in turn;

Pay Per Click.

The most popular pay per click advertising network in the world is Google Adwords. The effectiveness of this online advertising medium is definitely a proven fact. However, if you do not take care, you can easily waste thousands of pounds running an ill planned campaign, and be left wondering where it all went wrong!

Pay Per Click advertising is often said to be best served to websites that sell ‘impluse buy’ type products. PPC tends to give a very quick Return, but in the long term is more costly and gives less of an ROI than a traditionally, organic SEO campaign.

Banner Adverts

Most marketing professionals have at least heard of the term ‘advert blindness’. This phrase has been traditionally used to describe the mental process of the ‘filtering out’ of adverts by magazine readers. It is more and more frequently used in the Online advertising world in regards to banner adverts.

Basically, most people ignore banner adverts these days without even thinking about it. This means even if you get a good deal on your banner advert campaign, the results can be poor.

Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation (A.K.A. SEO) is a huge area, viewed by many traditional businesses as murky waters. Many are confused by the terms used by SEO professionals, and unsure whether funds set aside for this will be recouped.

If the right Ethical SEO specialist is chosen, however, the results can be astounding, and the Return On Investment excellent. It is important to stress the word Ethical here, as some SEO consultants are far from ethical. Go with a company that is willing to take the time to understand your needs as a company (or individual) and won’t simply apply a ‘one size fits all’ type of affair to your SEO.

The returns for an SEO campaign are usually realised after 2 to 3 months, at which point your website should be experiencing not just an increased number of visits, but an increased number of ‘targeted’ visits. It is this targeting that is important. There is little to no point having your website ranked for terms that are not related to your website, or do not have a medium to high number of searches per month.

Used correctly, search engine optimization techniques will give you a good ROI compared to PPC advertising, as your website will be placed in front of the eyes of those actually searching for your products or services.

About The Author:

Mike Gracia writes content for Kingpin-seo. Kingpin-seo is one of the leading ethical seo, and is also proud to own a Google News approved Press Release site, meaning kingpin-seo are very well placed to offer Press Release Distribution services.

2009: Measuring Up

By Josh Chasin in Featured

If, like me, you get a dozen or so MediaPost columns in your inbox each day, then you probably already know this.  But when you have to write a column every two weeks, often the hardest part is coming up with a topic idea.  So the end of the year is a total bonanza, because you can always write a “year in review” column or a “predictions for 2009″ column.

I’m opting for the latter. To my regular readers (John G, I’m looking at you), these predictions will be recognizable as the key themes I’ve written about in 2008, and which I expect to continue writing about in 2009.

The Evolution of Online Advertising Technology – More Targeting, Less Privacy (Part One)

By Scott Buresh in Featured

Please bear with me as I go through a brief history of basic online advertising. The evolution of targeted online advertising is interesting, because I believe the perceived harmlessness of early advertising technology and targeting tactics lulled many people into a sense of complacency or perhaps even false security.

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