There are several ways that you can market your business online. How you decide to go about it depends on your product/service, your target audience and your budget. The plan usually includes what features and benefits you want to convey to your target market, how you will convey it to them (this process is often referred to as your advertising campaign) and who is responsible to carry the various activities in the plan. This point is missed by surprisingly many people but successful advertising greatly depends on knowing the preferred methods and styles of communications of the target markets that you are trying to reach with your advertisements. A couple of very useful tools are media plans and calendars. This allows you to specify which advertising methods you are using and when you are using them. You want to show your target audience why they need your product/service. You’ll want to consider all of the online methods of communication, such as newsletters, classifieds, press releases, as well as offline mediums like TV, radio, displays/signs, posters, word of mouth, press releases, etc.
Here are some great online advertising promotion methods.
1. Local Advertising. If you have a local business such as a restaurant or hair salon, advertising online can really boost your visibility and sales. Many small local businesses discount the internet because they believe it to be only for national or international types of products. This is definitely not true. One way to increase your local exposure is to create a PPC (pay per click) campaign on Google’s local network. That way, if someone in your local area does a search for your type of business, you will come up in the ads. You can also advertise on local business or administative office websites or forums.
2. PPC advertising. Pay per click (PPC) advertising is one of the most effective online advertising promotion strategies today. when done correctly, you can gain many leads and sales from your pay per click ads. In a nutshell, pay per click ads are the text ads you see on the right of the screen when you do a search for something online. And if you click on one of those ads, the person who placed it there will pay the search engine for your click. PPC is an extremely profitable way to advertise because you only pay when you get results. In order to do PPC well, you understand the basics of keyword research and how to write compelling ad copy.
3. Free advertising. With the advent of social media and blogging, any business can now advertise its products and services for free. . .and often, more effectively than with paid advertising. It’s important to have a presence on sites like MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube and the numerous other social sites and forums. This is an indirect way to advertise, but if it’s done the right way, it will allow you to build trust and relationships with your potential and existing customers.
Online advertising promotion is just one part of the marketing mix that you should be considering. . .but it may be the most significant part, depending on your target market.
