Businesses that have taken the bulk of their advertising portfolios to the World Wide Web have long since figured out that this is the best forum for promoting their wares. The primary reason is simply the expense: internet marketing beats out buying television commercial spots, renting billboard advertising space and the relative inefficiency of passing out business cards to innumerable – and largely disinterested – strangers. By absorbing just a few major tenets of how internet marketing works, you can then whittle down this number to the ones that are specifically suited to the kind of business you’re running. Most companies hire advertising agencies, but as a business owner it is vital to know the product just as well.
Buying Advertising Space Online with PPC
Pay per click is a popular method of advertising online that has the potential for a very large return-on-investment. As with anything, you’ve got to do it correctly and be optimized for the right service to reap the benefits. At the base level, it’s all about targeting the correct combination of keywords, because you want to avoid clicks on your banner by people who aren’t statistically likely to buy – this costs you money, with no return.
Your goal is to get a high click-to-conversion ratio, so that the amount you pay to Google (or any other search provider) for each click is recouped many times over by the consumer actually purchasing your product. Generally, in PPC, you pay out pennies and cents for every click, whereas your product or service is worth tens-of-dollars or more.
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There exists a lot of market data, as well as companies that are uniquely-qualified to help you fashion advertisements for your PPC program. When done correctly, it has the potential to be an extremely affordable and thus lucrative method of online advertising.
Organic Search and SEO
Search engine marketing describes organic search and search engine optimization – as well as a litany of growing methods for placing your services in front of waiting consumers. Because the traffic stream is usually preexisting, you are tasked with finding ways to placing your product under this stream, instead of building the stream from the ground up.
This is the method championed by start-ups with low operating budgets, and has the potential to work even better than PPC. You effectively use the internet to build brand awareness, by posting guest articles on high-volume sites, engaging in social media marketing and allowing news of your services to spread through other social networks as they latch onto your website. It is definitely a time-intensive process, but the rewards far outweigh the initial effort once you’re successful, because the stream of traffic is constant.
Because of the power of search marketing, many businesses – from the SMB to the multinational corporation – eschew trying to do SEO on their own and opt for a reputable company that specializes in ranking factors. Search engine mastery requires a range of talents and in-depth knowledge, from understanding how to write keyword-rich articles, to managing a social network.
The ability to write goes a long way; by engaging your audience, your blog post steadily pick up backlinks from all over the internet, as more people read them and reference them in their own related posts. Overall, because of the very low cost to entry, search marketing is generally considered the most affordable way to advertise online.
