Tips on Advertising
I’m no expert on advertising. I do tend to be greedier than many advertisers, though, and my approach to advertising has served me well. So think of it as a guerrilla marketer’s guide to advertising.
Advertising Builds Brand Awareness
A lot of folks want advertising to convert immediately. That’s rarely what happens. Advertising should be thought of primarily as a brand building vehicle.
Take for example my banner ads for V7 Inc, our web hosting service. Most users seeing that banner will see it at the very moment that they need web hosting. Most impressions will be wasted, if you think of it that way.
But what the advertising does is build awareness of the V7 Inc brand so that when the time comes, and the consumer thinks, “I need hosting”, V7 Inc may have a place in that consumer’s mind.
To illustrate this point, I will admit to placing affiliate banner ads for LunarPages on V7N’s Hosting Directory. Although the banner ads were removed last month, just yesterday I received notification of a sign up. People do not necessearily act immediately, but if your ad is being seen chances are it is making an impression which may translate into sales down the road.
Affiliate Advertising is Free Advertising
Many advertisers balk at the idea of paying out commissions on their sales, and for this reason choose not to ulitise affiliate programs to promote their products or services.
The fact of the matter is, affiliate advertising is largely free advertising. Most of the banner impressions served up by your affiliates will not result in direct sales. Most people who see banner ads for V7 Inc will not immediately click on the ad. These banner impressions build your brand. And, yes, you’ll have to pay out some commissions, but that piddly amount paid out is nothing compared to the value your brand has gained.
Advertising Builds Credibility
Advertising seperates the men from the boys. Most pansies on the Internet do not have the balls to write out $10,000 checks to buy advertising on the Internet.com network, so when V7 Inc advertised the SevenSeek Web Directory on Internet.com, it turned heads and let people know that we weren’t playing around.
Cheap Eyeballs
A lot of website owners have decent traffic, but not quite enough to demand four or five figure payments. If you know your market, you can get some awesome bargains on high traffic sites run by one-man shows.
September 1st, 2008 at 12:07 am
There’s a certain degree of brand awareness that manifests itself online and it’s something to take into consideration. Multiple exposures in advertising are very important and there’s no reason why this is any different online. Of course this depends on the nature of your business and many sites can only depend on a single exposure and it may not be feasible to do banner advertising so they have to make their one shot count.
There are usually options though and affiliate advertising is a great way to build your brand. Net profit from affiliate revenue is pure gravy since this is profit you would not have gained otherwise.
Ken
King Cobra Poker