With the Internet becoming more available and affordable, it is no wonder so many people use it to stay connected to their network of friends. That is why Online advertising has become a necessity for any business that wants to be effective and successful.
There are some advantages of online advertising that classic marketing cannot compete with.
One of these advantages is the price. Reaching your target market online is much cheaper than doing it through print, outdoors, or radio. Television can be cheaper in terms of cost per GRP, but in general, a business needs to spend large amounts of money on television advertising to achieve sufficient visibility.
Online promotional materials are much cheaper than those in real life. If you publish an e-brochure, you pay the same price whether you get 1,000 downloads or 100,000 downloads. If you print the same brochure, the two costs will be very different. Paper is expensive, distribution is expensive, therefore going online enables a business to realize significant savings on their marketing budgets.
Online advertising is flexible. You can set up an SEM campaign and choose how much to bid and what keywords. The daily budget can also be set at your maximum affordable limit. All parameters can be adjusted and those settings become effective the moment you save them to the system. If you want, say, to target only Texas customers, because your business is local, you can choose to have your ads show only to people who are accessing the Internet from Texas.
Online advertising has this social component that helps a lot. People like to share news and interesting things with their friends on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other social networking websites. If your offering catches their eye, they may serve as messengers and marketers for you and promote your products or services to their acquaintances and friends. This is a power that no one should underestimate. In the right circumstances, well thought out advertising can skyrocket your sales and increase your popularity to enormous levels. Facebook marketing allows for very narrow segmentation. You can target your ads, for example, only to women, 25 to 45 years old, married, interested in scrapbooking. Facebook makes it possible for companies to configure their campaigns in such a way that ads are shown only to people who belong to the selected target group.
Online advertising has another advantage: it is international. You can sit on your deck in Alabama and reach customers from Germany or anywhere else in the world you want. Although the barrier to entry in online advertising is quite low, the learning curve can be quite steep. It will take time and a series of trial and error before learning the tricks of the trade. If you don’t have time to educate yourself, you can hire an online advertising consultant to get your business online and handle all of these things for you. These consultants are not very expensive and if you find a really good one, you may be impressed with the results.
Top Five Mistakes Online Advertisers Make
If you are thinking of making money through online advertising, you should know that the statistics are quite grim – more than 95% of people who try fail. However, the good news is that for the 5% who are successful, money is literally raining down on them. So if you want to be part of the 5%, listen and pay attention because we are going to tell you the five main mistakes that you should avoid if you are going to be successful in making money online.
Mistake 1: Believing in gurus and exaggerated objects
Online advertising is literally an industry unto itself, and you will find many people selling themselves as gurus or hyping products that promise to make thousands of dollars in no time. But guess that? These people are NOT your friends. They are simply trying to sell you something, and they are doing very well by insisting on their desperation to make a quick buck.
If you really want to make money from online advertising, the best way to do that is by signing up for a forum website like Warrior Forum or My Affiliate Apprentice, where they teach you step-by-step how to do things online.
Mistake 2: Trying to sell things
This will go against what you already know, but you are not trying to sell things on online advertising, you are trying to “pre-sell” products. There is a big difference between direct selling and preselling. Selling tends to insult the intelligence of your audience. Meanwhile, pre-sale involves careful consideration of how a product might benefit your target market.
So if you really want to make a lot of sales, the most important thing to do is discover your customers’ hot spots or why they buy things.
Mistake 3: Not following an action plan
If you sign up for a forum or purchase an online advertising course, you will find action steps to implement what you have learned. If you are like most people, you will probably read the action plan once and then forget about it, or just follow it slowly. However, if you really want to replace your job with passive income from the internet, you must adhere to whatever plan of action comes before you. Remember, if people are already making money from it, you can too.
Mistake 4: Do everything alone
If you have any experience building and managing websites, you already know that it can be a one-man operation. However, there are times when you need the help of professionals, such as when you want to create new graphics or when you need to change some code on your website. The good news is that you can hire professionals for very little money. Just go to oDesk if you need professional help.
Mistake 5: Expect the worst
If you are going to do online advertising, be sure to expect the best rather than the worst because that is what you will get sooner or later.
