Advertising Techniques

Over the years, marketing and advertising rules and guidelines have undergone a major revamp. Much of this can be attributed to the advent of the electronic media and its mass appeal which in today’s scenario might be having more impact on the masses than the print media. The basic objective of marketing and advertising is to make your product or services visible to the maximum number of potential customers. Similarly, the way a product or service is projected in the eye of the consumer is also equally important. However, let us for the time being concentrate only on the first part, i.e making your product visible to the maximum number of people to enhance business productivity.

It has never been easier to find and show your products and services to the maximum number of people who can be your potential customers. They’re all online, in one place — their favorite search engine, looking to buy your product or service. There is a huge potential customer market on the internet waiting to be tapped. Let’s face it. The easiest way to find a product in the 21st Century is to use the search engine of your choice.

Again, by sheer logic and past self experiences we know that mostly the customers scan only one or at a maximum of two pages of search results of a search engine. He will visit websites and links on these two pages in which he finds keywords closest to what he is looking for. Thereby it brings business to these websites. So an effective marketing and advertising technique is one which allows your website and links to be on these initial pages so as to catch the eye of the person.

In order to get into the first screen of the results there’s only two ways that currently work. One is called Pay Per Click or PPC and the other is Search Engine Optimization; or SEO. With PPC just as the name suggest an advertiser pays a search engine a pre-arranged bid amount every time a searcher clicks on his link and goes to his website. The amount of his bid in relation to competitive bids determines his link position in the search results. On the other hand SEO focuses on proper coding, inbound links, and the use of proper keywords in order to attain a higher rank in the search display page. Search engines receive no money for these listings.

Since pay per click results can usually be achieved faster than SEO, it’s a good way to start. Some advantages of PPC are:

* By its very nature pay per click offers more flexibility. You can start a campaign immediately. You can set daily,weekly or monthly budgets. You can even set cost per action goals. You can pick the exact keywords you think will deliver the highest sales conversion.

* This is particularly helpful for novices, who might not be sure of which keywords can generate more traffic. So by using a PPC and alongside trying out different keywords to find out which generate more traffic can be a very beneficial exercise. One can invest heavily on such keywords later on. If one can monitor the keyword progress (which requires time investment) PPC models can give total control of spending.

* PPC is tailor made for service providers who are after blitzkrieg publicity. Seasonal promotions normally see a huge rush in PPC spending as the time for actual selling is only limited; the producer wants to have a sure shot chance of catching the customer’s attention. Similar goes the case for quick response advertisings.

* Further, Non PPC models like SEO require a very systematic and specific approach. Designing the website in accordance with the search engine’s algorithms, giving proper codes and keywords can take up lot of time and money. One can also never be sure even after doing all these things right as someone else could have done them better!

* PPC models eliminate the risk factor as the advertiser will not need to pay in case his campaign doesn’t work out and people do not click on his links. This option will not exist for non PPC models.

Both PPC and SEO are both viable options. If you can achieve good Search Engine Optimization then by all means do so but don’t neglect the power of PPC for a powerful kick start to your online marketing.

Tags: internet advertising
Filed under: internet advertising