How to Advertise on the Internet
Banner Ads
Today's internet marketing experts recommend that you do not do banner advertising unless it's pay-per-click. If you pay by impression (just to have your banner on someone's site), you're practically throwing away money because people largely avoid eye contact with banners on the internet nowadays. We're frustrated with those flashy, pop-upy, blinky ads and so in man's primal instinct for survival, we avoid looking at any banners. So, if you're going to put your banner somewhere, make sure you only pay if it actually generates something for you, namely, a visitor.
I think that the exception to this is when you are not paying much to begin with, the audience is your perfect target market and you have a really cute ad in a really great placement. Women are drawn in by pretty things. Make sure that if you do pay for banner advertising on a great site that you are not one of many on that page. You want to be at the top of the page or be the sponsored advertiser for a newsletter, for example.
You can participate in banner exchanges for free if you but agree to place a rotating banner for other participating businesses on your site. Yuck. Who wants to do that for something that won't even result in a lot of visitors anyway? And it just sends people away from your website.
E-zine/Blog Advertising
The Internet Marketing Center says this: "When we talk to successful online entrepreneurs about which advertising techniques consistently deliver the highest-quality traffic to them, they often tell us that targeted advertising in e-zines and newsletters is the way to go."
This is because people who read e-zines and newsletters have chosen to receive them to their inbox. And seeing as we all already get enough junk emailed to us, to choose to have something emailed to you on a regular basis that might even contain advertising, means we must really be interested in the mailing! The subscriber chooses to receive and read the e-zines or newsletters because they trust the sender. So, if the sender chooses to advertise your website in their publication, you are already trusted in the eyes of the reader.
You probably already subscribe to some newsletters yourself. Or, visit some blogs. Are you a mom, yourself? Do you sell to moms? Then you are your target market and the newsletter or blog that you are reading is where you need to be advertising. Don't worry if they don't feature advertisements in their newsletters now. There's a good chance that no one has ever contacted them before and asked to give them money for this service! They might be so happy to get your email that they'll give you a deal. And if you are their first advertiser or the first in a while, won't you grab their subscribers' eyes?
Some good newsletters/e-zines/blogs in which to advertise to moms (and to submit your press release for an editorial review!) are:
Directories
People still use directories to find websites, rather than using search engines alone. A bigger benefit, I think, is the search engine ranking boost that you get from being listed with some of them.
The biggest one one which to get listed is The Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org). The ODP is human-edited by volunteers, which is staggering! It's FREE to be listed. DO IT because a site that is listed with them will automatically be listed with Google, Netscape, AOL, Lycos and lots of other smaller directories. But, know that it's takes a very long time to get listed on there. Your site has to have plenty of good content with no "under construction" pages or bad links. Follow all of their instructions (when you try to apply, you'll see the list) and then just wait. It can take up to a year. They tell you that if you re-submit, that you'll go to the back of the line.
Yahoo! Directory is one of the biggest on the 'Net. If you've got a website that sells stuff, you have to pay $299 USD to be listed on there. This is definitely not the way to go unless you are established. You can start an affiliate program managed by an outside company for that amount.
MSN started a small business directory in 2004. It's $49 USD to submit your site and you get one main directory listing that includes up to four links to your site and you can put your listing in up to three different categories.
Mom-co is a great place for mom-owned businesses. Membership is only $25/year and you get 10 categories where you can list yourself. You can also pay for more visibility. It's a pretty site, not looking cheap and icky like a lot of similar sites do.
Some other free directories:
Directory.Google
GeniusFind
Earth Station 9
Shopping Bots
These are like search engines except that instead of finding only information, they help you find the best deal by scouring the 'Net for the product or service for which you're searching. The shopping bot then lists them in a search results page showing prices and a brief product description with a link to the merchant website. Some shopping bot listings are free, while others are pay-per-click or commission-based.
Shopzilla is pay-per-click but you have to make an initial deposit of $100. You can pay as low as 10-30 cents per click.
PriceGrabber is a popular place. They charge a commission of $1 +4.75% of the selling price.
Shopping.com, you've probably heard of. It's pay-per-click as well.
Yahoo! Shopping is the largest of all of these sites and works on a pay-per-click basis. It's a bit more expensive than Shopzilla.
Froogle is, in case you couldn't guess, Google's shopping directory. It's free, so submit your business!
Google Adwords and AdSense
Google's advertising network is the largest on the Internet. It rocks. AdWords ads appear on hundreds of thousands of websites, via AdSense. AdSense allows YOU to earn income by displaying AdWords ads on your own web pages. The ads that appear are related to the content that you have on your page. Whenever a visitor clicks on one of your ads, Google pays you a percentage of the pay-per-click bid price the advertise pays THEM to display the ad throughout the internet.
People make thousands of dollars a month just by putting the AdSense code on their site, though Google forbids anyone from divulging just how much they are making. You need a lot of traffic to make that much, of course and Google tracks suspicious clicking. Too much from one person and you'll get kicked out of the program. Because if YOU are the advertiser, you are paying every time someone clicks on your ad and you hope that each click comes from an interested web surfer. You'd be pretty mad if you knew that you were paying just so that someone could feed money to Google while pocketing a percentage of that amount.
So, good for Google because they've created an excellent advertising program for you. Basically, you decide what word/phrase you want people to search on Google to find your ad. You bid on that word/phrase. If your business competitors are also bidding on that word/phrase then you're going to have to spend more than them per click to get your ad at the top of the page, making it more likely that it will be viewed and thus clicked on. So, the bidding can get expensive. But if you don't mind being 3rd or 4th down on the sponsored ad list, then you can get a good deal and you still only pay when the ad works by driving traffic to your website!
The key to not spending lots of money would be to not bid on competitive words. Just because there are a lot of people bidding on a certain word/phrase does not mean that it's the word/phrase that will bring you the most traffic. The best tool for you, that you can use for free before bidding on AdWords, is Wordtracker. Type in the phrase that you think people would be searching to find you and it will generate all sorts of related words and grade them. There are words that a lot of people may be searching for but that your competitors haven't clued into and are not bidding on!
Expired Domain Name Traffic
Okay, this isn't advertising. But it accomplishes the same goal: to get you traffic. Let's say that you sell tires. You can find an expired domain name like Tires-R-Us.com and buy it and redirect it to your site. Then, anyone who tries to visit that website will find you instead, which should work out not too badly for them because you're selling what they were looking to buy in the first place. There's nothing wrong with doing this and it doesn't have to be expensive at all. Ipowerweb has the cheapest domain names that you can buy for only $2.95 each. www.whois.net is a good place to look for expired domain names.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is basically like having sales agents whom you only pay on commission. It's all online and it's automatically run through tracking software. It's one of the lowest cost ways, and one of the most effective ways (if actively managed by you) to advertise online.
Read all about how to start an affiliate program by clicking here.
Partnering With Like Companies
Why not find a non-competing company who shares your market and approach them for a partnership? This could mean that you advertise their business on your website for free and vice versa, usually on the main page or in the footer. You could exchange business cards and include their cards with your mail outs (and vice versa). You could send your newsletter subscribers information about your partner's specials.
