Internet Based Marketing
In this article, I am going to go over a few key points as to why internet based marketing will give you a better return on your investment over that of offline marketing. Let?s begin with an example.
You go to your local newspaper and you tell them you want to place an ad. While there, you ask them how many readers they have or what are the circulation numbers – and they give you a round about number. You also ask, what the demographics are, and they give you a general answer, as they do not exactly know.
Then, let’s say the place an ad in the classified section and then sit back and wait to see what happens. Now, to track this, you put a code on your website URL so you know exactly how many visitors you’re getting from that one newspaper ad. With the phone number, you also include a code, so that you know where the calls are coming from.
You’re also going to have to be patient. Your ad will go out in the next edition. Eventually, you’ll start getting some calls and some additional traffic to your site. Compare this added interest with the cost for the advertisement. Say you got ten leads out of the ad, with the ad costing you about five dollars per visitor; this means your ad has cost you $50 in total.
Now suppose one of these leads converted into a sale. You may get some more calls of course over the next few weeks. Responses to print advertisements sometimes take a while.
In the next example, let?s say you start a Pay per click campaign. Using this method, you research keywords that are relative to your product or service. You can get as targeted as you want, plus you can leave a few keywords in the broad category to see if there are other keywords you may be missing when trying to capture this market.
With this example, your ad goes live within just 15 minutes, using, let’s say, Google. You don’t pay unless people click on your link; if they do, you pay a dollar. Let’s say that your conversion rate is 2%. This means that you spend $100 to make two sales.
Here, though, you can tell which keywords are converting to sales because you can use conversion tracking. Then, you can remove the keywords that aren’t converting, so that your ad campaign is both more effective and more cost-efficient.
In addition, because you’ve also used broader keywords, you can see how many people are finding you with this “one size fits most” method. You can also place ads on other websites with exact demographic information, which will be extremely targeted to your business.
What’s the point of all this? Basically, when you compare advertising in traditional venues such as the newspaper with online advertising, you can measure your performance with online advertising much more efficiently.
Of course, pay per click is only one form of online advertising. There are many others which are very effective such as article marketing, advertising in ezines which appeal to your target demographic and putting out press releases. Email marketing is one of the best methods out there, if properly done.
Internet based marketing can significantly reduce your costs. It can also provide more information that lets you run more efficient and better marketing campaigns. In addition, your turnaround time is faster so that you get better information much sooner than you do with traditional venues.