Purchasing Online Advertising - An Overview
Are you the owner or marketing person at a small or medium sized business? Are you trying to figure out how to get started, or improve upon, your Internet marketing campaign? Getting started advertising online can be a seemingly daunting task given the non-tangible nature of Internet user traffic. Advertising in local online markets is even more difficult due the national and international nature of the Web.
A business will likely have many questions when getting started. Where do I find local online marketing opportunities? How much should I be spending for a given campaign? How should I be measuring the results of my advertising campaigns? I’ll give the short answer to these questions here and expand on them in future articles.
Where can I find local online marketing opportunities?
The most important (and obvious) answer to this question is search marketing programs from Google and Yahoo. The Google Adwords program is a fantastic program that delivers potential customers from your local market directly to your business website. Yahoo’s Search Marketing works like Adwords and is another good option to get started with. Marketing opportunities from Google and Yahoo will be all many businesses will need. However, there are some potential shortfalls with these programs:
- Some business niches can be very expensive - ten dollars or more for a single click in extreme cases.
- Low traffic business niches may not get an adequate amount of traffic from search marketing programs.
- Search marketing gives little or no branding value - something that businesses in local markets could have some interest in.
If search marketing programs from the major search engines are not meeting all of your online marketing needs, it’s time to find some alternative advertising opportunities. It’s not always easy to find local online marketing that has value. There are some obvious choices, like The Bend Bulletin’s website, or the Source Weekly’s website, but are these actually going to deliver results that are worth the associated costs? What other options are there? I am going to follow up this article with a list of local websites that offer advertising opportunities and my impression of their value.
How much should I be spending on an online advertising campaign?
Your overall budget is something you will have to decide on. The purpose of this question is more to inform you of what amount a particular advertising campaign is worth at a site like the Bend Bulletin. In general, Internet advertising rates are defined by statistics that give you some idea as to how many people are going to see your ad, or visit your site, for a given amount of money spent on the campaign. Unfortunately, most local advertising outlets are just going to quote monthly or yearly rates for listings or banner ads and they aren’t going to tie that rate to any kind of performance metric. This method of ad buying will be much easier for someone just learning about marketing on the Internet, but it may take months for you to figure out whether your money has been well spent. In this scenario, you could be buying advertising that has absolutely no value at all.
I am going to post another article that details some online advertising standards and terminology for those that would like to learn more. For now, there are a couple of questions you can ask the website owners that you are planning on advertising with:
1. How much traffic does their site get? Anyone can throw a site up in a day and make it look like a solid advertising opportunity but without visitors the site is worthless as an advertising medium. Many local sites list advertising rates but do not state their traffic levels. In my opinion, this is an unacceptable practice. Would you advertise in a newspaper that only had a circulation of 5 people? Not likely. Ask them how many unique visitors and page views their site gets per day and per month. Ultimately you have to be the judge on how many visitors you would like to be exposed to your advertisement, but I wouldn’t bother with sites that have less than 1,000 unique visitors per month.
2. Is there a guaranteed number of ad impressions you will be receiving for the money you are spending? Small campaigns of a hundred dollars or less, or things like links or directory listings generally are not paid for on an impression basis, but banner advertisements that run for many months on larger budgets should have some kind of performance metric associated with them. The value of the banners will vary widely based on the market and niche you are in, but an example would be that for every fifty dollars you spend, your ad will be shown on a page 1,000 times. Regardless of the actual price you are paying, if you know this number you can actually make apples to apples comparisons between the various websites you are advertising on, and have some general sense of the value of the ads you are purchasing.
How should I be measuring the results of my advertising campaigns?
Google or Yahoo search marketing programs are going to give you an exhaustive set of statistics that will tell you exactly how many visitors they have sent you and what it cost. Measuring results from local sites is much more difficult.
Websites that are selling you banner advertisements should provide you with a statistics package that you can log into and see how many daily ad impressions (the number of times your ad appeared on a page), and clicks (the number of times users clicked your ad and visited your website) your ad has received. You should occasionally check your own servers referrer logs (through a standard statistics program) and make sure the number of visits from the site you are advertising on roughly matches the number of clicks provided in the publishers banner statistics (this will let you know if there is a possibility that the publisher is falsifying your banner ad statistics).
Programs like directory listings or plain text links may not have statistics, so you will have to rely on your servers referrer statistics to find how many visitors you are getting.
Just Get Started!
There is no question that Internet marketing can be confusing. The best way to get started is to just jump in and do it! Start small, set an initial budget, and start experimenting. Look at the results, adjust your budget accordingly, and keep at it. In time, it will all start to make sense.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Overview
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is probably the most misunderstood topic related to Website ownership. Essentially SEO is composed of two simple ideas:
1. On-Page Optimization
Search engines need to be able to read and understand the content and context of your site. The process to improve your site for search engines is often called “on-page optimization”. On-page optimization consists of correcting any technical problems that are preventing search engines from effectively reading your site, fixing any missing or mislabeled HTML tags, and adjusting the text in the site pages to improve keyword density.
2. Link Building
Search engines will determine the ranking of your site in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPS) based on the content of your site as the search engine understands it, and on the “link popularity” of your site - or how many other sites are linking to your site. The process of increasing the number of links to your website is called “link building”. It is not just the number of links pointing to your site that matters - it is also the quality and context of those links. Google assigns Pagerank - a value from one to ten - to all websites. A website linking to your site with a Pagerank of six will be much more valuable to you than a website with a Pagerank of two. Context is important as well. If your site is about Bend Oregon or Bend Oregon Real Estate, you will do much better getting links from local Bend sites.
Most people understand SEO as being only related to on-page optimization. On-page optimization alone can have some positive effects on your search engine rankings, but in competitive markets you need to actively pursue both factors to get to (and stay at) the top of the search engines.
There are no Shortcuts!
In a competitive market, improving your search engine rankings will require time, diligence, and patience. Anyone that tells you that they can guarantee a certain result in a short amount of time is either trying to scam you, or they will utilize techniques that could get your site banned from the search engines permanently.
Google’s page on SEO services (avoid getting scammed)
Top 10 Mistakes Small Business Owners Make When Creating a Website
Over the years I have consulted on hundreds of small website development projects. During the course of development of these sites, I often see the same mistakes made over and over again. I thought it would help a small business owner to read about these mistakes before tackling a new web project so they could avoid some common pitfalls.
1. Unrealistic Expectations
Many small business owners approach the website implementation process with wildly unrealistic expectations. Often these expectations are centered on Too Many Features (#9), which results in Delayed Implementation (#2) and Lack of Marketing Plan (#4). They also don’t realize that obtaining site visitors (and resulting new customers) will often require an ongoing marketing plan and budget. Nothing is free.
Where Unrealistic Expectations really does damage is in the world of ecommerce. Many think that selling things online will be an easy and steady way to augment sales. Reality is that most small business ecommerce projects never even pay for the cost of implementing the online store. If you are planning to sell things online, be sure to do a lot of research in this area before jumping in.
2. Delayed Implementation
I have known people that have delayed getting a website built for years because they were unable to make decisions on things like site features or domain name. A single page site is far better than no site at all. Keep it simple, get your site up, and worry about adding features later.
3. Bad Domain Name
A good domain name should be easy to remember and if possible, contain at least one keyword related to your industry. Example: BendLawyer.com is a much better domain name than KarpicznkyCraigenandSchultzLLC.com. Your name doesn’t need to be in everything.
4. Lack of a Marketing Plan
“Build it and they will come” is a common misconception on the Internet. If you don’t have a marketing plan in support of your site goals, your site will never perform to your expectations. Your marketing plan is just as important as your site implementation plan so give them both thought before implementing your site.
5. Choosing a Non-Professional to Implement Your Website
Everyone has a cousin that is doing web design out of their garage. Resist the temptation. There is a world of difference between the product a professional or agency will deliver, and the product cousin Jimmy will whip up in the Garage. Even if cousin Jimmy happens to be really good at this, is he going to be able to ensure that your website meets your business goals? Going with a non-professional will likely lead to at least five of the issues in this list. Don’t get cousin’d.
6. No Content Optimization
The text content of your site is very important for both Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and for delivering a clear and concise message to potential customers. It is rare that a small business owner dedicates enough time to quality website copy. Before a site is even built, you should have a rough outline of what text each page is going to contain so that the pages can be built with SEO in mind. Consider hiring a copywriter if you need help with this part.
7. Lack of Updates
Don’t have your site built and then forget it. If you have chosen to have content like articles or news - make an effort to keep them updated. If you do not anticipate having the time to keep these features updated, it is probably best to not implement the features to begin with. Look your site over every few months and make sure it accurately reflects the current state of your business. Even small things like updating the copyright statement in your site footer to reflect the current year are important.
8. Poor Design Ideas
Hire a professional and trust their judgment. It is just fine to comment on colors or make suggestions that will guide a designer toward your goals. However, suggesting things like implementing sound, animations, or other unprofessional elements will ruin the effectiveness of your site. Remember: this is a professional marketing tool, not a third grade art project.
9. Too Many Features
A lot of business owners will agonize for months over what features their sites should have. This creates several serious problems in the Website development process. Feature load often leads to the second biggest mistake in site development: Delayed Implementation. It also can lead to Lack of Marketing Plan (#3) because too much time was spent analyzing features rather than the important marketing phase. Feature load can also be a contributor to Unrealistic Expectations (#1) and Poor Design Ideas (#6).
Unless you have a clear idea of what your site goals are and what features will help you reach those goals, keep it simple! You can always add things later……
10. Over-Complicated or Poor Technical Implementation
The small business owner really doesn’t have too much control over this aspect of site implementation other than in choosing a reputable professional (see #3). To be avoided here are things like unreliable or outdated programming platforms, over-complicated page structures or URLs (could negatively affect SEO), and difficult to use site administration tools. I have included this here to place emphasis on choosing an experienced Website professional, so don’t worry too much about the details of this item.
Welcome to the Ditchmonkey Blog
The purpose of the Ditchmonkey Blog is to assist local Bend, Oregon businesses succeed on the Internet. Content will include articles that clarify topics like how to create an effective business website, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), internet marketing, and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising.
I will also be choosing local business sites that I think are very well done and point out the strengths of that site so that other business owners can start to get an idea of what works on the Internet, and what doesn’t.
I hope that you will find this site informative and helpful in your pursuit of Internet success.
Aaron Walton