How to Advertise your Online Business

Arafath Hashmi | February 13, 2011 | 2 Comments

Online business is a very easy and high growth subject, because most of the things are nowadays connected with the internet, so there are plenty of ways to market your online business or product, here I am showing some of the best ways to advertise your online business. I have seen a lots of cases, where still people used to follow the traditional and offline methods to promote their websites, but they are not aware that the offline marketing is expensive and targeting the wrong audience is also not a good idea.

Always remember one thing for a successful online business you must target right audience, or else all you marketing and advertising efforts shall be wasted. That’s why stepping in to a correct way is very important. This tutorial helps you in finding the way to advertise your business or online product.

Tip to Advertise an Online Business:

There are many ways to advertise online but let us discuss some of them, I will try to cover most of the topics..

Pay-per-click Advertising:

If you are just starting your business, the first advertising option you should consider is pay-per-click advertising. Good organic rankings are not easily achieved, as a search engine optimization campaign takes time to make such desired results as top rankings on major engines.

Another vital factor in favor of PPC advertising is that it protects you from any seasonality of visitors’ stream towards your pages. Thus, it is advisable to start and manage the PPC campaigns if you are planning steady traffic and a constantly developing business project.
If you would like to refresh your knowledge of pay-per-click search engines.

Start the campaign. Firstly, keywords selection will be your decisive and winning reason. Don’t forget to create proper landing pages for the visitors, and calls for action, to get successful results. Obviously, costs-per-click vary with different keywords and sectors. Start from the minimal sum and constantly manage new campaigns (choosing relevant keywords) to get the better conversion.

Calculation. If your product price is $300 and costs-per-click for the keyword about $5 (300/5=60 clicks, you should know the number of sales. As the minimal number of sales, 1, gives 1/60*100%=1.6%, you must target not less than a 1.6 percent conversion. No doubt, the success of your ad will be rather higher than this number.

Of course, there are special options to leverage the PPC ad campaigns for better results. Playing with bids and using geotargeting, you can sharpen the keyword choice and regulate the expenses.

Results tracking. Any of your advertising efforts demand tracking and correcting, or you can spend resources in vain. Remember that your new site marketing strategy won’t be prosperous without regular organic and paid search engine traffic assessment. Our next step should be to make a wide-ranging marketing strategy and affiliate marketing as a perfect promotional tool.

Banner, Text and News Letter Advertising:

First, you should define the audience for advertising. The evidence shows that targeting numerous reader audiences leads to money spent in vain. Start choosing the practical niche and concentrate your advertising efforts on it.

The next step determining your ad campaign’s success is searching for right resources. This task takes time, but remember that the more right and relevant resources you find, the more targeted visitors – that is, future buyers – you get. Thus, spend the time and create a base of resources, whose primary subscribers are your future buyers.

Here is our example list showing resources whose primary subscribers are site owners. The prices indicated are approximate and may change. They are quoted on a flat rate basis and CPM figures are calculated just for your information.

Advertising formats differ, depending on size and look. These and other terms, such as frequency of exposure, find the price for the campaign. Generally, you are offered banner or text advertisement. By the way, you can arrange for text only, without graphics, in the banner.

Solo mail distribution is an alternative to the banner or text ad in e-mail newsletters. Generally, newsletters offer solo-mail distribution among their advertising options. It enables great readers’ number reach, and spreading only your message. Presentations, program releases, new offers, and services are perfect objects for this option.

Ad Creation. Ad creation is beyond the scope of this course. However, there are several important points that you should remember when creating any marketing message.

Your message should contain a promise.
Your message should have no more than three supporting points (more than this normally cannot be perceived). Remember that proof (like hard numbers) is better than benefits, but benefits still are better than features. It also is important to first excite your target with some cool stuff you are promising them, and then to take away impediments to action. All the “money-back guarantee” stuff is directed toward this goal: to make a targeted customer disregard fear/uncertainty/doubt and buy/try the product.
Your message should have one clear call to action.

In the case of traditional graphic ad creation, be sure that your banner has the name of the company and proper promotional text. The composition of the text gives your prospects a compelling reason to click the banner. Don’t create a confusing or boring message. And don’t forget about the link on the banner leading to your site.

Though newsletters have excellent targeting capabilities and are closer to the reader than Web pages, your smart banner or text ad can be placed in any Web advertising mediums, not only e-mail newsletters. Choose targeted and respected informational resources with significant traffic numbers and you’ll get visitors interested in your goods and services.

But remember, it is extremely important to track the results of your advertising efforts. Each step in your marketing strategy should be checked. The Web analytics module of Web CEO makes it possible to track your advertising effect with high precision.

There are more text advertisement options, ranging from articles and press-release distribution ordering reviews to RSS Feed usage.

Article writing and Press Releases:

This is a perfect way to announce the benefits of using your products or services, and a powerful marketing tool. Unlike PPC-oriented advertising, it doesn’t cost you money, especially if you write the text-copy yourself.

Articles must be submitted to article directories and article archives that are many on the Internet. These resources attract search engine spiders because of fresh content and visitors’ attention to the article categories and topics.

By using press releases, you will get highly targeted visitors to use the links to your site. The service is presented both by free and paid submission. Paid service gives you the advantage of faster indexing into the search engine news service and natural SE result pages.

Top online news and press release distribution services offer a set of paid options that can save you time and money. Such distribution may include online services and databases, all media in the region you choose, a significant amount websites, and even more.

Yahoo News, Google News and other news search engines pick up your press release. They also use paid inclusion to Yahoo, AltaVista, AlltheWeb and more.
Your press release is distributed through PRWeb’s syndicated network news feeds.
It also is promoted via PRWeb’s blogging technology and news standards like XML, OPML, ATOM, RSS, and NewsML.

RSS Feeds:

Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication (or RSS) has become a powerful marketing tool. It helps to distribute your news headlines via the Web. This process is known as syndication, the essence of which is that your subscribers and readers get your message across the Web at once. There are many reasons why you certainly should use RSS, but the main ones are: 1) you get extra—and what is really valuable free traffic to your site; 2) the users surf your site every time you update it, when a user sees the headline and reads a summary that is interesting, he clicks through and views your page.

Conclusion of this entire Tutorial:

Pay-per-click is a better advertising medium for small online businesses. It provides you with highly targeted traffic, and you have great flexibility in terms of traffic volume and cost.
E-mail newsletter advertising is the most efficient of all traditional banner advertising methods.
Press release is a very powerful marketing tool. It brings you not only visitors, but also back links to your site.
If your site is updated very often, or even every day, you will certainly need RSS Feed to supply the users with new information—and, as a result, bring highly targeted visitors to your site.
Affiliate programs and networks can effectively advertise and promote your business, increasing sales numbers from the beginning of your online marketing campaign.

Please let me know your comments and suggestions in the comments section below.