| Internet
Advertisement Explained : Part 1 -
Channels of Internet Advertisement
- A Primer
Building a professional web-site is just the first
step in your Net marketing program. The next step is
to attract customers from all over the world through
various advertisement and promotional efforts. Without
conscious promotional effort - your perfectly designed
and content-rich web-site has as much visibility among
millions of web-sites in the World Wide Web as a grain
of sand in a sea beach.
Like advertisement in print and television media -
Net Advertisement has truly arrived and the sooner you
take notice of it, better is your chances of success.
In this article series - we shall identify and explain
various channels of Internet advertisement, their comparative
merits and demerits, relative cost implication and finally,
how to make their best use at minimum budget.
Why Numbers are So Important in Web Marketing
In a retail shop or shopping
mall - success depends on three key factors
- How Many People Visit the establishment daily
- Out of total daily visitors - how many actually purchase
something (i.e. Visitor to Customer conversion ratio)
- What is the average customer-spending per visit
A web-site - whether selling to bulk buyers or
consumers, functions more or less in same way. Its success
depends a great deal on the ability to attract interested
visitors in large numbers from all over the world and
then convert a sizeable percentage of them into paying
customers.
While converting a visitor into customer depends a
great deal of various on-site and off-site factors -
many of which may not be within your control, number
of web-site visitors can certainly be increased by reaching
out to large sections through various advertisement
and promotional channels. That way - one can be assured
of good return even at modest conversion ratio.
Search Engine Rank is Important - But Not Everything
Search engines play a critical role in attracting visitors
to a web-site. Higher the ranking of a web-site in search
engines, better is its prospect of attracting visitors.
As a result - there is a mad rush among web-site owners
to get higher and higher ranking in search engines.
In technical jargon - the act required to get to the
top of search engine result without paying any kind
of fee to the search engine is called 'organic placement'.
Smart marketing guys would like you to believe that
their organic placement skill is so good that they can
place any web-site at the top of leading search engines
like Yahoo! and Google under popular keywords within
days ! My advice to you - take such claims with a pinch
of salt (and while you are at it, make that 'pinch'
really hefty with lots of pepper thrown in ! )
In reality - your newly created web-site stands almost
zero chance of getting to the top of a leading search
engine through organic placement within weeks or even
months ! We shall discuss the reasons in a separate
section.
However, high rank in search engines through organic
route is not the only way of attracting visitors - there
are many other ways of doing the same.
What are Various Internet Advertising Channels ?
I have compiled below
broad categories of Net advertising channels. Some of
these are free - others require payment. We shall discuss
each of them in subsequent issues
- Search Engine Marketing
- Organic Placement
- Paid Advertisement
- Paid Inclusion
- Site Specific Marketing
- Banner Advertisement
(Fixed, Pop-Ups and Rotating)
- Performance Oriented
- Impression Based
- Click based
- Time Oriented
- E-mail Marketing
- E-Zine Publishing
- Targeted e-mails
- Discussion Boards >
(Networking with peers, helping others)
- Bulletin Boards
(To post your message - seeking help, posting buy,
sell and biz ads)
Conclusion
A mix of free and paid-for advertisements is ideal
solution for best result within short time frame.
Over reliance on one, at the expense of other, may
not get best possible result, specially for newly
created web-sites.
Happy and Productive Surfing
Dr. Amit K Chatterjee
Related Links:
Author
: Dr.
Amit K. Chatterjee
(Amit worked in blue-chip Indian and MNCs for 15
years in various capacities like Research and Information
Analysis, Market Development, MIS, R&D Information
Systems etc. before starting his e-commerce venture
in 1997. The views expressed in this columns are
of his own. |
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