Goes without saying, in the contemporary digitized world, online advertising is integral to marketing strategy for innumerable businesses across the globe. This is just the genesis. And the most important part is getting it done right. Let’s quickly learn from the activities of a good online advertiser. Findings tell us that most mid-sized businesses get stuck with their online lead generation in three areas:

 

SEO:
They understand the concept of search engine optimization, and do some work there, but they usually quit before great results arrive.

 

PPC:
People get a Google AdWords account, invest some money, watch it disappear, and stop.

 

Social Media:
Here, people just waste time because they don’t know how to do it right. Then what makes a good online advertiser?

 

In this post, I intend to take you through the major activities that a successful online advertiser would do. And in turn, get to know how to spend money wisely to ensure return on our investment. Before I commence, let me assume that this online advertiser with all his sound-mindedness possesses a well-defined target audience, therefore clearly understands who his target is. For instance, their browsing habits, their psychological triggers and similar behavioral patterns. Without this relevant information, this advertiser is likely to lose in online marketing almost always.

 

A good online advertiser would ideally opt to do the following:

To begin with, he would think out of the box.

 

Yes, because the advertiser’s potential customers may search for his product or service. Hence, being listed with a PPC ad can do him considerable good. But that’s not the only way to reach the customers. Plus, only a small percentage of his entire target market is searching for what he sells at any given time.

He will know that the key is to go where the customers are. 

 

A good online advertiser will figure out where the targeted customers hang out on the Internet, learn what they read, find out what social networks they visit, and then discover industry-specific forums or blogs. Get the picture? Once the online advertisers know where his customers are, they will obviously advertise there. The advertiser would be sponsoring newsletters or dedicate solo e-mails which are extremely effective methods of advertising for many businesses. If the advertiser discovers that much of his target audience is subscribing to a certain newsletter, he will find out if he too can sponsor that newsletter or send a dedicated advertisement.

 

A dedicated or ‘solo’ e-mail is an email advertisement that a publisher will send to their newsletter list that contains only one piece of content: the online advertiser’s advertisement. This would be a golden chance and no good online advertiser would want to miss it. Once an online advertiser finds an area where it makes sense to advertise, they would quickly contact the publisher or vendor and set up a test. 

 

Publishers or vendors would always want to sell on a long-term contract to the online advertisers. But an intelligent online advertiser would never bite in. The advertiser would do his job of making this process scientific. He would shred off the guesswork and would opt to take the only way to do that is to test. It’s worth the test for the advertiser’s investment. 

The ideal online advertiser would in fact be sure to split-test, when he runs a test.

 

A good online advertiser when running a dedicated email, for example, will want to test a couple different subject lines against each other. On his next test, he chooses the subject line that performed best and then tests something in the body of the e-mail. Next he will test the landing page. Eventually, he gets to the point where he is confident in the number of leads or sales his online advertisement is going to produce every time he runs it. And, finally a brilliant online advertiser would only at that point, sign a long-term contract.

 

That’s about all that can make you a good, sensible online advertiser. In fact, it requires a bit of patience and scientific thinking, and it will eventually reap the desired results. Kindly feel free to ask questions about online advertising in the comments, while we at Simpliskills would be glad to address them in subsequent blog posts.