As a business owner, you know that Online Advertising is considered a necessity to drive traffic and increase sales.
Outside of a pay per click campaign, what other options are there? Think outside the box to find other ways to increase exposure to your company and its products or services.
Paid Online Advertising
Banners and pop-up ads on content related websites have long been a popular form of advertising online. A banner or pop-up could be highly effective placed on a web-based Email program like Hotmail.
The online version of your local newspaper is another possibility. Be forewarned that they are expensive, particularly if you place a banner ad on any of the popular, larger sites such as MSN or the like.
The benefit to this type of online advertising is that you will reach millions of potential customers. The more you can narrow down the sites where your ad appears to best match your niche market, the more qualified your traffic will be. The only downside to any of these is the cost.
Let’s consider some other forms of Online Advertising that won’t break the bank.
Link Exchange
Exchanging links with an appropriate website can be a great way to advertise your company for free. The key is to find other online merchants whose products or services are complementary to yours. Your direct competitors will probably refuse placing a link to your URL on their site, but a site that offers something related to your focus shouldn’t mind.
While it is more advantageous to you to partner with a site that receives a lot of traffic, you may have difficulty getting them to agree to a one-to-one trade. You might have to offer them more in exchange for your link posted there, such as a blog post or article touting their business.
Remind them that it is good SEO to have another external link in order to overcome any further objections.
Newsletters
Another way to advertise is to create a newsletter. You can develop one that is printed and goes out in the mail, make it into an email message, or post it on a Yahoo group. Refer to a previous article here that gives information on newsletter writing tips. Just remember to make it informative, and not totally focused on promotion of your company.
Local Pages
Craig’s List, Yahoo Shopping, eBay, and other sites that list businesses and products by locality are a great way to reach customers in your geographic area. There is a cost involved with listing an ad on some of these sites, whilst others are free. The biggest advantage is that you can harness the huge amount of targeted traffic to these pages and use it to your advantage.
The way you use Online Advertising for your business largely depends on your budget. If you are short of funds, then be creative in finding ways to spread the word about your company and its products or services.
Remember that word of mouth is one of the best ways to advertise. Provide good merchandise with excellent online customer support and your customers will do much of the advertising for you.
About Sean Rasmussen
Some excellent ideas here Sean.
I didn’t realize that Ebay could be used for advertising. Have to check that out. Is the pricing competitive?
I had heard that Craigs List was free but never looked into it.
Ebay has changed so much, I am not sure what options they have any more Gee. It may be worth you while investigating if that is something that interests you
Hi Sean,
That is interesting I too will have to go investigate Ebay I am always on there so I guess that is another area I could look at
Rita
Hi Sean,
This is great information. What do you think about advertising options like Facebook ads, or buying advertising through StumbleUpon, BlogCatalog and the like? This is also something I’ve been thinking of trying.
Interesting information on how you can advertise online. I am wondering how to decide if paid advertisement makes sense and how much to invest. But I guess that is different for every person and every product you plan to advertise for.
My recommendation would be to start out very small and learn all you can about paid advertising before jumping in too heavily Renee.
Hi Sean,
I currently use the free options of advertising and have started using social media sites like twitter & Facebook as a means of getting offers out there because it costs you only time rather than money.
Thanks for the tips about using Craig’s List, Yahoo Shopping & eBay… it’s always nice to find new ways to advertise for free! : )
Hi Sean,
I’m a firm believer that word of mouth is the best form of advertising. I had not thought it could also apply to online advertising.
Besides having quality products and good online customer support is there any other way to gain word of mouth advertising from customers?
Providing quality products and top notch customer service are really the best ways to gain more exposure via word of mouth Jill. It’s the same as the offline world, if people like the product and service, they will generally tell other people about it.
Like Jill, I prefer word of mouth advertising, however, I am also willing to get some other forms of advertising on my blogs as it may be a while until I build up my customer base,
There are lot’s of great ideas here that I have posted to my bookmarks. Thankyou,