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.
