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Testing the Internet Waters
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Tim McCarthy is a New York City-based consultant whose experience includes working for Disney.com, Forbes.com and Yahoo.com. A graduate of Springfield Central High School and Bennington College, he can be contacted at timothymccarthy@yahoo.com.
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An online advertising primer, By Timothy McCarthy
If advertising online seems like a foreign, unforgiving and not altogether welcoming prospect, you are not alone. It may appear that most of the world is now comfortably navigating the online space and enjoying a direct and profitable relationship with its customers, but that's not exactly true. Not yet, anyway.
There's no one formula
The biggest names in business, though much farther along then they were a few years ago, are still figuring out what works. Recent converts, they are still wrestling with the possibilities and difficulties of a medium that's very different from what they are used to. That should not discourage anyone from investigating how their business can benefit from exposure online. With a little research, the individual business owner can access resources and make testing the waters a friendly proposition.
Online advertising and "traditional" advertising have a similar objective to use the right message at the right time to engage the right people. To this end, there are multiple online options, each with its own advantages. When researching the possibilities, keep paramount your company's objectives and how each option can help reach them.
Online ad forms
Online advertising can be divided into two categories: search and display. Search is analogous to classified ads and display corresponds to a billboard or print ad. As with a billboard on the side of the highway, place an ad for your product or service on publisher's site and everyone who visits that site will see your ad. Such ads can be useful for a launching a product, promoting a special event, or just to create name recognition on a site that's an appropriate match for your business.
The online advantage
Where online trumps offline is in its ability to target an audience on a one-to-one basis. Online eases the process of reaching people actively looking for your services or who match a target audience profile. Especially for a smaller business, advertising online can maximize limited advertising dollars as ads can be geo-targeted, be it in a search or display setting, based on the user's location, down to their zip code. Depending on your budget and the capabilities of the publisher's site, ads can be sent to users based on age, gender, expressed interests, or income, as well as a number of other parameters.
About search marketing
On this micro-level, search marketing is a rapidly growing category. With programs such as Google AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing, the company (advertiser) bids on keywords it believes a target audience uses when searching for information online. Depending on the amount of the bid and the relevance of the search results, an ad will, ideally, appear at the top of the search results page. The user actively looking for information about a product or service is, in this scenario, matched directly with you. Based on a pay-per-click model, it involves a cost that's usually lower than display advertising, is easily optimized for better performance, and is generally a great way for a small company to test the online waters.
With the metrics available to measure success and endless ways to reach the customers most important to you, advertising online is a crucial part of growing a business. Take some time to explore your options. Networking offline is a great way to find out what is working for others online. E-mail newsletters, blogs and the like can be a big help in letting you know what's out there and can be marketing tools to use yourself down the road. There is a lot to learn, but the good news is that if you do the groundwork, an online ad campaign can be an extremely cost-effective and rewarding experience. If done well, it can lead effectively to a one-on-one relationship with potential customers and can be a great way to maintain contact with existing ones.
Tim McCarthy is a New York City-based consultant whose experience includes working for Disney.com, Forbes.com and Yahoo.com. A graduate of Springfield Central High School and Bennington College, he can be contacted at timothymccarthy@yahoo.com.
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