Does online advertising work or is it all hype? There are various methods of online advertising which include getting free or natural results from search engines, paying search engines for premium listings or pay per click results, banner advertising, sponsored listings, paying private website owners to advertise on their site. Unlike other advertising media, online advertising can be quantified by looking at the log files of your website and finding out the effect of your internet marketing campaign. Unfortunately, too many businesses just believe that if they are on the internet or spending money on online advertising that it simply must be working.
Premium listing is expensive and many times you need to guess the keywords or key word phrases that your internet user would type in to the search box to find your product or service. You may end up paying a couple thousand dollars for 40 visitors to your site. How many businesses have ever paid someone to analyse the log files or looked at the files themselves to find out who is coming to their site, which countries their visitors come from, the search terms that their visitors used or whether the internet user turned from a prospect to a sale. Most businesses are comfortable with the myth that just because several million or billion people are connected to the internet that somehow their site must be getting some of that traffic. Of course, its wishful thinking and for any business foolish not to invest time and money finding out how to advertise on the internet and how to combine both internet marketing with traditional methods of marketing.
Free or natural search results
Natural search results or free search results are invaluable. Research from Enquiro as well as many other research firms, found a “significant amount of confusion over sponsored links.” In the research conducted, over 77% of participants when performing a product research search choose a natural listing over a paid listing. Even during an actual purchase scenario, 67% of participants still choose a natural listing over a paid one. 85% of Google searchers, chose the natural listing over the premium, paid listing.
The warning here is that the premium listing that you are paying top dollar for may not be generating the return on investment that natural search results generate.
Another study conducted by MarketingSherpa called “Search Marketing Metrics Survey” in July 2004, showed that “conversions from (natural) search engine results are 25%+ higher than paid search
It may be that users attibute more credibility to websites that gain natural search results or it may be that websites that appear higher in search engines tend to have more content and better written content.
Paid Online Advertising
If you don't have the time or money to invest in web copywriting or search engine optimization and you have a niche product or service, then a Google ad words is an option that carries the least amount of risk. Visit https://adwords.google.com/select/
However, google adwords or other pay per click (PPC) ads are also subject to risk. Click fraud and impression fraud are growing and it is important to weight that risk against any gains made advertising using these channels
Importance of Copywriting
It cannot be understated that in the pursuit of top search engine rankings, the conversion rate is very poor if the copywriting is bad. Most businesses do not spend enough time or money on a website copywriter who understands marketing and search engine optimization. The internet user wants you to differentiate your business from your competitors, and copywriting, especially on the homepage must sell.
Customer Service
Customer service is part of online advertising strategy and without it, all the search engine optimization in the world won't help sell your products or service.
Businesses must respond within 24 hours to customer enquiries or risk losing a sale. The longer the response, the more likely you are to lose a sale.
Conclusion
Online advertising is important but before investing money in pay per click campaigns, premium listings, search engine optimization make sure that your website copywriting is up to scratch and your staff are ready and able to respond to customer enquiries.
See also http://www.passioncomputing.com.au/Website_Redesign/Statistical_analysis.aspx for information on statistical analysis of website usage
http://www.passioncomputing.com.au/Web_Copywriting/Web_Copy_writing.aspx for information about web copywriting
http://www.passioncomputing.com.au/Website_Redesign/Search_Engine_Optimisation.aspx for information about search engine optimization
0 comments:
Post a Comment