Advertising on the internet can be hugely profitable to your business. With the rate of internet users in Australia escalating to 65.4% of the Australian population (Nielsen/Netratings Dec 2004) your potential customers are more than likely using the internet to look for your products or services every day. We have listed the most popular ways to direct customers to your business through the fastest growing medium today, the Internet.
Internet users would be familiar with the colourful graphic advertisements on popular sites such as Ninemsn or Yahoo. This is banner advertising. Businesses using Banner advertisements usually pay that particular website a cost “per impression”. This means they pay a specified amount every time the web page with their advertisement receives a visitor. This form of advertising is most useful for brand awareness.
These advertisements appear on search engines, such as Google, usually in prominent positions at the beginning of the search results as “sponsored links” or down the side of the page. They usually include a heading followed by a short description and a link to their website. The advertiser can choose when the advertisement will appear by selecting “keywords” or “key phrases”. This means they can control the market they wish to target. Keywords are selected based on what their customers would type into the search engine to find their particular product or service. This form of advertising is useful to direct your target market to your website.
There are many industry specific directories on the Internet and you don’t need to have a website to be listed on many of them. However, having a website will help you compete against the other businesses who are most likely to have a link to their website. Some of them are free but many charge a fee for listings. Some directories will list your site for free on the condition that you add their link to a prominent page on your website. Make sure to read the “Privacy Policy” upon registering to make sure your details are not forwarded to third parties who will flood your email with SPAM.
Links to your site from other websites is advantageous for two reasons. Firstly, it directs traffic in from that site and secondly, it will improve your page ranking on some search engines. Search engines follow links through a site and when that link goes to another site, it views that site as potentially important.
The links should ideally be from sites relevant to your industry and list relevant keywords. With many links, the search engine will identify your website as an authority on the keyword subject and increase your ranking accordingly.
Email Marketing is the use of emails to promote your products or services. It is very important to comply with the Anti-Spam laws in Australia when considering an email marketing campaign. Basically an email campaign should be “permission based” meaning the receiver of the email has either “opted-in” (subscribed to a mailing list or newsletter) or has a relationship with you such as a previous customer.
It is important to provide the option to unsubscribe in your email messages and to delete anyone requesting to unsubscribe from your mailing list immediately. Failure to comply with the Australian Anti-Spam laws carries hefty penalties.
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