Online Advertising Models

In addition to optimizing your website and increasing your site traffic through search engines, consider advertising on third-party websites and in search engines using a combination of banner advertisements and text links.

• Graphical banner advertisements, pop-ups and text based ads are online ads that are placed on third-party websites that link back to your website. The ads are designed to encourage users to click through to your site to learn more and, ultimately, to buy. These ads can be set up for a fee – pay -per- click, pay-per-lead, pay-per-sale – or they can be part of a reciprocal ad exchange with an online “partner,” where you place your partner’s ad on your website in exchange for your partner doing the same.

• Paid advertising in search engines. Above, we mentioned briefly that some search engines offer marketers the opportunity to buy guaranteed search engine listings through the purchase of keywords. Google, for example, has a paid solution called Adwords – think of it as pay-per-click advertising in its simplest form. Google allows advertisers to bid for  “sponsored links” – paid listings across the top and down the right side of Google’s search results – on a per-bid basis. As an advertiser, you decide  what keywords you want to “bid” on, how much you are willing to pay per click back to your website, and how much you are willing to pay in total per day – USD $1? $10? More? Less? It’s completely up to you. Paid search engine listings are a quick, cost-effective way to get your site into search engines, without the wait associated with “natural” ranking.

Publishing on Third-Party Websites

Another, often overlooked, but cost-saving method of marketing your business online is by publishing editorials in third-party e-zines, e-newsletters and on information-based websites. Just as editorials in offline media can help position you as an expert in your field and drive readers to your website, providing articles written (or ghost-written) by you to targeted online media can also drive traffic to your website, often with no out-of-pocket expense. Just remember to include a short biography that outlines what you do and a link to your website at the bottom of each article you publish.

Permission Marketing Using Email

Permission-based email marketing can be a low-cost and very effective component of your web marketing strategy. It can help to build a relationship between your business and target market, and can drive traffic back to your website. Email marketing can consist of direct email blasts and sales letters, personalized autoresponders, and/or email newsletters.

If you have the budget and don’t have the time, you can certainly hire a freelancer or a firm to conceptualize, develop and publish your email messages for you.Although, for many small businesses, the costs associated with fully managed solutions are simply too high. The advantage to email marketing is that you can choose a do-it-yourself option, where you do all of the work, or part of it yourself, saving hundreds, even thousands of dollars.

Self-Publishing Using Low-Cost Internet Tools

There are a number of very easy to use self-publishing solutions available to small businesses. The costs of these tools are low – from USD $20 per month and up – and they are usually offered at a monthly or per-1000 email rate. The solutions are hosted entirely online, allowing you access from any computer connected to the Internet. Further, they are designed for small business owners with little technical knowledge. At a minimum, they offer a database, where you can house and manage your email addresses, a selection of HTML templates for your email messages, the ability to import your own templates, plain-text options, testing functions, and added extras such as customizable auto-responders and forward-toa- friend and unsubscribe features. You may even find an email publishing tool designed specifically for your industry. For example, the real estate industry has a number of do-it-yourself and fully managed email newsletter solutions available, some of which even include “canned” articles that users can choose to include in their own newsletter.

Here are some popular self-publishing solutions to consider:

• Constant Contact – www.constantcontact.com

• MyMailOut.com – www.mymailout.com

• Topica – www.topica.com

• Microsoft – www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness

The Problem with Spam

It must also be noted that more and more email marketers are struggling with spam filters, which are designed to protect email users from unscrupulous and unsolicited advertising. The problem arises when spam filters do such a good job that they succeed in filtering out legitimate marketing messages that email recipients have requested to receive. Unfortunately, as spam proliferates, as it undoubtedly will, the filters will only become better, causing email marketers to scramble to devise new ways to get their messages out to the public.

Ensuring High Delivery Rates

The easiest way to ensure that your emails will be delivered is to get permission from your client base to market to them through email. Getting permission is critical, particularly since new privacy legislation was introduced in 2004, which regulates how businesses collect, store and use their customers’ personal information. This includes email addresses.

Getting permission may mean asking in advance if you can send emails for a specific purpose, and requesting that your email address be flagged as legitimate in the recipient’s list to ensure your messages bypass any filters s/he may have installed. Currently, it also seems that HTML emails are becoming caught in spam filters more readily than plain-text emails. This may mean that a simple, plain-text email containing a link to an online message is the most effective  method for getting your message out. Alternatively, you can test your email messages for deliverability using software such as SpamCheck (http://spamcheck.sitesell.com) which checks your emails’ subject lines and body copy for filter triggers.

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