Online marketing is no doubt the most effective way to reach people. Its capability to earn millions is unquestioned. Perhaps, this is one of the most momentous discoveries of mankind. The internet has brought about a lot of changes in the world. It allowed us reach the unreachable; it permitted us to communicate with the people around the globe without spending much money. These are also the reason why people nowadays are investing in online marketing for their businesses…because beyond a doubt, online marketing will work for them. We do have a lot of options to choose from when it comes to advertising. In fact, we have the television, radios, print media and all. However, online marketing still belongs at the top of the list for many reasons. First, people prefer online marketing because it reaches the whole world. Your supposedly very small business may become very large almost overnight because of the magic of using online marketing because everyone in this world can literally see what you offer. Second, you reach the world and get millions without having to pay millions in return. The cost of online marketing compared to other forms of media is very efficient and cost effective. Let’s say you use print media. If you are going to make a flyer and advertise it over the world, how much would it cost you? If you were to pay for TV advertisement, you would definitely have to pay for every single second that your business is aired. Third, online marketing creates a two-way communication process. We do not simply promote what we have. Hence, we get to know what our visitors or what our customers think through the ”Comments” box on our web pages. By doing so, we get to know what they want and we are able to improve our products and services. Next, it is also very important that we build relationship with our customers. Yes, we may have benefited from them but we should always find ways to keep them coming back to our place of business or at least our website. With online marketing, we are able to do this because we can become interactive with them, thus, making our customers feel that they are valued. Fifth, in business, we always have to budget our resources. Unlike in other forms of media, we save a lot of money with online marketing because we will no longer need to keep sending letters, flyers or postcards every time we want to contact our customers or offer a promotion. In fact, the current trend is to only mail your customer information if they need additional resources or information about your business. For advertisements in newspapers and magazines, you have to pay for every inch of space, and even every color used in the design your ad. With online marketing, it is always cost-effective. The sixth reason why people have shifted to online marketing is its flexibility. For example, let’s say there has been a change in the benefits or features of your product or service, or even a change in your prices. Well, you’ll have to hire someone to redesign your ad, reprint it and send it out again…and that cost more money. But with online marketing, you can easily update your site and make the changes without removing money from your wallet. Does it sound great? Yes, it does. Well, are you getting the picture on why there is a craze with online marketing? Here’s more. Another reason a business should prefer online marketing is because you have a lot of media choices when promoting your business. You can opt to show videos, photo presentations, audio, blogs or even social media. There is nothing really hard about this type of strategy. It will definitely save you more time and of course, resources. Moreover, you can monitor what is going on with your business. Through the use of tracking, you have the chance to see the traffic generated by your site. With this feature of online marketing, you get to know what else you can do to tweak and improve your site because you see what keywords prospects are choosing to find you and incorporate more of those into your website. Online marketing is also an extremely effective type of advertising because you can design your website the way you want it. You have the power to add features in it, to create a web design that would attract visitors and make them stop on your web page and take a look at what you have. The best thing about it is that, you can do the changes anytime you want without worrying about your expenses. By controlling the design, more and more people will be attracted to your site and you will be able to create an amazing impression on them. Lastly, people go crazy about online marketing is because it is beneficial not just for businesses but for the consumers as well. Why? Simply because it makes everything much more convenient. The consumers need not go out of their house anymore and search around the city to look for what they want. With just a click, they can have it. And another thing is that the communication between the buyer and consumer is immediate. Response is very fast and that is why transactions are almost immediate. So there we have it. These ten reasons explain why online marketing has become the number one source of advertising today. You need not have a second thought anymore. All you have to do is close your eyes and dream of how money can be made when you invest your money in online marketing.

An old school marketing tenet says that you have to spend money to make money. Sure, when putting up a new business or expanding an established one, you have to spend on additional capital as well as advertising. But in the current state of economy, you have to think a lot before spending. So, when it comes to advertising in this technology- driven but sagging economy, it is best to put your bet on online marketing than traditional advertising types- and here are ten reasons why: 1. “Branding” is out, and measurable return of investment is in. Traditional marketing is great for building brand exposure, that is, if you have a large budget for marketing. But for the small- to mid-sized businesses, online marketing is the smart way to go. When you put an ad on TV, radio and newspaper, you have to wait for certain period of time before you can tell whether your product or service is doing well. With online marketing, you can have a daily reading of how much of the traffic you get is actually converting to sales or not. With that, you can make immediate business decisions for your company. 2. Information in a flash. One major benefit of online advertising over traditional advertising is that you don’t have to wait for months before you launch your product or service. In fact, you can publish any information and content immediately and not limited by neither geography nor time. 3. Quality exposure. When a person passes by a billboard or sees an ad on TV, you cannot tell whether he or she is interested in what you are selling at that time or whether they will be interested in the future or whether they even noticed the campaign. However, a person clicks on an ad in the web when he or she is interested. With online marketing, you actually get your target market. 4. Cost-effective exposure. How much does a TV spot cost these days? Running a small ad in a paper for a day can already cost you a couple hundreds dollars – more if the paper has a wider circulation. However, not all of those who read the papers even read your ad. Some people just click to some other channel on TV when the commercials come on. However, you still have to pay for their viewing your advertisement. Even with pay-per-click (PPC) and other forms of paid online marketing you only pay for the views of people who are interested in your service/products. SEO is even more cost-effective in the long run because it could give you quality exposure for a relatively small financial investment. 5. Prime position. With traditional advertising you pay more to have your ads displayed in a place where it can be seen by the most number of people (Prime time on TV, for example or a billboard on a busy highway, etc). With successful online marketing your position is always prime position. Good SEO will help you rise in the search engine results pages for relevant searches, making sure you’re right there when people want you. 6. Long-term exposure. You can only place a certain amount of advertisement on TV for a few weeks, on the papers, for a day – but with good SEO, you can maintain the same site for years. However, online marketing can complement traditional media by providing directories towards previously made advertisements or those of other brands. 7. Online marketing is best for brand engagement. Studies reveal that among customers, particularly non-techie female internet users with children under 16, the Internet has a greater effect on brand engagement than print media, TV and outdoor advertisement. Brand engagement is one of the factors that ensure brand loyalty among customers. And in this time of recession, it is important to maintain buyers. 8. Online marketing provides insight and other interactive mediums. Studies also show that the internet also has a crucial role in the propagation of indirect experiences of brands through customer reviews. Online video directories for brands are a good example of interactive advertising. Customers can also choose to visit the brand’s website, or interact with the advertiser through other channels such as email, chat or phone. Response to brand communication is instantaneous, and conversion to business is very high. 9. Website users buy more online than average newspaper users. In Germany, Internet users are enthusiastic online shoppers, as well. Before making a purchase, either online or in a store, many German consumers research the product on the Internet. By 2005, online buyers rose by 7%, taking the total number of online shoppers to 27.4 million. 10. Product information. Almost as important for consumers was the search for product information. Research online was particularly popular wherein it came to slow moving consumer goods such as cars, domestic appliances, consumer electronics, mobile phone contracts and furniture. During this time of recession, people think a lot before they spend their money. With free and rich information online, people don’t mind doing a little research and reading some reviews and recommendations before they go and buy certain products.

It would be unwise to jump into Pay-Per-Click marketing without having a set of relevant keywords. Pay-Per-Click marketing is all about targeting specific keywords. Most prospects search for your products or services by typing in relevant “key words” into the search engine keyword toolbar in order to find the keyword search results they are looking for. The search engines show natural and Pay-Per-Click results after analyzing the relevance of those keywords. A website that wants to rank high on the Pay-Per-Click search results, must have their most relevant keywords optimized they begin their Pay-Per-Click program. These sets of keywords are generated using several different methods and a variety of keyword tools such as the Google Keyword Tool. This keyword list is generally segregated into groups of related keywords and keyword phrases which best match the core content of the website’s landing page for which these Pay-Per-Click keyword groups direct them to. This landing page and its content should also be optimized with relevant keywords from your list in order to receive a higher relevant page rank. Also, the more relevant your Pay-Per-Click ad is, the higher its results and the lower your costs are. Your list of keywords will be used extensively within your website and in all of your online marketing. Not only will you use this keyword list for your landing pages and its content, you will also use it to create your Pay-Per-Click banner ads; therefore, one of the worst things you can do is choose a wrong or unrelated set of keywords because this will lower the rank of your Pay-Per-Click ad while costing you more money, decrease the flow of traffic to your website, and have a severe negative effect on the conversion rate. Due to the overall importance of selecting relevant keywords, Pay-Per-Click keyword selection is probably the most important task you will ever encounter in your online marketing efforts and this should not be left to someone who is NOT a professional. You must understand that if your keyword lists are not specifically designed to meet your exact marketing needs, you will never achieve the results that you desire and deserve with your hard-earned marketing dollars. You must first set up you Pay-Per-Click account. Since Google Adwords is the most common PPC ad agency, let’s assume that’s where you’ll start. First set up a Google Adwords account. Google will pretty much walk you through this, but a couple of key points. First, uncheck the content network button first (we’ll discuss this a little later) and second, make sure you set up the optimizer for testing your ads against each other. After you have set up your Google Adwords account, it’s time to create your first ad group and ad. In order for you to get the best “quality score” you should remember two words, “relevancy” and “action”. In other words, make sure you have your keywords grouped into specific ad groups based on their likeness and create your ad specifically for this one group. This will increase your groups “relevancy”. Secondly, when creating your ad, make sure you ask for a specific “action”, such as directing them to a specific landing page which is relevant to that specific group of keyword group. There are also “negative keywords” that you should specifically designate within your Pay-Per-Click campaign. These are words that would cause a prospect to click through to your website, but that has no relevancy to your particular type of business. For example, you may think that the keyword “night stand” would be of particular interest to a furniture store, but in actuality a person was actually looking for a “one night stand”. Obviously, a different profession!! With more and more businesses using Pay-Per-Click marketing and getting a good return on their investment, it’s becoming more difficult to maintain market share due to the increased competition and in turn a higher cost-per-conversion for you. But one way we have adapted is by using a Geo-targeted Pay-Per-Click campaign. A Geo-targeted Pay-Per-Click campaign uses your keywords but targets a specific geographical area, such as Dallas or Texas. This is a great way for local businesses to can’t or don’t need to serve a national audience. Geo-targeted Pay-Per-Click ads also tend to get good quality scores which results in a lower cost-per-click and a higher return on investment. Once you’ve set up your campaign, it’s time to create your ads. You will be able to write as many four line ads as you’d like for each particular adword group. I would suggest starting out by writing two ads for each group and testing them against each other until you find a winner. Obviously, as with any type of advertising, there are specific strategies that are most effective when it comes to writing ads. Here are some simple guidelines: – Line 1 should contain your main keyword you are targeting and get attention – Lines 2 & 3 should list specific benefits that your prospect will receive – Line 4 should be a clear call-to-action Once you’ve tracked, tested and tweaked your Pay-Per-Click campaign and ads where they’re running smoothly, you’ll want to expand your campaign to other search engines such as Yahoo and Bing as well as advertise on the content network within Google. The content network is where you can place text ads or banner ads on specific websites or specific types of websites that are related to your industry. Setting up your Pay-Per-Click campaign can be a very labor extensive and expensive task if you don’t know exactly what you are doing. A good Pay-Per-Click management company can be worth its weight in gold. Often the amount of money that you will lose due to poor keyword selection, bad ad creation, and improper testing can pay for a great company to manage your account for you.