Affordable Online Advertising

PPC advertising is an advertisement where you only pay when someone clicks on your link and visits your site. You may have noticed these ads displayed on search engine result pages and content sites. How it works is that you pay an initial deposit when you set up your bid management account. You then write your two or three line ad and view keywords or phrases related to your business or product and bid for an ad position. Ads near the top are more valuable because they generate more clicks. When a visitor to the search engine (SE) views a page with your ad and clicks on it you are charged the bid amount by the SE from your account.

PPC can be a very profitable form of advertising if it is set up and managed skillfully. PPC can provide immediate results, is easy to manage with a limited budget through setting daily limits and it is easy to test the effectiveness of your campaign. Managing a PPC campaign and getting the most out of it is a very tricky business. If you have the time there are plenty of resources on the Internet and provided by search engines such as Google to assist you to learn how to get the most out of PPC. If you don’t have the time then you will need to engage the services of a marketing company to set up and manage your campaign. Google has a program which qualifies individuals or companies as Google Adword Professionals. They have to satisfy certain criteria and sit an exam to achieve this qualification. You can look for their symbol and use it as a guide to whether the marketing company you intend to use is able to manage your campaign successfully.

To use Email marketing successfully you need to:

1. Create your Email letters and place them in an autoresponder
2. Have a list of Email addresses you have collected from your website or from your current customer base
3. Track your results through an ad tracking program to measure results

An autoresponder is a software program that can send automatic pre-written emails to people on your email list.

You can set up your own Email marketing campaign or have a professional company do it for you. Either way it is important to define your goals before you begin. Ask yourself what is it that you want to achieve and then set up your campaign with these goals in mind.
Once you have built a solid email list you need to treat it like gold and provide high value, succinct information, know your subscriber well and keep your message well defined and relevant.

To use Article marketing successfully you need to:

• Write articles to inform not as blatant advertisements. They must be quality informational articles. There must be no reference to your website or business in the body of the article.
• Do keyword research and write your articles with relevant keywords to assist readers to find your article
• Place a resource box at the end of every article. Make it short and to the point including your name, credentials and website address.
• Submit your article to quality article directories and place your article in the relevant category

Tips for writing a good Press Release are:

• Three essential parts: Headline, Introduction and the body.
• Headline is very important, give it a lot of thought, make it informative
• Make your introduction short and interesting
• Body includes who, what, where, why and when. Make it people centered.
• 400-500 words with correct spelling and grammar
• Write you’re your press release using targeted keywords
• Track your results

Use a service like PRWeb to distribute your press release. Ensure that the package you choose allows you to use keywords in your release, target specific markets and track your results.

This information has given you an idea of the types of online advertising available. You can use one or all types depending on your business and your marketing goals. How much you spend and your return on this investment is relative to how well planned and executed your marketing campaign is. Read on for more information about tracking the return on your marketing investment.

Next: Part 4 Return on Investment

Tracking return on marketing investment is an essential task to ensure you have an effective marketing and advertising program. If you can successfully track your ROI you will have mastered effective online advertising which will save your precious time and money.