Small Business Advertising p. 3
Banner Advertisements: What are banner advertisements? If you are a regular internet user then you are probably pretty familiar with banner ads because they appear on nearly every website on the net! These ads are generally on the very top of a website or they run down one of the vertical sides. A banner ad is sort of a mix between a traditional advertisement and a hyperlink because it has the look and feel of a flyer with the productivity of a link. As soon as you click on the ad (or sometimes just run your cursor over it) you will be transferred immediately to the website host!
For your business website you can use banner ads in two major ways- as a marketing tool and as a money making tool. Here’s how!
Marketing tool: Banner ads work as a marketing tool because you can design your own advertisement based on your specific retail product line. Keep the ad consistent with your business name and logo and make sure you design it in a similar format you would a flyer. For instance, if you see a quality type of poker card, make sure you get this point across and state your specialty (poker cards) and possibly any other side products that you sell in small print at the bottom. Banner ads are a great marketing tool and you can go through many connecting businesses to post them.
Money making tool: Banner ads as a money maker are more of a controversial topic for small businesses, although most agree that they have more benefits then downfalls. Here’s how they work: You would have banner ads from other businesses posted on your own website that have ads about products connected to your own retail products (although no competitors!). You would get paid by the banner ad companies by each time a consumer clicks on the ad. This is a great way to make a little bit of income for doing virtually nothing! The only things to keep in mind are to not put competing companies on your website and to make sure the banner ads aren’t too much of a distraction to website visitors.
Pay-per-click: Ah, pay-per-click advertising (PPC). This is one of the most popular among small business owners who make a living off their internet sales because it involves little planning, little time and it comes with heavily monitored results. This is how it works in a nutshell:
An advertiser works to get a certain keyword or phrase that hits their targeted market (in the clothing department retail world it may be, “clothing apparel, shirts, jeans ECT). This would be the word or phrase the business owner hopes consumers will type in the search engine when they are looking for a retailer to buy the product from. Then, the business would have a reserved slot on that particular search engines website (when that actual word was searched for) and they would only pay each time a consumer clicked on their link.
Why is pay-per-click advertising such a popular form of marketing? The biggest reason is that it is completely budgeting friendly. You aren’t really taking a big risk because you will only be forced to pay for those times your link is actually clicked on, not for just having your link up online! Many PPC hosts even let you set a monetary limit on how much you are willing to spend or how many clicks you are willing to budget! Google is a great example of this with their Ad Words program which lets you decide to spend $10 a month, $20 a month and so forth depending on how much you want to spend on this advertising format!
This advertising method is also pretty popular because you can monitor it very well. If you are selling poker tables on the internet and are having a difficult time figuring out which of your marketing methods is working the best, pay-per-click advertising lets you see how many clicks are going directly to your business website and what the result of these clicks is!
Newsletter or E-zine: One of the most unconventional yet most exciting forms of advertisement consists of newsletters and/ or E- zines. What are these documents? Well, we’ve all heard of newsletters in their ‘regular’ format- printed four page long leaflets that include all the basic information, plus relevant news, about a business that comes out either once per month, every other month or twice per year. These newsletters have always been distributed through snail mail or by pick up at local stores but the internet has changed the way of the newsletter. Now everything is done digitally!
The online newsletter is comes in a downloadable format (usually PDF) and it is much cheaper then the normal newsletter format (no printing or mailing charges!). Without these additional charges, more businesses are capable of making newsletters and frankly, they can’t afford not too! Here are a few ways newsletters benefit a small business:
Newsletters help bring much needed loyalty from customers! Because an online newsletter can be expected and counted on each and every month, more small businesses can take advantage of them to bring in repeat customers!
Newsletters inform customers of businesses new practices! Whatever new news that you have going on, a customer can learn right from the get-go with a product newsletter!
Newsletters are cheap and easy! Remember- no printing or mailing charges!
For your retail product website you should aim for a 3 to 4 page newsletter, probably every month or every other month. A great thing to do is include new relevant news and new products/ services that you are offering for both your online store and your local store (if you have one). If you do it right, customers will start checking out your newsletter or E-zine just to learn more about the products or services you are offering. Getting attention is the most important, and essential thing about advertising.
There is more on this subject, as well as a complete description of newsletters and E-zines in the next Section.
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