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As published in:
How to Break through the Clutter and Attract Traffic on the Web with Simple
Plain-Text Ads
by Matthew Capala
Published Online at EmarketingInaBox.com (2007)
Published in The Graduate Voice (Jan. 2008)
The number one stumbling block to online success is that businesses do not know how to allocate their
online marketing budgets—i.e., choose the most efficient and effective e-marketing tactics. Online start-
ups usually have great ideas, build fancy websites and even hire consultants; yet, time and again they
fail to make money online and either fail, or operate on the edge of profitability. One of the reasons is
that they do not know how to attract substantial traffic to their sites.
The bottom line is: on the Web it is all about traffic. No matter what your website objectives are, if your
Website is not getting enough ‘hits,’ you will never see a dollar. Thus, in order to succeed on the Web
you have to have an ‘it-is-all-about-traffic’ mentality. You also need to be strategic in terms of which
online marketing tactics you choose to succeed in the cluttered e-marketplace and get the highest ROI.
There are myriad opportunities to successfully launch a business on the Internet…but building a
Website is only the first step. It is like putting up a lemonade stand in a desert. Unless you point people
to that lemonade stand, no one is going to buy from you. So you want to put up signs on the roads,
directing traffic to that stand. You want to put those signs in heavily trafficked areas to maximize the
number of people who see it.
Now, since you are in the desert, there might not be any heavily trafficked areas nearby. But on the
Web, people are just a click away from any piece of online real estate. So you want to put your
advertising signs up where there is traffic that is “qualified” to buy from you. In this case, “qualified”
entails those Web searchers who are interested in your product or service. Recent studies show that
about 30% of all people who use the Web search in the US are going to search engines such as Google
or Yahoo! with an intention to buy a product or service.
When you buy advertising online, you are basically trying to buy traffic because you do not get many
visits through natural (or organic) search. Simply put, you are paying someone to put a sign on their
Website to redirect people to your Website. In the old days of the Internet, advertisers could only buy
banners. Banners are those big square or rectangular ads on Websites that appear at the top, bottom,
right side, left side, or anywhere else that a Website is willing to sell their space to advertisers. As an
advertiser, you buy banner space on a “per-thousand” basis. The term which you will hear if you buy
banner space is CPM – which stands for Cost per Thousand (M is the Roman numeral for the number
1000).
If, as an advertiser, it costs you a $5 CPM for a banner space on a site, that means that for every 1000
people that see your ad, you are paying $5 to the business that is allowing your ad to be displayed on
its site.
Even though 1000 people might see the ad for every $5 you pay, you probably are not going to get 1000
people to click through that ad and come to your site. Rather, you will probably get some small
percentage that click through, also known as the click-through-rate or CTR. Recent studies show that
the CTR for banner advertising is the smallest among e-marketing channels. According to eMarketer, the
click-through-rate of Banner ads declined from 0.75% in 2006 to 0.2% in 2007, meaning on average only
2 people out of 1000 click on banner ads.
Although banner advertising is still big business on the Web, many advertisers have shifted their online
advertising budgets to what is known as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising or “sponsored links”. With PPC,
advertisers only pay the Website where their ad appears when someone actually clicks on the ad. So
instead of paying advertising dollars for eyeballs that may see but never click through your banner ads,
you are only paying for visitors who actually are interested enough to click on your sponsored-link PPC
ads. You only pay on “performance,” that is, when someone takes an action – in this case, clicking on
your ad.
Whereas banner advertising is the online equivalent of buying relatively large space ads in a newspaper
or magazine, pay-per-click ads are like tiny classified ads. There are usually no graphics associated
with sponsored links – they are simply lines of text promoting an offer or describing a product that
appear on top and along the right columns of search engine result pages (SERPs) or on your Gmail.
These ads are related to the keywords you typed into the Google search bar, or to the content of your
email.
So why do these simple plain-text ads get so much more attention these days than prominent banner
ads where you can use fancy images, flash and videos?
Pay-per-click ads might show up in Google’s or Yahoo!’s search results or on Web sites that display the
ads intermingled with other related content, which is a marketing tactic known as site-targeting or
contextual advertising. For example, if you sell digital cameras online, you would probably consider
placing your ad on a Web site or blog that offers consumer electronic product reviews, and you would
also want your ad to be displayed on Google when the keyword “buy digital camera” is typed into the
search bar. The first option is often referred to as “contextual web marketing” since your ad shows up
next to contextually relevant articles, and the second is known as “search engine marketing” (SEM).
The ability to get your customized message in front of interested buyers when they are searching for
your product/service makes search engine marketing (SEM) a very effective and targeted way to
advertise. The popularity of PPC advertising has skyrocketed in the past several years in part because
you can easily track the return on your marketing investment and also due to the awareness of search
marketing created by the success of Google and Yahoo!, which run the two largest PPC advertising
networks.
Like in traditional marketing, on the Internet you also have to focus on the customers and meet their
needs. When people enter keywords into a search box like the one at Google, Yahoo or any other
search engine, they have a need. They have a question that they want answered. They want to be
served the solution in the form of information as to how they can resolve their problem. They are
essentially saying: “I’m searching for….” or simply “I need….”
Your job as a marketer is to put yourself in their shoes. You must ask yourself: What keywords are my
ideal prospects going to type into their search boxes? If you do not select the right keywords, you
simply won’t get the traffic you want to your Web site. You won’t get a chance to show that brilliant
advertising copy that will motivate prospects to click through to your site, read your unbeatable offer, and
then buy your product/service.
Search Engine Marketing is a rapidly growing industry. According to Forrester, digital marketing
spending among all online channels was highest for paid search PPC – with $4,067 billion spent in
2006. Moreover, according to a survey done by MarketingSherpa online advertisers unanimously ranked
paid search ads as the best performing online marketing channel in 2006. In comparison, flashy Banners
ads were ranked as one of the least effective with only 14% of respondents indicating that they perform
great and 40% indicating that they perform worst.
Matthew Capala
EMarketingInaBox.com
More Articles
How to Break through the Clutter and Attract Traffic on the Web with Simple
Plain-Text Ads
by Matthew Capala
Published Online at EmarketingInaBox.com (2007)
Published in The Graduate Voice (Jan. 2008)
The number one stumbling block to online success is that businesses do not know how to allocate their
online marketing budgets—i.e., choose the most efficient and effective e-marketing tactics. Online start-
ups usually have great ideas, build fancy websites and even hire consultants; yet, time and again they
fail to make money online and either fail, or operate on the edge of profitability. One of the reasons is
that they do not know how to attract substantial traffic to their sites.
The bottom line is: on the Web it is all about traffic. No matter what your website objectives are, if your
Website is not getting enough ‘hits,’ you will never see a dollar. Thus, in order to succeed on the Web
you have to have an ‘it-is-all-about-traffic’ mentality. You also need to be strategic in terms of which
online marketing tactics you choose to succeed in the cluttered e-marketplace and get the highest ROI.
There are myriad opportunities to successfully launch a business on the Internet…but building a
Website is only the first step. It is like putting up a lemonade stand in a desert. Unless you point people
to that lemonade stand, no one is going to buy from you. So you want to put up signs on the roads,
directing traffic to that stand. You want to put those signs in heavily trafficked areas to maximize the
number of people who see it.
Now, since you are in the desert, there might not be any heavily trafficked areas nearby. But on the
Web, people are just a click away from any piece of online real estate. So you want to put your
advertising signs up where there is traffic that is “qualified” to buy from you. In this case, “qualified”
entails those Web searchers who are interested in your product or service. Recent studies show that
about 30% of all people who use the Web search in the US are going to search engines such as Google
or Yahoo! with an intention to buy a product or service.
When you buy advertising online, you are basically trying to buy traffic because you do not get many
visits through natural (or organic) search. Simply put, you are paying someone to put a sign on their
Website to redirect people to your Website. In the old days of the Internet, advertisers could only buy
banners. Banners are those big square or rectangular ads on Websites that appear at the top, bottom,
right side, left side, or anywhere else that a Website is willing to sell their space to advertisers. As an
advertiser, you buy banner space on a “per-thousand” basis. The term which you will hear if you buy
banner space is CPM – which stands for Cost per Thousand (M is the Roman numeral for the number
1000).
If, as an advertiser, it costs you a $5 CPM for a banner space on a site, that means that for every 1000
people that see your ad, you are paying $5 to the business that is allowing your ad to be displayed on
its site.
Even though 1000 people might see the ad for every $5 you pay, you probably are not going to get 1000
people to click through that ad and come to your site. Rather, you will probably get some small
percentage that click through, also known as the click-through-rate or CTR. Recent studies show that
the CTR for banner advertising is the smallest among e-marketing channels. According to eMarketer, the
click-through-rate of Banner ads declined from 0.75% in 2006 to 0.2% in 2007, meaning on average only
2 people out of 1000 click on banner ads.
Although banner advertising is still big business on the Web, many advertisers have shifted their online
advertising budgets to what is known as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising or “sponsored links”. With PPC,
advertisers only pay the Website where their ad appears when someone actually clicks on the ad. So
instead of paying advertising dollars for eyeballs that may see but never click through your banner ads,
you are only paying for visitors who actually are interested enough to click on your sponsored-link PPC
ads. You only pay on “performance,” that is, when someone takes an action – in this case, clicking on
your ad.
Whereas banner advertising is the online equivalent of buying relatively large space ads in a newspaper
or magazine, pay-per-click ads are like tiny classified ads. There are usually no graphics associated
with sponsored links – they are simply lines of text promoting an offer or describing a product that
appear on top and along the right columns of search engine result pages (SERPs) or on your Gmail.
These ads are related to the keywords you typed into the Google search bar, or to the content of your
email.
So why do these simple plain-text ads get so much more attention these days than prominent banner
ads where you can use fancy images, flash and videos?
Pay-per-click ads might show up in Google’s or Yahoo!’s search results or on Web sites that display the
ads intermingled with other related content, which is a marketing tactic known as site-targeting or
contextual advertising. For example, if you sell digital cameras online, you would probably consider
placing your ad on a Web site or blog that offers consumer electronic product reviews, and you would
also want your ad to be displayed on Google when the keyword “buy digital camera” is typed into the
search bar. The first option is often referred to as “contextual web marketing” since your ad shows up
next to contextually relevant articles, and the second is known as “search engine marketing” (SEM).
The ability to get your customized message in front of interested buyers when they are searching for
your product/service makes search engine marketing (SEM) a very effective and targeted way to
advertise. The popularity of PPC advertising has skyrocketed in the past several years in part because
you can easily track the return on your marketing investment and also due to the awareness of search
marketing created by the success of Google and Yahoo!, which run the two largest PPC advertising
networks.
Like in traditional marketing, on the Internet you also have to focus on the customers and meet their
needs. When people enter keywords into a search box like the one at Google, Yahoo or any other
search engine, they have a need. They have a question that they want answered. They want to be
served the solution in the form of information as to how they can resolve their problem. They are
essentially saying: “I’m searching for….” or simply “I need….”
Your job as a marketer is to put yourself in their shoes. You must ask yourself: What keywords are my
ideal prospects going to type into their search boxes? If you do not select the right keywords, you
simply won’t get the traffic you want to your Web site. You won’t get a chance to show that brilliant
advertising copy that will motivate prospects to click through to your site, read your unbeatable offer, and
then buy your product/service.
Search Engine Marketing is a rapidly growing industry. According to Forrester, digital marketing
spending among all online channels was highest for paid search PPC – with $4,067 billion spent in
2006. Moreover, according to a survey done by MarketingSherpa online advertisers unanimously ranked
paid search ads as the best performing online marketing channel in 2006. In comparison, flashy Banners
ads were ranked as one of the least effective with only 14% of respondents indicating that they perform
great and 40% indicating that they perform worst.
Matthew Capala
EMarketingInaBox.com
More Articles
| eMarketing In-a-Box: How to Attract, Retain and Monetize Your Website Customers Copyright 2007 All Rights Reserved emarketinginabox.com All Rights Reserved paul@emarketinginabox.com I matthew@emarketinginabox.com |
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| Our Expertise Your Success Online Marketing Made Easy In-A-Box |
| Advertising |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Recommended E-Business Tools |
| Advertising |
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