July 21st, 2008
You Might as Well Play Lotto Of the 20 Million Websites listedless than 10,000 generate traffic ! It is estimated that an average of 2.7 Billion dollars was spent on internet advertising in the first quarter of 2007 by TNS Media Intelligence, a US provider of Advertising information and statistics. According to TNS CEO Steven Fredericks, there has been a dramatic shift away from traditional print and television advertising and towards online advertising, with television showing a decline of 2.7 %. Small businesses are following this trend, but without fully understanding the search engine process their online campaigns are nothing more than glorified yellow pages ads in a directory of millions of listings.
To illustrate the point, online advertising specialists Advertising Web Service conducted an internet search for the words ‘Carpet Cleaning’ and ‘Plumber’ on Yahoo, Google and MSN , each yielding an average of 16 million websites per listing, which leaves small business operators out in the cold when it comes to internet marketing and advertising.
Search Engine Optimization is one way for small businesses to try navigate their way through the ocean of online completion, as is online networking, but most small operators do not have the internal IT infrastructure or budget to include either of these tools in their daily routine, and staying on top of the online marketing game demands daily attention.
Google’s ‘Adwords’ work much like the stock exchange with daily flux in the demand and supply of the ‘word’ market. What this means is that advertisers bid on the words they want Google to list them under and set a budget for the right to be listed under these words. If a competitor places a higher bid on the same word their ad will automatically default to the higher ranking. Other factors such as relevance to market and costing structure also determine ranking on Google.
Advertising Web Service CEO Steven Bermeister says: “In trying to keep up with the online competition, small businesses make the mistake of investing thousands of dollars on professional looking websites which in all probability will never be seen. Small businesses need to differentiate between marketing their services and marketing their websites”. Of course the website should be well designed promoting the unique aspect of the product or service using benchmark marketing strategies, and the operation should be smooth, but that’s the easy part of the formula. Connecting to ones specific target market is the real challenge. A low budget ad that reaches its market would generate more profit than the most expensive ad that floats around cyberspace forever unseen.
In fact by using a search engines unique ability to filter out extraneous traffic, small businesses can better match their product or service with their customers search. If a searcher is looking for a camera in Mullumbimby, a well targeted internet ad will show up under the relevant words, ‘camera’ and Mullumbimby’. This is the outcome that small businesses are looking for in online advertising - a specific, local relevant match. In this way small businesses can turn the internet around to work for them instead of feelingoverwhelmed by it.
TNS Media Intelligence is the leading provider of strategic advertising intelligence to advertisers, advertising agencies and media properties. The company’s tracking technologies collect advertising expenditures and occurrence data, as well as select creative executions across 20 media in the U.S.
Steven Bermeister
Filed under: Business, Marketing, Web Comment (0)
Article tags: advertising, Bermeister Steven, Business, Marketing, Steven, Steven Bermeister, Web
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