Online advertising

Did your company produce a killer new product? Are you worried that the competition might steal your thunder? If so, there is no better way to make sure consumers find your products first than advertising.
Online advertising is a profitable (and necessary) undertaking for any serious Web business. There is no more efficient way to get your message, and your products and services, in front of consumers. And, like all business ventures, you need a plan.
Advertising campaigns, however, can take months, even years to refine and be considered a success. But sometimes you need a good, old-fashioned advertising blitz to get an important message or new product launch out to market quickly.

The research and planning phase of any project is arguably the most important — online advertising included. Budgets can evaporate quickly online when ads are mistakenly targeted at the wrong audience. Because your online ads will be displayed far and wide, it is crucial to make sure the audience is the best match for your products or services.
To begin targeting the best, most relevant audience for your ads, create a list of your products’ attributes and the problems they are designed to solve. After compiling a thorough description, take note of oftused words and phrases, and other words that are unique or important to your product descriptions. These will act as some initial keyword ideas to explore. Now, take these keywords and phrases and use any of several available tools to find related keywords and their relative level of competition. Some free resources (in all or in part) include Google’s External Keyword Tool, Google’s Wonder Wheel (on the left side of Google search results),
WordStream.com and KeywordSpy.com. Two paid keyword tools that will also show competitive analysis for your select keywords include SEMRush.com and Compete.com.

Identify competition
Now that you have a list of keywords most relevant and important to your business and products, start using them to identify competitors. Search for your keywords and phrases in the top three search engines and take note of the ads that appear and what company is providing them. What keywords are they using? How are they targeting your key demographics? When you find a few key competitors, use the Similar Web browser extension (available for Firefox and IE at SimilarWeb.com) to find other, similar websites. Browse these sites and take note of their most often-used keywords and phrases, and the ways they are using to capture leads. This can also serve as a way to build negative keyword lists. You might find that many of your competitors
are advertising on a few, highly competitive keywords. If the space appears crowded, consider adding some qualifiers to your list to find a less competitive area for your ads. For example, if selling dive watches, you might find that “watches” is cost-prohibitive or simply too crowded. Instead, research “dive watches”, “diving watches” or “scuba watches”.

Target your audience
Today, search remains the most powerful way to get your message in front of people who are actively seeking your products or solutions. Much of that work will be accomplished automatically by selecting the right keywords and eliminating keywords that do not bring value. As keywords are refined and tested in advertising, click-through rates (CTR) and conversions will rise. However, search advertising is only one piece of the puzzle. Thanks to some innovations and better targeting, display advertising remains a key component of online advertising. Content ad networks (such as Google Display Network*, ValueClick Media, Burst Media, AdReady, 24/7 Real Media, and many more) offer the ability to advertise on websites that display content relevant to your website and its products. These services can be used to automatically display your ads on websites where your core audience is spending time online. In addition to using display ad networks, identify some top bloggers and other trusted websites popular with your core audience. There could very well be opportunities to advertise directly and prominently on those websites. Capturing top ad positions (or even exclusive, run-of-site advertising) can go a long way toward establishing your business as the premier supplier of products and services in a particular industry. What’s more, when you advertise with a trusted source, consumer confidence is built in to your messaging. Finally, don’t sleep on social networks. These websites are maturing and along with that comes an increase in user tolerance for advertising. Facebook has a full-blown advertising system in place and can
provide accurate targeting to boot. There’s little question that a good portion of your audience is using social networking in some capacity — the trick is finding out how much and how receptive they are to your ads.

Mobile marketing

A study in 2010 suggests that almost 46 million mobile phone users have smart phones. Those numbers are enough for the advertisers to start taking the mobile market seriously.
Increasingly, mobile content and applications are being targeted at a user's location.
More than 25 percent of adults in U.S. have used maps, navigation or other mobile phone services that automatically determine location. Nearly half of those using mobile phones have taken action on mobile ads.
Localization of customer targeting means more qualified traffic and better conversion.
Utilizing localized advertising in combination with interactive advertising is a winning formula.
The great strength of the mobile ad is that it allows for very specific targeting of users. Advertisers who take the time to get to know their target audience will be able to reach out to a large group of consumers who are hungry for information about what is available in their immediate area.
At this point (and it should come as no surprise), the leader in location-based advertising is Google. Google has acquired a patent for using location for advertising, which sets it ahead of the competition. It allows users to bid on ad prices within a defined area and allows advertising from apps to directly correspond to a user’s location.
Anyone with experience managing PPC campaigns will find themselves in familiar territory when launching mobile ad campaigns. Just like PPC, mobile advertising allows you to set up a section for specific campaigns and, within those campaigns, create accounts for different brands, as well as their relative keywords.
In addition to choosing to advertise in search results or through the content network is the ability to select a specific area — obviously of importance to mobile ad campaigns. Mobile ad platforms will allow you to target geographical locations based on country, region and specific city For more highly targeted ads, advertisers can target specific mobile network carriers, devices and even markup languages. This allows users to control who they are advertising to, which, allows them to meet the needs of a destination URL, depending on the technological capabilities of the targeted device.
You want your user to experience a feeling of success upon finding your landing page. Forget about the fact that users can zoom in on a mobile Web page. Create simple pages that display the information that benefits the user immediately upon landing.
Like any other form of Internet advertising, the mobile ad must reach multiple devices and screen sizes. With so many types of handsets, the ability to reach specific ones is absolutely imperative to a successful mobile marketing campaign. To market to more than just one of these groups, optimize multiple pages for each of the different styles.
A display on a Blackberry Curve is far different from that of an iPhone, for example. Phones have the ability to resize text but forcing users to take that extra step can be risky. Let your landing pages be as targeted to the users of specific devices as they are to the consumers you are trying to reach. A page that is not automatically readable or navigable with the information important to your consumers (delivering on the promise of the ad) could send users elsewhere.
Web developers can target specific phones to a certain degree by serving up different conditional CSS files. By checking the maximum width of the device’s
screen, they can create usable layouts specific for the device.
Like other advertising campaigns, having several versions of an ad and a landing page is paramount to success.
Continue to test different tactics and don’t be afraid to experiment. Be aware that the ability to track mobile advertising campaigns is still somewhat limited. When checking an IP address for someone who visited your site with a Blackberry, for example, you will be seeing the Internet Gateway address, not the actual phone’s IP address. In addition, some phones don’t support cookies and others clear the cache on a regular basis. However, there are analytics solutions to help track ROI. Affiliates who find ways to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns will be miles ahead when the technology catches up to the needs of advertisers. And, by making use of the ability to target specific locations, you have already narrowed the criteria for analysis.
Mobile advertising, especially in terms of affiliate marketing, is in the early stages of its growth. There will be obstacles to overcome. But those who get in early and manage to grow with the developing technology will have a head start on their competition. The technology is already advancing in leaps and bounds. If you start now, you’ll be ready for the next development phases.