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Use interactive advertising to increase exposure, revenue
Marketing
By David L. Rawle
The Small Business Television Network asked nearly 21,000 small-business owners, “Where will you spend the majority of your advertising dollars in 2005?” The no. 1 response was the Internet.
Internet advertising is booming. For example, AOL’s first-quarter advertising revenue was up 45%.
And the increases are not for traditional Web ads. Full-motion online ads are expected to grow nearly six fold during the next five years.
To maximize the effectiveness of Internet advertising, make sure that it is strategically driven, highly targeted, and regularly measured and refined.
Touch your target audience
Obviously, it makes sense to advertise where your prospects are likely to be.
For example, if your company sells soccer cleats, consider buying an ad on one of ESPN’s soccer Web pages or the Web sites of local newspapers’ sports pages in the markets where your customers live.
However, if you combine interactive advertising with key word search sponsorships, you increase the likelihood that customers find you on their terms.
Since key word search sponsorships can be purchased by number of impressions, you can pay for only the number of people who will see your search listing. These same efficiencies can be applied to Internet advertising.
You can pay specifically for the number of impressions or the number of click-throughs. And, under certain circumstances, you can pay only a percent of your sales generated online.
Online yellow pages through search engines, ISP and yellow pages companies are gaining momentum as popular consumer resources.
They offer an easily implemented opportunity to reach consumers already in the market for your product or service.
Create an effective method
No one likes being “spammed,” and Web users are becoming savvy in their surfing habits. A great product can be missed with an ill-placed or ineffective ad.
Remember the soccer cleat idea? A banner on ESPN’s soccer Web page may catch a surfer’s eye, but to get that message to “stick,” take it a step further. Place the ad on ESPN’s soccer Web page and have several pairs of cleats run across the page when it first loads, leaving tracks all over the page.
Then allow surfers to “roll over” the cleats with the mouse to learn more about specific styles. The more you involve the customer, the better the odds that they will click through and want to learn more about your product or service.
Analyze the results
Add a “check Web analytics reports” to the interactive marketer’s daily to-do list.
According to JupiterResearch, spending on Web analytics will reach more than $500 million by 2006. Companies with revenue of $1 billion or more already are spending more than $50,000 annually on such tools.
Web analytics software provides the marketer with valuable information, including the number of unique visitors, length of stay on any given page and the links a user clicks on.
Marketers can use that information to create improved customer experiences and increase sales.
An article about Dirt Devil.com’s use of Web analytic reports revealed that many visitors were jumping over to competitors’ sites, presumably for comparative shopping. DirtDevil.com noticed this trend and gave the price tags on their products more prominence, and increased their conversion rate from 12% to 15% before the changes to 20% to 23%. The technology, says Royal Appliances’ (Dirt Devil’s parent company) manager of interactive marketing, “lets us make lots of little changes that have had a cumulative impact.”
Technology makes communicating with vast numbers of people simple. With the click of a mouse, an e-mail can reach an infinite number of readers.
A banner ad can be viewed by millions of people in a single day. However, to use technology in such a blunt way diffuses its effectiveness. Smart interactive advertising must be personal, flexible and measurable.
David L. Rawle is chairman of Charleston-based Rawle Murdy Associates Inc., a marketing, advertising and public relations firm. E-mail him at drawle@rawlemurdy.com.
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