Internet Advertising

You have your website optimized for usability, customer-centric design and search engines. What else can you do to promote your website and get more traffic? Advertise. There are a lot of options now. What makes sense for your business?

Cheap Methods of Promotion

• One of the best ways to promote your website is just to include the link to your website in any communications you send out: emails, enewsletters, quotes, RFPs, brochures, etc.
• Trade links with association websites and partner websites. Make sure you place links on your site in a place that makes sense for your visitors. Avoid link exchanges which place non-relevant ads on your site.
• Contextual advertising such as Google Adwords can be very affordable since you can set spending limits and place several different ads to target specific segments of your audience.

Brand Awareness

Once you have some traffic coming to your site, you might like to increase your brand awareness. You want your customers to think of you when they have a need you can fulfill. Here are some types of advertising to increase your brand awareness:

• Ads in newspapers, magazines, or other print periodicals. Properly designed, this type of ad can not only make your company more top-of-mind, they can also drive traffic to your website when people remember your name during a purchasing cycle.
• Ads on industry websites: trade magazine sites, association sites, etc. These can be especially effective because professionals typically turn to the web for research and news. Many websites are also very affordable for limited runs and smaller ad sizes.
• Sponsorships. Sponsor a round of golf, a charity event, a local event, etc. These can be great publicity plus a tax write-off. Your company will be seen as generous and in-touch with issues and/or the community.

Targeted Campaigns

You may have specific products or services you want to promote or a corporate event you want your customers to know about. This type of marketing requires a bit more targeting.

• Targeted ads on industry websites. Look for sections or features which target your customers and find out about advertising or sponsorship opportunities. You’ll get more impact from bigger ad sizes (skyscraper, medium box, leaderboard).
• Contextual ads. Find out if your industry’s websites use contextual ads to target your audience.

Don’t be shy about trying out a few different advertising methods. Sometimes it takes a little trial and error to figure out what works best for your specific customers.

Technorati Tags: customer-centric sites, advertising, B2B, internet consulting, B2B internet consulting

B-to-B Magazine: Outsell: B-to-b digital ad revenue to top print revenue by 2009 – The report said b-to-b print revenue is expected to account for 34.3% of total b-to-b media revenue in 2009, compared with a 38.6% share for digital products. Events are expected to account for 27.1% of total revenue.

If you haven’t already, you should consider putting more of your advertising budget online. This data is from advertisers, but the Internet is already the type of media used the most often at work and where decision-making buyers turn for more information and research. You want to be where your customers are – online.

Technorati Tags: customer-centric sites, advertising, B2B, internet consulting, B2B internet consulting

Having a website is supposed to increase your sales (if done properly). How do you know who is looking at your site and who is interested in your products?

One popular way is to put some type of login/registration requirement in place in order for people to see some type of information or content that they are looking for. This seems like an excellent idea from a sales or marketing standpoint, except now you’re dropping all pretenses of having a customer-centric website. Remember to think about what your customer wants. If they are searching for some information on your website (or came from a search engine) and have to register or login before they can get it, how many of them will just leave your site entirely (with a bad taste in their mouth) instead of giving you that information?

Instead, only collect personal information when it is in the customer’s best interest to do so. Offer a form or online chat where people can request more information that includes as little information as needed to help them. This is not the time to get their full contact information, date of birth, credit card, and what color their bath mats are. Name and email or phone are plenty. And guess what? You now have a sales lead that was willingly given to you – this customer is much more interested in your products and services. They are probably further down the sales funnel and therefore a much more valuable contact than just throwing up login requirements to get lots of names.

Technorati Tags: customer-centric sites, sales leads, design, B2B, internet consulting, B2B internet consulting