By: Arthur Cooper
Submitted: 2011-05-13 16:45:50 | Word Count: 664
Advertising on the yellow pages is outdated; plain and simple. Yes, 15 years ago it may have made sense to pay to have a tiny listing in this huge rolodex but now this certainly isn’t the brightest or the most cost effective way to market your business. Even with the yellow pages shifting to an online medium, the service is still costly and offers your business no stand-out appeal.
In today’s market, this method of advertising your business simply will not yield effective results . Online advertising is extremely competitive. The prevalence of the internet as the front-running advertising medium only causes the market to grow even more competitive by the day. You must do what you can to keep up with the competition. Yellow pages is certainly not the way to do so. With Yellow Pages you are a mere listing amongst many and you have no way of assessing the return on your advertising investment.
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Nowadays, it is more important than ever to employ a better way to market your business. It requires a custom strategy and a great execution schedule. There are a few different strategies that you may choose from. It is important that you choose the strategy that will best suit the needs of your business.
Pay per click (PPC)
PPC is an internet advertising model that is used to direct traffic to your website from search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. You bid on the keywords that that are relevant to your products and services, and only pay if someone actually clicks on your ad to go to your site. The amount you pay for the keywords is determined by the level of competition for that particular keyword. As you can imagine, if you are bidding on a keyword, it is highly likely that your competitors are bidding on that same keyword as well. This can get quite costly and is a good short term strategy. The most important element here is the relevancy of your ads to your keywords and the landing pages to your ads. This will increase the conversions rates and also increase your ROI.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
SEO is the preferred method by many businesses for advertising on the internet. SEO is the process of improving your site’s visibility in search engines via organic search results. Successful SEO can be achieved by using sophisticated optimization techniques and a custom strategy.
These techniques include doing thorough keyword research, generating content on your site that is relevant to these keywords and increasing the popularity of your site through effective link building. Also, a thorough assessment of your competition is necessary for successful SEO. You need to know what your competition is doing, why they are ranking, who’s linking to them, who they are linking to, the keywords they rank for and more.
You want to stay on top of your site design and development. Make sure that you can track all your conversions (leads, sales, sign ups) accurately. This will enable you to be able to optimize your conversions as you build more organic traffic.
Social Media Marketing
Do not underestimate social media. Make sure that your company has a Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube page. Update these pages often with fresh content. These pages also rank in search results. These are just a few advertising suggestions. For help with creating an effective advertising strategy, contact the professionals at Optimum7 today!
