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So where do you start with advertising your website? The options are endless and the first choice you are going to face is, are you going to do it offline or online?In this page i want to cover some of your options and the likely pros and cons of choosing them.
With so many options to choose from your websites future hangs in the balance before you even start. |
Lets look as some choices -
Offline Advertising, You have choices of magazines, papers, television stations, radio stations, billboards, leaflets, shows and events and lurking in the background there must be many other examples ready to absorb your hard earned cash.
Let me be frank about this form of advertising, unless you have a staggering advertising budget that is capable of making your company a household name (branding) are likely to fail or at least make any significant long lasting effect. It’s safe to say that a mid sized or smaller company’s budget will not go to far enough with attracting new clients or customers. The problem lies in getting your targeted audience to remember your website and getting them to go to their computer to visit you. With so many distractions your advertising will generally end up in the forgotten depths of their minds.
Online Advertising: This is where it gets interesting, there is one thing you should understand when you optimise your website and embark on the SEO (search engine optimisation). If the SEO consultant does his job properly you can guarantee apart from being contacted constantly by other SEO companies you will be approached by other website salespeople trying to sell you advertising space.
Here’s my tip of the day, it will save you a fortune. After many painful experiences and owning various fully optimised website, when I am approached usually looking for an upfront fee I ask them if i can try it on a trail basis first and if it’s successful i’ll give them an order. All the companies have declined so far which indicates to me that there are untruth’s in their claims.
These products are usually fronted by a sales team who are often scarce with the truth to obtain your order. Potentially this will save you money and wasted time by avoiding ineffective advertising. All businesses have advertising budgets but your main objective is to return the best level of advertising for your investment and your company (ROI).
Companies selling traffic, promising xyz amount of hits for £££s with some so called scheme or other are everywhere online, don’t be fooled by there claims. These are just computer programmes that simply visit your website from different ip addresses probably bouncing off proxy servers which can look like genuine traffic, you will never achieve sales or enquires so don’t be tempted or fooled into acquiring these.
Now that the previous subjects have been covered to save you money where then should you invest in building up regular new customers or clients? With hindsight I would definitely invest in certainties.
Online advertising has the distinct advantage of targeting new business whilst clients/customers are on their computers.
As things stand the search engines (google especially) are the best vehicle to bring custom to your website providing you target the right keywords and you are prepared to invest what is needed to gain the positions needed for those competitive keywords. Once you achieve this you will safely provide your business with visits that are genuine, without wasted money being spent on competitors using your funds in PPC. Adwords is the next best thing after SEO to achieve targeted traffic but has the advantage of quicker results when acquiring traffic although more expensive. I like to compare this to renting a property or buying it.
SEO may take time but do it properly and your business will benefit as well as be constantly advertising the website. So your priority has to be - Find the best SEO Specialist you can find with a proven track record.
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