Expediting the Lead Generation Process for Online Businesses
Although the task may seem overwhelming initially, learning the lead generation process for online businesses can be rather simple. There are many different ways in which you can broaden your online business’s exposure. In fact, you may already know how to execute some of the more useful lead generating tasks. Many business owners and online marketers have found remarkable success by simply promoting their business on social networking websites.By making their business accessible on these incredibly busy websites, anyone can increase market exposure. There also independent lead generating firms for hire. Although no two are exactly alike, lead generating firms are generally very inexpensive. The internet makes for an incredibly unique market place. People from all over the world can access just about anything of interest at any given time. The days of door-to-door sales and paper flyer advertisement are forever in the past.A New EraNew clients serve as the lifeline for businesses in any field. Obviously it is extremely important to retain existing clients, but it is simply impossible to expand an existing business without new customers. In order to achieve profitable expansion, a business must find a way to generate leads.High Traffic WebsitesFacebook is the most visited website of all time and it is not even a close race. This factor makes the social networking site an incredible place to promote businesses of any kind. With millions of daily visitors, there has never been a greater marketing opportunity for business owners.Facebook allows business owners and marketers to bring their product straight to the consumer. There is a good possibility that you already know how to use Facebook. Why not use the social networking giant to accrue new business leads daily? Don’t forget that creating a profile or fan page is absolutely free!Facebook may be the busiest, but it is not the only social networking site that can help broaden an online business’s exposure. Taking the time to establish a presence on various networking pages can drastically expedite the lead generation process for online businesses.Search Engine OptimizationIn order to build a sufficient internet presence, an online business must consistently create original written content. This original content, generally written in blog form, helps online business attract attention from search engines. Ranking highly in a Google search can be a goldmine. If your content gets shown on the first page of Google then it is more likely to be seen by prospective clients and therefore there is a greater chance of leads being generated. Believe it or not, there is actually a certain way to write business articles to expedite this process.Search engine optimization, often referred to as SEO, is a blogging technique that can significantly increase traffic to an online business’s blog. Each new visitor is a lead and potential client. SEO articles are written around one keyword or keyword phrase. By learning to effectively manipulate the search engine process, an online business can drastically increase its maximum exposure potential.There are so many ways in which an online business can get additional attention. Consistent blogging and becoming easily accessible are perhaps the most efficient lead generation process for online businesses.
Chapter 13 – Online Advertising – Throwing a Banner into the Works
As you may have gathered from the title, the focus of this chapter is largely on banner advertising but don’t for one minute believe that banners are the be all and end all of online advertising. “Banner advertising” is a bit of a misnomer – modern online creative advertising is about a lot more than just banners.The Multi-Purpose Nature of AdvertisingAdvertising, whether online or offline, always has a number of objectives:o Building brand awarenesso Creating consumer demando Informing consumers of your ability to satisfy that demandBut when you really think about it, they can be distilled into just one action: Increasing Sales!Advertising is based on the simple economics of demand and supply. Advertisers aim to stimulate a consumer need and then satisfy that need. Create the demand. Then satisfy the demand.Building Brand AwarenessMaking people aware of your brand or product is an important long-term goal. Once customers know about you, you’ve taken that first big step towards gaining their trust… and their patronage. It’s a simple fact that the best known brands do more business. And therein lies the rub.The ultimate goal is to do more business and sell more.Building brand awareness is perhaps the key strong point of online creative advertising. It’s largely visual, making it an ideal channel for promoting brand collateral.Creating Consumer DemandBrand and product awareness is also about creating demand. Advertising needs to convince consumers about what they should want and why they should want it. Modern online advertising can provide a great way to communicate the USP’s of your product, thereby helping stimulate demand.
Aspiration is a function of knowledge. You can’t want what you don’t know about.Satisfy Consumer DemandOnce your consumer wants something, they need to know of your ability to satisfy that want. If your brand building has been effective, they know you exist. Now tell them how you can deliver what they need.Driving Traffic and SalesIf your Online Advertising campaign doesn’t drive traffic, then there’s really no point in it, is there? All forms of online marketing need to drive traffic in the long term. But what about the short and medium term?That’s where the immediacy of Online Advertising comes to the fore. Unlike traditional media advertising, Online Advertising can turn the potential customer into an actual customer right there and then. What’s more – you can track exactly how effectively your campaign does this.Payment ModelsDepending on the primary goal of the campaign, different payment models can be used:CPM or CPIPaying for exposure. CPM refers to Cost Per Thousand and CPI to Cost Per Impression. This is usually how a campaign would be priced when brand awareness is the primary goal. It’s also how most banner ads are priced in South Africa.CPCPaying for clicks. CPC stands for Cost Per Click. Normally associated with Paid Search Marketing, banners can be priced this way when the aim is to drive traffic. This is seldom used in South Africa.CPAPaying for acquisition. CPA refers to Cost Per Acquisition. This model means the publisher carries all the risk. The advertiser only pays when an advert delivers an acquisition.If you’re into buying banner advertising, this is the best way to pay – if you’re selling it, it’s the worst way to charge.
Not surprisingly, the CPA model is not commonly used for banner advertising and is generally associated with Affiliate Marketing. Of course, the lines blur when you’re publishing an affiliate banner.Flat RateSometimes, owners of lower-traffic sites choose to sell banner space at a flat rate i.e. at a fixed cost per month regardless of traffic or amount of impressions. This would appeal to a media buyer who may be testing an online campaign generally targeting niche markets.So What Exactly Are Banners? In simplest terms, a banner ad is a hyperlinked image. The image carries the message and the hyperlink takes the visitor to the advertiser’s landing page.Of course it doesn’t have to merely be an image. In fact, this form of advertising has come a long way since the early days of images that say “click here!” and drop you off at the homepage of the advertiser’s website.Banners can contain other forms of rich media as well and many use interactivity and sound to draw attention. The use of action scripts and technologies like Flash has taken this form of Online Advertising to a whole new level.Types of Banner Ads – Size Matters! As mentioned before, “banner advertising” is something of a misnomer. Banners come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Perhaps calling it “rich media advertising” or “online creative advertising” is more descriptive.If we break it down traditionally, banner advertising can be separated into various categories according to their size and shape:o Banners o Full Banner: 468 X 60
o Half Banner: 234 X 60
o Micro Bar: 88 X 31
o Vertical Banner / Mini Skyscraper: 120 X 240
o Leaderboard: 770 X 60o Buttons o Button 1: 120 X 90
o Button 2: 120 X 60
o Micro Button: 80 X 15
o Square Button: 125 X 125 / 120 X 120o Rectangular adso Medium Rectangle: 300 X 250
o Square Pop-Up: Any size, but 200 X 200 is common
o Vertical Rectangle: 240 X 400
o Large Rectangle: 336 X 280
o Rectangle: 180 X 150 and other variationso Skyscrapers o Wide Skyscraper: 160 X 600
o Skyscraper: 120 X 600
o Half Page Ad / Super Skyscraper: 300 X 600While the sizes above indicate the generally accepted dimensions of ads, rich media technologies mean the ads themselves can expand beyond the allocated area of page real estate. Expanding ads, that “pop-out” on mouse-over, overlay ads that appear on top of site content, and ads that incorporate interactive elements have become very popular.But Why Banner Advertising? In previous chapters we went on and on about the value of marketing tools that focus on giving consumers what they want when they’re looking for it. Now, all of a sudden we’re changing course and suggesting a method of interruption marketing? What’s that about then?Horses for courses – and some campaigns are just better suited to visual means.o You’re promoting travel packages. What stirs more emotion – an image of a tropical paradise? Or the words “tropical paradise?”o Want to build your brand within a specific sphere? Why not brand, through banner advertising, the websites of every major player in that niche?o Running a competition? Keep your target market’s eye on the prizeo Launching an exciting new sports car? Images with a call to action – “test drive it now” – or interactive rich media that highlight all the exciting new features as you mouse-over that part of the car on the imageInteractivity Since banners can contain rich media, they offer levels of interactivity that other forms of advertising can’t reach. Get your target market to not only see your banner, get them to play with it too. Interaction builds a bond and improves the chances of the consumer remembering your brand tomorrow.Animations, games, video, flash – and you thought banner ads were just hyperlinked pictures. Modern Online Advertising is able to bring together a number of other online marketing tactics:o A few years ago, flash micro sites were all the rage – now the same functionality can exist right within the ado Viral Marketing: clever viral marketing games or “send to a friend” functionality – again from right within the ado Video – check out video previews from within the adTargeting Online ads can further directly target your intended market by various means:o Geo-Targeting – Online Advertising has the ability to target by country, province or city, and can even drill down to IP addresso Network / Browser Type – Markets can further be targeted via networks / browser types such as Firefox, Internet Explorer, MAC etco Connection Type – Users can be segmented on broadband or dial up connectionso Day and Time – Chose any time of day, any day of the week. This usually depends on the client objective of the campaign or the product itselfo Capping – Limiting the amount of times a user sees a particular adMeasurabilityBanner ads, like all eMarketing tactics, are measurable. Track click-through rates and you get an idea of exactly how many people are responding to your call to action. Some publishers even have the ability to do post-click tracking i.e. you can track the user all the way to a sale if that is the purpose of the advert.Similarity with Traditional MediaeMarketers regularly bemoan the fact that it’s sometimes difficult to educate the market on the value of Internet marketing techniques. Traditional buyers of advertising have been conditioned in a certain fashion and have come to understand advertising in a certain way.Banner advertising goes a long way towards bridging the advertising divide. Ads have a set size, they can look very similar to print ads and they occupy a particular bit of real estate in a publication with a particular number of eyeballs looking at it. It’s easy to understand and it does the things buyers are used to expecting advertising to do.Bottom line – if done correctly, online advertising also builds your brand, and increases your sales!
How to Finance Home Improvement
With the world cup football being played in South Africa in 2010, there have been many reasons and opportunities for South Africans to finance home improvement, as many people are looking to capitalize on their chance to rent out their homes for the event. The better the facility the more rent one can charge.Now one not only increases the long term value of ones property, but also has a sure fire way to pay of, at least a god chunk of the home improvement financing and who knows, maybe one can make a profit as well. Now this is of course of no use to anyone outside of South Africa, but there must be some sort of event you can think of that could offer a similar opportunity. For example, in London they have the Olympic Games coming up in 2012.You see, a huge variable when it comes to making money, including renting out property, is timing. Keep looking out for that special reason to start your home improvements, and getting a home improvement loan suddenly stops being a ‘calculated risk’ and more ‘good timing’. There are suddenly more reasons on the pro side than on the con side.Even so, do not forget to do your homework. Make sure, even though interest rates on a loan are low at the moment, consult with your loan officer about what kind of escalation you can expect and if you should fix the rate. Remember to work with you finance company as these people are your partners in this thing and it is to the advantage of both to make sure this thing goes smoothly.Besides your loan officer, make sure you have any other necessary connections in place. For example if you were in South Africa, looking to rent out a property during the world cup, inquire at a few estate agents that specialize in home rental and are looking for properties to fulfill the demand. Make sure all your insurance is in place as well just in case the football fans you rent out to be disposed to be a little ‘overenthusiastic’ in the same example.