So, you've just started a new company, and you've got yourself a shiny new website to go with it - now it's time to sit back and watch the money come flying in, right? Wrong I'm afraid. How will people know where to find you? Do the search engines even know you exist? Can you compete with the competition? You need to get people to your website, this can be achieved through a combination of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), marketing and advertising. Today I'm going to present to you the best methods of advertising. There are many methods of advertising, but not all will be appropriate for all types of businesses - for example a local plumber will clearly need a different form of advertising than a company selling books on-line. Let's take a look at what's available, and who it's appropriate for.
Google Adwords
I had to mention this first because it's very popular. Google Adwords is the name of the product that Google offer which displays the adverts in the side panel of Google and many websites when you search for something. It appears not just in the search engines but also on any website that is registered with Google Adsense (the product for making money through advertising). The adverts shown are relative to the content being displayed on the page, which is nice because you know that your advert is being shown to people actually interested in what you have to offer (so long as you have set up your keywords correctly).
The great thing about Adwords is that it's pretty easy to set up and you can tailor it to suit your budget - you can allocate a monthly budget and it will work out the optimum settings for you. Some clients of mine have a budget as low as £30 a month, some have much more substantial budgets. How big your budget needs to be really depends on the competition. For example, Jess from My Pet Friend advertises through Adwords to try and get above the competition, but it's a local business so she is only competing with pet sitting companies from her local area. On the other hand, as a web developer, for me to advertise through Adwords is a very expensive exercise as the competition is vast and spread across the world. Also, pet sitters tend to be small time individuals operating on their own so they all have moderate budgets whereas I'm up against huge design studios which will happily budget £1000's per month for advertising.
Local Business Centre
Google also has something called Local Business Centre. It's a free service and is purely for local businesses. The idea is that when someone searches for a business in a local area, Google provides a map showing the nearest services. Naturally, there is competition within the ranking of the businesses in the list. This is based on search ranking, you can see how My Pet Friend fares in a typical search for a cat sitter based in the Bournemouth area here... http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=cat+sitting+bournemouth&btnG=Search&meta= You will notice that due to the attention we paid to improving the SEO of MyPetFriend, the search ranking is high both within the local business centre and the google general listings. People like to see a map of locality so this is a useful tool, although clearly it is not for every type of business. But it is free, so if you're a plumber or someone who serves one particular area, you have nothing to lose.
Yelldirect.com
Yelldirect.com is one step up from Local business centre. Although it has to be set it is a massive step up. YellDirect.com is the advertising service that supplies the ads for Yell.com. When people want a service, especially a local service, they go to Yell.com, I know I do. I didn't realise until recently that you can have a free advert with yelldirect.com! It won't rank as highly as paid for adverts but it will still be in there, and if you don't have too much competition it will certainly do. At the end of the day, any free advertising is a must! So do it! You can upgrade your account at any point, there are various options and levels available but a 1 year paid for advert will cost about £300, which may sound a lot but it's peanuts. Think back to the amounts mentioned for Adwords - £30 a month adds up to £360 a year, and that's the minimum you're likely to get away with. Obviously the advantages of Adwords is that it's global, whereas Yell is for local or national adverts, but it is far less competitive.
Affiliate Advertising
Affiliate advertising is quite a nice way of advertising/marketing your product. It works best if you have a product to sell. Sites like Affiliate Window offer a pretty robust service. Generally the way it works is that another site advertises your product, then when someone clicks through to your site and goes through with the sale, the linking site will earn some commission. The advantage is that other people will advertise your product for you, the downside is that you lose a small percentage of your sales.
Website Adverts
Many websites offer advertising (mine included), the price varies from £30 a month to £1000's a month depending on how successful the website that hosts your advert is. The good thing is that if you choose the website carefully you will get very targeted adverts, the bad side is that you may pay quite a lot for something which doesn't always guarantee results.
Conclusion
There are many forms of advertising, some are even free. Don't confuse advertising with marketing, this is a separate issue and will be covered in a separate post. Make no mistake, your new business will need some form of advertising. You may as well give the free options a go. Make sure you've got your analytics set up so that you know whether the adverts are working or not. Your web developer should be able to help you with your advertising scheme, some even offer advertising packages, I certainly do. Feel free to contact me for advice.
Good luck let me know how you get on.