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3. E-Mail Advertising
Once a very strong way to advertise, e-mail advertising has quickly risen to
#1 annoyance of those who spend a fair amount of their time with Internet. This is not to say that there is not a place for e-mail advertising any more, but navigating these grounds is extremely difficult -- and dangerous. The backlash from a poorly executed campaign could cause irreperable harm to company doing marketing.
The first and most important problem with e-mail advertising is SPAM. You have certainly heard of it and probably know what it is. E-mail that is sent to a group of people that did not "opt-in" to receive that message. True opt-in e-mail can be quite effective (although not as effective as pay per click advertising). The trick is finding true opt-in email lists. Many vendors claim to offer opt-in lists, but many of these advertisers also have varying standards as to what "opt-in" really means. In addition, rarely do you have guarantee of good targeting.
Even if you do get a true opt-in list, many times users forget they are on this list and complain of spam mail. Get enough complaints to your hosting provider and you could quickly be looking for a new Cyberspace home.
Newsletters have become a favorite of many marketers. This is truly a less intrusive means of e-mail marketing, although it still offers problems of being an inconvenience to reader. Most readers are interested in articles provided by a newsletter, not advertisements.
And again, we are training Internet users to ignore these ads (or delete them as I do).
4. Pay Per Click Advertising
There is a strong, viable answer to Internet marketers who are struggling with finding a friendly, effective means of bringing qualified traffic to their piece of Internet real estate. The answer: pay per click search engines (PPCSE). Unlike other forms of advertising that we discussed, well managed PPCSE's do not bring intrusive, distracting elements that other forms of advertising brings.
The key difference between pay per click search engine marketing and other forms of marketing is simple: who initiates advertisement. In traditional advertising methods, advertiser is forcing their message upon Internet surfer. With a pay per click search engine, user initiates information flow.
They are open to receiving information from marketers.
By actively searching on a subject, surfer is presented with a list of options that should meet or come close to meeting his or her need. The results are obvious: a more highly targeted visitor to your site, a visitor with a higher inclination to partake in service your site is offering (as they were actively seeking it in first place), and ability to pay for only interested visitor.
Pay Per Click advertising brings obvious benefits to marketer. Because advertiser only needs to pay for traffic received, and because that traffic is qualified much more than an intrusive banner ad or e-mail, resulting ROI is much higher. In addition, marketer does not suffer from as many instances of a passive visitor. This is not to say that there will be no passive visitor, but instances will be greatly reduced.
One stat that we like to point out in regards to pay per click search engine marketing is this: a clickthrough rate of 100%. Think about it: you know immediately how many visitors you are going to receive as a result of your listing. No worrying about eeking out that extra 0.02% in visitors. If you are familiar with running banner ad campaigns, you will quickly know how frustrating it is to see thousands of impressions go by without anyone paying attention.
But most of all, pay per click marketing compliments Internet surfer's manifesto of privacy, speed, and convenience. Again, by being a user initiated advertisement, user is welcoming information. Because marketers bid on specific keywords and phrases, a well managed pay per click search engine will greatly increase relevancy of a search initiated by a user. Also, a well-managed pay per click search engine will eliminate needless distractions of a company trying to call attention to an unrelated product or service.
If you have not yet tried pay per click advertising, you need to begin doing so. It is certainly future direction of marketing. As other marketing forms struggle to find ways to compliment Internet surfer's manifesto, pay per click advertising will be a solution to draw in new clients and customers at a fraction of cost.
CPC-List.com, An Industry Leading Directory of Pay Per Click Search Engines. You may copy this article for free, but you must link to http://www.cpc-list.com and give credit for this article.
