American Express » Advertising

Communicate With Your Market

american business — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:53:46 +0000

Yes, we are going to ask it again. What are the objectives of the campaign? Which segments of your market are you targeting with the campaign? What are you promoting and how should this product or service be presented to your target market in order to get them to respond to your campaign? In the case of White Point, the primary objective of the campaign is to encourage prospective timeshare owners to visit the resort for a stress-free weekend to experience all that White Point has to offer. Users are presented with an enticing offer, and upon acceptance of the offer they agree to take a preview tour of the White Point Vacation Club vacation ownership opportunity.

This is the primary objective of each campaign tour generation.How does the product being promoted vacation ownership have to be positioned to the target market? Well, given the nature of the communication channel PPC advertising users will be targeted based on their behavior as dictated by their search criteria. We’ll talk a little bit more about this later.

What is the message that you are going to communicate to your target market to convince them to click through to learn more about your products and services? If you want to communicate with your market, you need to position your message around their views and desires as they relate to your product. If your message coincides with the users’ desires, then the probability that they will click through to learn more about your offering is very good. Similarly, those visitors who happen to stumble across your message who do not share this specific desire will not click on your ad these are the lost causes.

Online Advertising Agencies

american business — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 11:29:34 +0000

The second generation came along very quickly. Online advertising agencies started to crop up, managing the banner advertising space for very heavily trafficked sites. If you wanted to advertise on a specific site, you worked with their online agency. To advertise with a number of heavily trafficked sites, you ended up dealing with two or three or four advertising agencies. Almost as soon as banner advertising became mainstream, it started to decline in effectiveness.

Click-through rates dropped through the floor, technology to strip out unwanted ads became very popular, and soon there was all kinds of available advertising space at dirt prices and few takers. Banner advertising was okay for branding, but terrible on generating traffic to your site. Advertisers used many techniques to try to change things. Various sizes and placement techniques were tried. Animated banner ads saw a little increase in click-throughs. Drop-down menu banner ads were somewhat effective.

Many techniques were employed, but with the exception of a few key areas, banner advertising continued to be viewed as generally ineffective.

Internet marketing strategy

american business — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:10:48 +0000

A well-planned Internet marketing strategy distinguishes those businesses that are committed to the long-term potential of the medium from those who are simply marketing online because the market says they should. Typically, the latter can easily be detected. I am sure you’ve stumbled across a Web site that is nothing more than an electronic brochure—a site that does not communicate the promise of the brand to the target market or a site that is stamped “Last Updated . . .” only to display a date one or two years prior to your visit (or more.) These are examples of businesses that have yet to fully embrace the potential of the Internet and how it can not only grow their business, but also reach more users in a more cost-effective manner.

Planning plays a critical role in the success of your Internet marketing strategy with regard to your Web site itself, the online communication channels that you choose, and how you actually execute each campaign you launch to your target market. Those businesses that are capitalizing on the mainstream use of the Internet are those that plan their Internet strategies well in advance. For example, research reveals that the average online marketer that is using targeted PPC campaigns or organic optimization as a means of driving traffic to their Web site are dedicating on average 36 percent of their total online advertising budget to the medium. That represents 15 percent of their total online/offline advertising budget. Does this seem like a surprise? It shouldn’t. It’s not unrealistic for search engine exposure to be able to represent 60 to 80 percent of a Web site’s total traffic.

Advertising Online

american business — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:20:59 +0000

Online advertising works, and it is becoming big business. Searching is expected to exceed outdoor advertising in the United States within a few months, and in the United Kingdom it already has. Much of the advertising dollars spent online seem to be on travel, health,reference, and lifestyle/news/entertainment Web sites. Advertisers are gettingmuch smarter about their initiatives and are targeting people based on behavior to increase response rates. We said previously that not everyone is the same, and advertisers are beginning to address this.

In the United States, companies are expected to devote between 4 and 5 percent of their total advertising budget to online initiatives in the coming year, according to recent eMarketer (http://www.emarketer.com/) data for advertising spending. Spending on online advertising as a percentage of total advertising is growing.

Where are businesses spending their advertising dollars and what is working? The following charts (Figures 1.7 and 1.8) presented by eMarketer help shed some light on the subject. Companies are spending more money on almost all types of online advertising. E-mail marketing and search engine placement are particularly big drivers for small to medium-sized businesses.Companies are aware of the importance of the Internet to their business,and trends indicate that they are investing more in advertising and in technology to grow online. It’s all about the return on investment.