August 30, 2008 | By Kenneth Koh |

Many people are confused by the different types of advertising techniques online. In today’s blog post, my aim is to classify all the techniques into 5 main types. I will also discuss the key to success in each of them.

Ready? Here we go……

1) Content Advertising

The first type of advertising technique is content advertising. It basically uses content to draw visitors’ attention. It is the main type of advertising technique because the entire internet is made up of content (or information).

The following traffic strategies all fall under content advertising technique:

- Submitting articles to article directories
- Posting articles to Squidoo, Hubpages or Blogger
- Posting articles to your own blog or content website
- Press release
- Paid reviews at other people’s website
- Yahoo answers
- Social bookmarking at Digg, Propeller etc
- Post videos in video sites
- Posting comments in forums

In content advertising, you draw traffic from 2 sources. You either get the traffic from the website where the content is posted or from the search engine.

Existing traffic from the website is given. There is nothing much you need to do other than making sure that your content is good and your title is interesting.

The real challenge lies in getting traffic from the search engine. Your aim is to get high ranking in the search engine and direct the traffic from the search engine to your content and then to your website. This is done through careful keyword research and search engine optimization.

2) Link Advertising

This type of advertising technique typically uses a short link with some description to attract the visitors directly to your website.

The following traffic strategies all fall under link advertising technique:

- PPC advertising
- LeadsLeap advertising
- Classified advertising
- Submission to directories
- Link exchange partnership
- Banner advertising (image version of link advertising)
- Craigslist advertising
- Email signature

In link advertising, you draw traffic from just 1 source, that is the existing traffic from the website where your link is posted.

The key in link advertising is your OFFER.

Many advertisers expect people to click on whatever link they post. When no one clicks, they wonder why people are not responding.

Remember, people are NOT AT ALL interested in your ad. They are only interested in how they can benefit. If your ad fails to convey the idea that you have something good for them, they simply won’t click!

3) Viral advertising

This kind of advertising technique is similar to word of mouth advertising in the offline world. The idea is to encourage your existing traffic to bring more traffic to your website.

The following traffic strategies all fall under viral advertising technique:

- Offer your products’ affiliate program, including finding joint venture partners
- Place a “Tell-a-friend” script on your website
- Distribute viral screensaver, software or ebooks

Success in viral advertising depends a lot on your ability to create a buzz in your community. You need to package your product into something that is unique and interesting so that people are interested in spreading the words for you. Viral advertising can hardly work for a “me-too” product.

4) Incentivized advertising

The forth type of advertising technique is incentivized advertising where the traffic is rewarded to visit your website.

The following traffic strategies all fall under incentivized advertising technique:

- Traffic exchange programs
- Auto-surf advertising
- Paid to read advertising
- Safelist advertising

Success in this type of advertising depends mainly on your offer and the way you present it. Most advertisers who fail either do not have a good offer or they fail to deliver the benefit of their offer across to the target audience.

5) Obtrusive advertising

The last type of advertising technique is obtrusive advertising where the traffic is forced to view your ad. The most typical examples are popup and popunder advertising.

The first rule in obtrusive advertising is to avoid untargeted traffic, which happens to be quite common in this kind of advertising. If your ad is shown to a pool of people who are not interested in your offer, you are simply barking up the wrong tree!

If the traffic is targeted, your success in obtrusive advertising depends mainly on your offer and the way you present it, similar to incentivized advertising.

Final note……

As you can see, online advertising is not as complicated as what it seems to be. I hope that by understanding the main types of advertising techniques, you can be better prepare your advertising campaign. All the best!

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The Internet has now become an important medium for product and service advertisements.  Almost every company that can afford print, radio and TV advertisements have also ventured into placing ads on the Internet.

But with millions of websites out there being visited by millions of computer users, how can you make sure that your ad can be seen by your target customers and that your leads will be followed by these users?  Here are a few tips.

1.  Place an ad on the websites frequented by your target customers.  Before doing this, you need to define who will be your target customers.  Placing an ad on sites that they usually visit will increase the possibility that your ad will gain the attention and will be followed your target customers. 

Also, consider the website’s search engine placement, traffic, external linking and the other ads placed on it.  External linking will determine if there are other sites that link to this site.  This will mean that people can get to the site where your ad is placed, even if they are browsing a different site.  Check if many of your competitors have ads on this site.

2.  Placing ads on some sites cost some money.  However, there are also sites that can place a link to your site, product or service in exchange of having their link being displayed on your site.  This is also true about the newsletters sent by site owners to its mailing list members regularly.

Also, having helpful links placed on your site and having sites link to your pages help in boosting search engine ranking.  This is similar to making a statement that your site’s content is important that other sites have links to your web pages.

3.  Pay-per-click (PPC) is also a good method in Internet marketing.  You will only need to pay for the ad if the link is clicked.  If you prefer this method of advertisement, make sure that you are using services that set limits on daily expenses.  There are also services that help you determine effective keywords and monitor the PPC results.

4.  Choose your domain name wisely.  It is still being debated if domain names matter when it comes to search engine placement.  Whether it does or not, having product related domain names help consumers remember your domain, that they can go back to your site even without the links.

5.  Make sure you have useful content on your sites.  While keyword density is important in search engine placement, having useless information or annoying repetition of keywords will not increase your customer’s confidence in your site.  It may even affect your sites traffic and can get your site removed from search engines.  So make sure that keywords are used strategically.

6.  When thinking of keywords, think like your target customers.  What do you think are they going to search so they can get to your site?  Also, use specific keywords or key phrases.  Submitting a single word or a very general phrase to a search engine will not get you to the top of the search results compared to submitting specific keywords that describe your product and services perfectly.

7.  Track your ads.  Always check how much you have spent on placing links on frequently visited sites and on PPC.  There are services that allow you to monitor PPC transactions and how many of these end in sales.  You always need to consider if the ads that you have placed on these websites are getting you to your target consumers and if these ads can lead to revenue.

One final tip on marketing products and services, sell the benefits.  It will help your marketing strategies a lot if you highlight the benefits of choosing your products and services instead of merely discussing the product specifications.  Product specifications may not mean much to customers, unless they know what these stand for (how these specifications affect the quality of the product or service).

Many people say getting to the top of search engine results is difficult since millions of websites exist, which can be using the same keywords.  While this is true, this doesn’t mean that your website has to stacked under your competitors’ websites when presenting search engine results.  Strategic advertising and linking, together with useful content, can also get you to the top of the search results.

Engaging in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has its own benefits and drawbacks. But what exactly is PPC advertising and what it can do to your business?

Business nowadays is doing different kinds of austerity measures when it comes to advertising their products and services. This is because of high rates of placing ads on print and on television. But there is a fast growing approach that businessmen can utilize to bring their services closer to the people and that is through Internet Marketing.

One tool that is causing internet marketing popularity is PPC advertising. This is a technique used in search engine marketing that requires one to pay a fee every time someone clicks an ad on your website. Usually this placement is done through a bidding process. If you are a top bidder for your keywords/phrases, you are sure to be on the number one spot on all search engines. Just be sure of the effectiveness of your ad copy to get the most number of clicks you need for your business.

Here are the benefits of PPC advertising are:

1. You need not be a genius in computer and technology to be able to run this ad campaign.
2. Immediate results are seen after a few days.
3. No need to make a website conform to the SEO rules.
4. Nothing to lose even if you do not top the pages of different search engines. You can still always choose PPC advertising.
5. You can make use any search engine available.
6. You can type in any keyword you like.

Cons of PPC advertising includes:

1. Fixed payments every month to the search engine you choose.
2. Pay for each click received by your website. At times, visitors are just competitors or people playing pranks on search engines. This hassle wastes money you put in to this advertising.
3. Inability to pay for the fees next month would mean removal of your website on the paid listings.
4. This advertising can only be used temporarily because it is difficult to handle in the long run.
5. Pay-per-click pricing can be costly for long periods of time, therefore, this should be stopped after an ad campaign.

But how exactly PPC advertising can increase traffic, leads and sales?

PRE-QUALIFIED TRAFFIC. All visitors of your website are already considered as a qualified consumer or buyer of your product. PPC advertising leads your customers to you for a lesser cost.

INSTANT EXPOSURE, IMMEDIATE PROFITS. PPC search engines enable you to get your desired results fast. They will have your website live within just a few hours which means immediate increase in sale.

CONSISTENT TOP LISTINGS. This is to get your website on top of the sponsored search results for free. You just have to choose the keywords related to your site and business and place them within your web pages. After this, you are done.

PPC advertising enables advertisers to control their advertising campaigns. Advertisers have effectively targeted their audience and set their own price per click. PPC advertising networks provide the platform to identify the desired audience by geographic setting, topic and industry.  These networks have a list of websites of the publishers where the ads will be placed.

Tools are provided by the networks to check how the pay per click limit is working for a certain advertiser. If its still competitive, would it be even listed among the paid search lists or does it generate sales? Of course, if the advertiser made the highest bid, the better chances the ad will be seen in the search engine. These networks too provide protection for the advertisers against click fraud. This advertising set-up allows advertisers to set a daily budget for his ads, thus, less spending for unnecessary clicks. Advertiser will never go over his budget. 

In PPC advertising, what are important are the keywords and phrases. You have to select at least ten “very specific” keywords that would give you the best traffic in the search. Then, write the ad creatively but straightforward. Tell the truth about your product or service and do not lie. Good thing if your product or service will not disappoint those that are relying on your ad’s promise - but what if it did otherwise? Important too is the clarity of the ad. Do not use very vague languages. Include important details like the price.

You should also remember to budget your bids. Do not go overbidding because you will only lose your money and do not go so low that your ads will never get the chance to show up. Check your profit against your spending. If you see no progress then most likely you have to drop your ad campaign.
  
More and more advertisers have been using PPC advertising and it will continue to grow faster than any online advertising techniques. From revenues of $2.6 billion in 2004 to $5.5 billion in 2009, cost per click will dramatically go up as well from $0.29 to $0.36.

PPC advertising is new in online marketing and it is going to continue in the years to come. For advertisers, this means increase revenues with fewer advertising expenses, savings, more sales, good return of investment (ROI) and effective ad campaigns in the days to come.