Smart Advertising That Will Skyrocket Your Business Profits

If you want to Sky Rocket your profits immediately in your business today. Learn how to write killer Sales & Advertising Copy and win the heart of your customer so they buy over and over…Read On!

Here are the basic steps of marketing & advertising you must know & use, if you want to make huge profits in your business.

Did you know?...

Marketing and Advertising work together you simply can’t overlook the fact that if you’re running a great ad for truck parts, you may want to think twice about running the ad in ‘Dolly” magazine. Yes it sounds logical, but you’d be surprised by how many times something like this will happen each and every day.

Businesses blow hundreds and thousands of dollars everyday on ads that do absolutely nothing and pull zero response! Later we will learn why.

Businesses everywhere need this information and any business that’s “in” business, is in the business of MARKETING! That’s what it really boils down to…

Simply reading this information won’t bring sales into your business. It’s all about taking massive action and testing your ads over and over again.

The key is PERSISTANCE. As with anything, unless you persist, most of the time nothing much happens. Don’t get too disappointed if you ads don’t work the first time around…just keep trying new things till you get it right.

But remember always focus on the benefits of what your product or service will do for your prospect, NOT the features, or company or YOU for that matter!

Here’s 9 Golden Must Do Steps You Need To Follow To Get The Most From Your Advertising and Start Making More Money Today!

1) Focus on buyer benefits, not features. Your prospect is only interested in one thing. THEMSELVES!

2) Know who your prospects are, where they are and how you will reach them.

3) Understand your competition. Where are they and what are are they currently doing to source prospects.

4) Understand the frustrations & problems of your prospects and how you can solve them quickly and easily.

5) You don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars on advertising – there are plenty of low cost and no cost ways to market and advertise your business effectively.

6) Look at offering your prospects irresistible bonuses if they act on your offer within a specific time frame.

7) Always ask for the sale. Don’t expect your customer to shove money at you – they are waiting for you to ask!

8) Be Persistent. This is probably the most important rule of them all. Never ever give up!

9) Focus on buyer benefits and not on product features, it’s not about YOU!

Put into ACTION this information and your well on your way to reaping the rewards of your ACTION and maybe putting your competition out of business.

Marketing and Advertising Careers

There is not much of a difference between marketing and advertising. Both are related with the sales of products. Today both marketing and advertising have become extremely essential for big as well as small establishments. The marketing of save a product through advertising has become essential for its sale, as advertising is a powerful medium that connects directly with the masses. Due to this increased demand of marketing and advertising, it is a good career option today. The marketing and advertising industry deals with multi-million-dollar campaigns and there is a lot of glamor surrounding the clients and the promotion of their products. This glamor is popular with the younger segments of the population.

This industry offers a lot of variety when it comes to careers, as it includes media representatives, radio and television anchoring and the Internet. The most important thing that counts in a marketing and advertising career is hands-on experience. The first most essential step towards a marketing and advertising career is to gain enough theoretical as well as practical knowledge about this industry. Experimentation also plays a very important role and innovation is wholeheartedly welcomed always. Public and private colleges as well as universities offer degrees in marketing and advertising. There are various initial options such as account manager, media consultant and market researcher which help to give a fair idea about the marketing and advertising industry as a whole. Marketing and advertising careers generally start with small amounts of money but there is enormous growth potential in these fields.

There is a tremendous demand for educated marketing and advertising professionals as this industry is growing day by day. A career in marketing and advertising helps a person to give vent to his creative side along with financial satisfaction. This industry provides a fresh outlook for youngsters with powerful communication and public relation skills.

Difference Marketing vs. Advertising

Marketing vs. Advertising: What's the Difference?

You will often find that many people confuse marketing with advertising or vice versa. While both components are important they are very different. Knowing the difference and doing your market research can put your company on the path to substantial growth.

Let's start off by reviewing the formal definitions of each and then I'll go into the explanation of how marketing and advertising differ from one another:

Advertising: The paid, public, non-personal announcement of a persuasive message by an identified sponsor; the non-personal presentation or promotion by a firm of its products to its existing and potential customers.

Marketing: The systematic planning, implementation and control of a mix of business activities intended to bring together buyers and sellers for the mutually advantageous exchange or transfer of products.

After reading both of the definitions it is easy to understand how the difference can be confusing to the point that people think of them as one-in-the same, so lets break it down a bit.

Advertising is a single component of the marketing process. It's the part that involves getting the word out concerning your business, product, or the services you are offering. It involves the process of developing strategies such as ad placement, frequency, etc. Advertising includes the placement of an ad in such mediums as newspapers, direct mail, billboards, television, radio, and of course the Internet. Advertising is the largest expense of most marketing plans, with public relations following in a close second and market research not falling far behind.

The best way to distinguish between advertising and marketing is to think of marketing as a pie, inside that pie you have slices of advertising, market research, media planning, public relations, product pricing, distribution, customer support, sales strategy, and community involvement. Advertising only equals one piece of the pie in the strategy. All of these elements must not only work independently but they also must work together towards the bigger goal. Marketing is a process that takes time and can involve hours of research for a marketing plan to be effective. Think of marketing as everything that an organization does to facilitate an exchange between company and consumer.

Cumulative Effect of Marketing and Advertising

The Cumulative Effect of Marketing and Advertising

One of the most difficult for people to get used to is the fact that they do not get any return on their advertising dollar.

When you start testing advertising and marketing done the emotional response way, you'll have to decide whether advertising and marketing campaigns you start and test are working well enough to continue.

All the biggest myths about advertising and marketing that are professed by all the so called "gurus" is that there is a cumulative effect of marketing and advertising. That "name recognition" builds from this cumulative effect and eventually results in business.

Image marketing can and does work in very limited circumstances. Those circumstances are strictly in situations where someone has so much money and so much time that they can afford to build name recognition that eventually leads to a large and successful business.

For example, we all know McDonald's and Coca Cola, and we've all seen the polar bears and the Golden Arches. We know about those products as things implanted in our brains. Keep in mind though, that Coke and McDonald's spend literally millions and millions of dollars a year to get and keep that kind of name recognition.'

In many businesses, while some large companies do have name recognition, there isn't always a so-called "taste" as there is with Coke or McDonald's. People go to buy those products and eat or drink them because they like the way they taste. They don't go just because they recognize the name.

Now keep in mind a very, very important difference between these types of products and many other kinds of services. In services, nobody knows what you taste like, or whether one office of "Great way Brokers" is better than "Smart Financial Services".

Why? Because many services are highly personal. They require making personal connections. "Name recognition" won't help you a bit if your advertising isn't seen by anybody because it's boring and uninteresting.

The cumulative effect and measuring the success of your marketing clearly presents when you want to do any direct marketing project, it either works well right away, or it doesn't. Occasionally, you have a mediocre result that can be tweaked and improved. Normally you know instantly whether your advertising and marketing is working.

Let's say for example you were in sales and you decided to run an ad in your local paper for $40. After two days you receive eight leads who leave their name and address in your Voice Mailbox. Now, using a ballpark of $10/lead as the maximum acceptable cost for any type of marketing or advertising campaign, you can get an idea of whether your promotion is in the ballpark or not.

With this $40 ad divided into 8 leads, you're paying $5 a lead. Which is certainly an acceptable cost per lead. This sort of cost-per-lead range will end up being very productive and successful for you as you move through the testing and increase the frequency and size of your ads.

But, if you ran the same $40 ad and only got two responses, you're at $20 a lead. That tells you that the ad probably either A) has the wrong headline, B) is in the wrong place in the paper, C) is in the wrong publication altogether, or D) is in the wrong time of the week or month, or any combination of the above variables.

This would work the same way if you were in the retail business. Instead of getting leads you would get customers. Wouldn't it be better to get 8 customers to respond to you rather than 2 customers? The ad cost the same no matter what your response is, however the bottom line on your business makes it a huge difference.

To be honest with you, even though you can take educated guesses and get pretty good at figuring things out over time, as you get more experienced in response marketing, you still never know exactly why a particular campaign does or does not work. All you know is either A) it does, or B) it doesn't.

Proterra Advertising recognized with two awards of Distinction from the Print Communicator Awards 2007

(DALLAS, TX) Jun. 19, 2007 – Proterra Advertising won two Awards in the 13th Annual Communicator Award Print Competition. The Communicator Awards are judged by industry insiders and draws contestants from around the globe, with winners spanning all 50 U.S. states and numerous countries.

In their first year to enter the competition, the agency received awards in two print categories. The awards were for work executed for their client, American Airlines Center, for their Invitation and Holiday Card entries.

The Communicator Award is given to companies whose submitted work exceeds industry standards, and it is this distinction that Heather Norton, Director of Client Services, knows further sets Proterra Advertising apart from other agencies.

“This award is a direct representation of the high quality of creative work we provide to our clients regularly. We are honored that we have been recognized as an agency that exceeds industry standards in communications,” stated Norton.

“Proterra Advertising always amazes us with their creativity. It is wonderful to have an agency that keeps providing us with fresh creative that reflects our brand as a Premier Sports and Entertainment Venue and makes us stand out in our industry,” said the Marketing Director for the American Airlines Center.

Proterra Advertising looks at competitions as a chance to show-off the hard work of their staff. Honored to receive awards of distinction, Proterra Advertising approaches each campaign with the intention to create work that is unique and award-worthy.

Established in 1993, Proterra has grown into an established marketing firm used by some of the best-known brands in the country to bring their message and products to consumers everywhere.

Internet Marketing Companies, Online Marketing Degree, Online Marketing Service

ONLINE MARKETING SERVICE

Online Marketing Service, also referred to as Internet marketing service is about using the Internet as another channel to market your business or organization. It’s about broadening your Web visibility, attracting qualified visitors to your website or getting interested people to email or call without even needing to come to your site. When visitors do come, through on-site marketing efforts and strong features, you lead them to do what you want them to do: fill out a form, register for an event or make a purchase from you through the internet usage. Some people would be eased to make their necessary work about their company by providing online worker from other place to make their job more easy to do.

Online Marketing Service builds, executes and measures direct response strategies using the Internet. Some key areas that the company should consider to concentrate on are acquisition of specific information, retention of the data being given on the site, awareness of how the site should be handled, optimization of the site content and behavior, and conversion of details through a more useful resource to the users online.

Here are some of the processes that the company should consider in getting their online marketing more effective:

1. Define Your Goal - work together with every member of your company to help clearly define exactly what it is you want to accomplish towards a more fruitful future using the online marketing service and how to set up goals which are important to the company.

2. Develop the Plan – the company should develop strategic, effective and measurable direct response marketing plans designed to achieve the company goals. Through the company's efforts of each member, a more suitable and easy way of conducting the plan can be performed.

3. Execute the Plan - provide capable and experienced project management throughout the entire implementation process. Each member of the company should be reliable, thorough, well-connected, and determined to make satisfied clients that are connected to the company. With these at hand, satisfied clients are willing to cooperate and pay more for the efforts of the company.

4. Measure the Results - No online marketing campaign is complete without measuring the results. Internet marketing strategies take tracking and measuring of the clients website advertisements before implementation occurs. This way, the company can measure their effectiveness to the clients as well as how better they know their company's effectiveness in the process. With the good results that the company is displaying, more and more clients are willing to be with the company and won't have second thoughts of paying a good amount for a good service that the company offers. Clients' satisfaction are very vital when it comes to consideration about the company's main goal.

ONLINE MARKETING DEGREE

Online Marketing Degree generally refers to the degrees that are offered in the internet through advertisements and well-presented by different courses that are being offered by the colleges and universities throughout the globe. It most likely want to prepare individuals in undertaking and managing the process of developing consumer audiences and moving products from producers to consumers by the use of the internet.

A more easy way to determine whether you're making the right decision in improving and pursuing your career as student is to continue studying and taking one of the major courses that the college or university offers. Online Marketing Degree includes instruction in buyer behavior and dynamics, principle of marketing research, demand analysis, cost-volume and profit relationships, pricing theory, marketing campaign and strategic planning, market segments, advertising methods, sales operations and management, consumer relations, retailing, and applications to specific products and markets.

Many colleges and universities have come up with the idea of advertising their different online courses because through this, a more practical, faster and easier way of advertising through the web can be seen and noticed. They will no longer have to make certain advertisements through television and radios just around their country but through online marketing service. The degrees that they offer will be seen by anyone from anywhere around the globe by the use of the internet. An effective way of advertising without the high costing.

A slight example on the online marketing degree is the Bachelor of Science in Business Administration – Marketing (B.S.B.A./MKT.) which puts working professionals on a clear path to lifelong learning and success. Maximizing their career opportunities, making important contributions to the profession, reaching the potential—that define success.

Through a program that combines academic theory with practical application, and includes courses in Ethical Leadership and in Social Responsibility, the students will gain knowledge and experience in areas vital to business and society. This concentration will help the students develop insights into an organization’s marketing effort by learning not only the traditional disciplines of alternate marketing channels, sales management, advertising and research, but also emerging marketing approaches related to consumer motivation, global customer management, customer relationship management, and marketing on the Internet.

Another example of an online marketing degree is the Master of Business Administration in Marketing (M.B.A./MKT.), it provides students with the ability to examine the relationship between marketing and corporate strategy and the tools necessary for developing and implementing strong marketing tactics throughout the companies in which they work. Through a hands-on curriculum including case analyses, this specialization lays the practical groundwork necessary for students interested in strengthening or furthering their career as a marketing professional or decision maker.

INTERNET MARKETING COMPANIES

Internet Marketing is a broad term that can include everything from pay-per-click management to a full-blown online marketing campaign that builds traffic and tracks site visitors to increase conversions from all mediums. Internet Marketing can be thought as encompassing all of the following disciplines: search engine optimization, pay-per-click management, link building and affiliate marketing.

Internet Marketing Companies work solely towards getting their client’s product or services marketed online, and this is really becoming something that modern businesses can’t live without. Obviously, an Internet marketing company can’t use the same techniques that a traditional advertising agency would use, such as television commercials and special promotions.

The things that an Internet marketing company can do are pretty amazing, though, because the costs are fairly low and the results can potentially reach a global audience. The interactive nature of Internet marketing, which allows businesses to draw out an instant response from potential customers, is a unique quality of the medium. Internet marketing companies can bring creative and technical aspects together, including design, development, advertising and sales. Internet marketing methods include search engine optimization, pay per click management, display advertising, email marketing, interactive advertising, blog marketing, and viral marketing.

The services that an Internet marketing Company offers aren’t always something tangible that people can see, although things like banner ads and social media marketing (using sites like MySpace) are quite visible. Things like search engine optimization and pay per click management are more intangible, but they help promote a website by placing it where people will see it when they are looking for that type of product or service. Internet marketing companies grow and promote an organization using online media.

An Internet marketing company does not simply build a website or promote a website… They make that website visible to people who are likely to become real paying customers. For some reasons, people are making easier ways of advertising their products and news through the Internet because of its lower cost and its effectiveness. Consumers can see the products and massive orders and requests could be in any instant on line with the company which provides the products.

An online marketing campaign is necessary these days with the Internet become bigger and bigger by the day. Therefore, it is crucial to hire an effective Internet marketing company to help your business achieve the online results you are looking for.

Since the advent of the World Wide Web, there have been many new evolutions to online marketing. Thankfully, there are many Internet marketing companies that can show you the ropes about the industry so that you can capitalize with your online venture.

There is a wide variety of items that a quality Internet marketing company can provide to your business. One of the main sources of online marketing is in search engine optimization, commonly referred to as SEO. This process simply refers to the act of ensuring that your website appears in the top of the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. This is achieved by submitting articles and keyword phrases all over the Internet because the more links that your website has on the Net, the higher your search engine ranking will be. Since most customers will choose to use the services of a company that is among the top ten in the search engines, SEO can work wonders for your online venture.

However, an Internet marketing company also has many other services that can benefit your business. Many of these particular companies also provide website designing and graphic design help that will make your website much more appealing to the public. If you search hard enough, you will be able to find a quality company that will produce your website from the ground up and then use SEO to ensure that your site gets the recognition it deserves.

Advertising Do's and Don'ts

As you begin marketing and promoting your online business you are going to run into some unbelievable advertising opportunities. Generally speaking if the ad offering sounds too good to be true--It is.

There are companies that will tell you they will get you listed in the top 10 search engines or place your link on millions of sites or they will get you listed in the top 10 returns of search engines. This last one sounds similar to the first, but there is a big difference.

Google searches over 3 billion pages during their searches. The companies that tell you they will get you listed in the top 10 of the major search engines would have to defy all the principles of math to do this. They could not work with more than a few companies in order to achieve this and honestly, there is no way they can get you listed in the top 10 of the search engines placements at all unless they make up their own search terms and people search on that specific term.

Stay away from the companies that tell you they are going to place you in search engines for a fee, for the most part they will do nothing more than use a site software submitter. You can get your own software for this or use an online service and submit your site yourself for a lot less than what most SEO companies charge for this service.

Guaranteed traffic-- They work fine for free sites or if your goal is to build a database of names, but if you are selling a product or service, you will get hits, but not many sales.

Mass email -- Any company that tells you they will send your ad to millions of people for $20 or $30 is simply taking your money. This might sound inviting, but do not waste your money. They are either using site submit tools or sending your ad to millions of harvested email addresses. The companies who tell you they are going to submit your site to millions of pages will most likely do what they say, but you will not see any return and may even get you Spam complaints.

Mass emails are a complete waste of your money regardless of what product you are selling. There are many sites that will tell you they will send your ad to double opt-in lists of people. We have tried over a dozen of these services and have barely received a hit, much less sales. The problem is you lose control over your ad when you use mass email companies. There is no way to verify the ad was sent and if you could verify it was sent, there is no way to tell it was sent to the numbers they promise. Plus, you run the risk of being accused of Spam.

Solo ads-- These are by far one of the best methods of promoting your product and service. They are targeted, you can verify the numbers and you can subscribe using a unique email and verify the ad was sent on the day and time it was supposed to be sent.

Consultants-- Use your best judgment when hiring consultants, call some or send an email and ask about a money back guarantee if they cannot meet the objectives they set forth. I am not a big believer in money-back guarantees because if a service is valuable and you can see the value before you buy, then a money back guarantee is not necessary. However, if someone comes to you and says, I can make your site profitable within 30 or 60 or 90 days and it is going to cost you X amount of money, then they should give you your money back if they do not achieve the desired results.

A good consultant will work with companies that he or she knows they can help by relying on their background and expertise in certain areas of marketing and advertising. Nobody knows everything, but if someone has an expertise in an area that I lack knowledge with, I would hire him or her in a second if they can honestly help me and they can prove they can help me and they will back up what they tell me.

We get emails every day from people who want to join ISOR with the plan of retiring in a month, making a million dollars without doing anything, etc. and we turn every one of them down. There is no business on the Internet or in traditional business where you can accomplish this type of unrealistic goal.

There are, however consultants who will tell you what you want to hear, just to get your business. They take your money and run and they will not help you a bit. We hired a copy writer one time who seemed like a good fit for our company and only after she finished the writing at $120 an hour did she tell me that she would not buy my product. Not because she could not benefit from it, but she refused to pay for anything online. Her copy was terrible and we ended up re--writing the entire sales page. Her feelings and beliefs came across in her writings. It was simply impossible for her to write positively when her mind was telling her negative things.

We have many marketing and advertising partners and all the companies we partner with have been tested by us to offer valuable services, but there are thousands of other companies on the Internet and you might find a very good company with a very good service that works for you and within your budget. Not all companies are out to cheat you, but the purpose of this article is to forewarn you regarding where you spend your advertising dollars.

We have spent a lot of money and time buying and trying different advertising options and by using our own ad campaign and link tracking system for all our advertising campaigns we have the data to back up what we say.

Research your advertising options carefully and do not get pulled into a good deal just because it sounds like a good deal. You do not need to spend a lot of money to advertise and promote your business, you just need to use your common sense and think long term.

Viral Marketing 101 Business

Viral Marketing 101 - Not Using It Could Kill Your Business!

Have you ever wondered if what you know about Viral Marketing is accurate? Consider the following paragraphs and compare what you know to the latest info on Viral Marketing.

Truthfully, the only difference between you and Viral Marketing experts is time. If you'll invest a little more time in reading, you'll be that much nearer to expert status when it comes to Viral Marketing.

Creativity.

This is one virtue a site must possess to lead the race in the ruthless competition in the Internet based business. With so many competition and rivalry going on, every method of marketing must be employed and utilized.

It doesn’t matter if you have a killer product or a fantastically designed website, if people don’t know that you exist, it doesn’t matter, and you are not going to make it big. Worse of all, you business could just get killed.

While there are so many methods and schemes used by so many e-commerce sites today, there are still some of those that can help you with an extra boost in the popularity ratings. One of these is the so called Viral Marketing.

While the term Viral easily depicts a virus, a word very much dreaded by all computer owners, it is not what it seems. You do not actually use a computer virus to spread your business; on the contrary it just might kill you. Everyone has had enough of all those pop up ads and spywares.

Viral Marketing Overview

Viral Marketing also known otherwise as Viral Advertising is a marketing technique used to build the public awareness of one’s product or company. They use many forms of media to reach out to the public without actually promoting the product by riding on in other forms of addictive means that could get a person hooked and be obliged or amused to actually pass it on, with the product or company advertisement along with it.

In a nutshell, companies ride on the idea that if people like the content of a media they will pass it on to their friends and family. They sponsor the certain media, such as a cool flash game, funny video, amusing story and such, which one may pass on to another with the company brand or logo or the products description or any other content to help promote the company or its product.

Viral marketing has become a popular means of advertising and marketing because they are relatively low cost. To avoid being tagged as spam mail, viral marketing counts on the eagerness of one person to pas on the product. If a person sees the name of the person they know as the sender, they won’t block it and open it as well.

Many companies offer incentives such as discounts and rebates when they help in spreading their viral marketing. They rely on the number of recipients a viral marketing gets from one person in determining the amount or number of incentive they can be attributed with.

Using Viral Marketing to your advantage

The main and foremost advantage of viral marketing is that you get a lot of publicity and public awareness about your site and your company. You get to generate a flow of traffic that are potential customers. With a little ingenuity and imagination, plus some incentives or prizes, you can reach out to a great number of people and announce your existence.

Most every site and companies are catching on to the effectivity of Viral Marketing and Advertising. Not using it could kill your business. Along with other schemes and methods in promoting your site, like Search Engine Optimization and such, viral marketing could easily push you ahead in the rating games.

Viral Marketing could be a sneaky way to get people to know about you and your company. You get them to pass your advertisement along. They are also very low cost that not investing in it could be downright a business suicide. All it takes is a great idea, a good addicting game, a funny story many ideas are still out there. Create a gossip or a buzz, many movies are promoted by using scandals and gossips to make them moiré popular. Remember the movie “The Blair Witch Project”?

Many big companies have tried viral marketing and have had many success stories with it. A classic example is Microsoft’s Hotmail. They were the first known big company to utilize the scheme and it has worked wonders for them.

Now it’s your turn to use viral marketing to work wonders for you. Act now and reap the benefits Viral Marketing will provide for you and your sales figures.

Knowing enough about Viral Marketing to make solid, informed choices cuts down on the fear factor. If you apply what you've just learned about Viral Marketing, you should have nothing to worry about.

Internet Marketing for Lawyers -- Advice

Internet Marketing for Lawyers - Advice That Counts

This article deals primarily with Internet marketing for lawyers and to a lesser degree non-Internet marketing for lawyers. Various forms of Internet marketing and non-Internet marketing are discussed with some very innovative Internet marketing solutions thrown in for the lawyer to think about or act upon.

Lawyers face the same challenges any business does. In order to get new business they must market their services, i.e., advertise. And lawyers deal with the same marketing and advertising challenge every business does – how to beat the competition. Plus lawyers have to assume that any Internet or non-Internet marketing or advertising they do may well produce little or no results for the amount of time and money they spend -- regardless of what an outside marketing or advertising advisor may say to the contrary.

Prior to the Internet the main non-Internet marketing option or advertising choice for any lawyer was to advertise in the yellow pages. To this day the print yellow pages contain plenty of colorful, one page display ads that feature lawyers offering their services, and lawyers pay a lot for these ads. How effective these ads are is anyone’s guess -- it’s hard for your colored, one page display ad to stand out when you have 20 other lawyers doing the exact same thing! The yellow pages companies, however, continue to promote their marketing and advertising philosophy that “bigger is always better” and “everything we sell is an opportunity,” so they often present a lawyer with a non-Internet marketing and advertising solution that costs plenty but often produces little. This line of thinking, along with the use of print yellow pages in general, has gone the way of the dinosaur at a very accelerated pace. The yellow pages in print form had their heyday for many decades, but the population now goes to the Internet for the information they seek, so most print directories are collecting dust. A lawyer who advertises in the print yellow pages may well get calls, but they’ll most likely be from vendors using the yellow pages as a cheap source of leads.

The major paid search providers (pay per click search engines) tend to offer lawyers Internet marketing and advertising solutions in a manner similar to the way the yellow pages do with their print directories. “Bigger is always better,” so rather than realistically discuss with a lawyer a pay per click Internet marketing and advertising campaign that makes financial sense and produces a decent ROI, the pay per click providers will tell the lawyer to go for as many top listing keywords (the most expensive) as their budget will permit and bid as high as they can. The lawyer may go broke in the process, but at least they’ll get exposure! Many lawyers get into pay per click as a quick way to get leads but quickly exit a month later after spending lots of money for Internet marketing and advertising results that produce nothing but expense.

While pay per click Internet marketing and advertising is the running favorite of Internet marketing advertisers worldwide, pay per click advertising for a lawyer is usually an extremely expensive proposition for what they get. How much a lawyer is willing to “pay for a lead” takes on a whole new meaning with pay per click. The cost per click for many lawyer related keywords, e.g., “personal injury lawyer,” “criminal defense lawyer,” can range from $5.00 to $70.00 per click depending on the market, and when the typical lawyer’s conversion rate (the number of clicks it takes to generate a lead) of one to two percent is factored in, the lawyer can find themselves paying upwards of $500.00 to $7,000.00 per lead, and a lead is not a client.

Part of the problem lawyers face when they work with pay per click (and this translates directly into poor conversion rates) is that (1) they spend little time creating their pay per click ads and (2) the ads direct traffic to the lawyer’s website. Any Internet marketing professional who knows something about pay per click knows you never send pay per click traffic to a website. Instead you create special pages, i.e., “landing pages” for pay per click traffic to be directed to. The landing pages perform the job of convincing traffic to do what the lawyer requires, which is normally to contact the lawyer via e-mail or by phone.

Legal Internet directories and portals offer the lawyer a potential Internet marketing and advertising option because of their popularity and enhanced Internet visibility. How effective a listing in a legal Internet directory or portal can be for a lawyer in terms of marketing, advertising and Internet exposure will depend upon the particular attributes of the legal Internet directory or portal in question. All things being equal, legal Internet directories or portals that charge a fee to be listed in them make more sense as an Internet marketing and advertising choice than similar sites that offer listings for free. The lawyer has to be particularly careful, however, when they consider advertising in legal Internet directories and portals that “look” like they offer a lot -- and a price to go with it -- but for whatever reasons simply do not produce enough leads for the amount of Internet marketing and advertising money the lawyer must spend. Many legal Internet directories and portals exist that have a very strong Internet presence, and they are excellent resource centers for lawyers, but this does not automatically make them good places to advertise. With Internet legal portals especially it’s not how many lawyers the portal attracts but how many people the Internet legal portal attracts who are searching for legal services. People have paid thousands of dollars for advertising in Internet legal portals that have produced nothing in the way of Internet marketing and advertising results. A very wise idea for any lawyer who considers advertising in an Internet legal portal is to get some very accurate user demographics on what kind of specific traffic the Internet legal portal is actually attracting.

What is a lawyer supposed to do? Everywhere the lawyer looks, whether the marketing and advertising media is Internet or non-Internet, considerable financial risk is involved, and a guarantee that the lawyer will get good, solid results for the amount of money they spend is often hard to achieve.

Ultimately the best way for a lawyer to go with Internet marketing and advertising – the way that will ultimately get them the best long term results for the money they spend -- is to focus on getting their website to rank high in organic search results. When all things are considered, people on the Internet who search for goods and services mainly search for websites to find their answers. They may look to legal Internet directories and portals, and if they don’t find what they want they may turn to pay per click listings as a last resort (only about 30% to 40% of users bother with pay per click) but ultimately people who search the Internet are looking for websites that provide them with the answers they seek.

If a lawyer is looking for an Internet marketing and advertising solution that doesn’t require being part of the pay per click crowd, the lawyer may want to look into pay per phone call programs. Pay per phone call is like pay per click, but the lawyer does not pay for a call unless they receive one. And the costs for pay per phone call are normally substantially less that what the lawyer will pay for a click in many cases. A smart lawyer may even want to consider getting involved with several pay per phone call providers with the idea that between the providers the lawyer will receive enough leads in the aggregate to make involvement with these programs worth it.

Many of the Internet marketing and advertising solutions that a lawyer chooses to look into must be tried on a case by case basis. Absolutely nothing can be assumed. A pay per click advertising campaign that works extremely well for the lawyer with one search provider might fail miserably with another.

One last thing that a lawyer should be aware of when it comes to the Internet and a website presence is that appearances really do count. Many people have been on the Internet for 10 years and have correspondingly seen websites of all types and styles. People are used to seeing professionally designed websites. The lawyer’s website should be too.

Behavioral targeting

Behavioral targeting or behavioural targeting is a technique used by online publishers and advertisers to increase the effectiveness of their campaigns.

Behavioral targeting uses information collected on an individual's web-browsing behavior, such as the pages they have visited or the searches they have made, to select which advertisements to display to that individual. Practitioners believe this helps them deliver their online advertisements to the users who are most likely to be influenced by them.

Behavioral marketing can be used on its own or in conjunction with other forms of targeting based on factors like geography, demographics or the surrounding content.

Examples of behavioral targeting in advertising targeting systems include: Predicta BT, AdLINK 360, Avail, Boomerang, Criteo, DoubleClick (prior to 2002)[1], nugg.ad, prudsys, ValueClick [2], and wunderloop.

Behavioral Targeting allows site owners or ad networks to display content more relevant to the interests of the individual viewing the page. On the theory that properly targeted ads will fetch more consumer interest, the seller may ask for a premium for these over random advertising or ads based on the context of a site.

Onsite Behavioral targeting

Behavioral targeting techniques may also be applied to any online property on the premise that is either improves the visitor experience or it benefits the online property, typically through increased conversion rates or increased levels of spend. The early adopters of this technology/philosophy are primarily within a retail or other e-commerce website as a technique for increasing the relevance of product offers and promotions on a visitor by visitor basis. More recently, companies outside this traditional e-commerce marketplace have started to experiment with these emerging technologies.

The typical approach to this starts by using web analytics to break-down the visitor mass into a number of discrete channels. each channel is then analysed and a virtual profile is created to deal with each channel. These profiles can be based around Personas that gives the website operators a starting point in terms of deciding what content, navigation and layout to show to each of the different personas. When is comes to the practical problem of successfully delivering the profiles correctly this is usually achieved by either using a specialist content behavioral platform or by bespoke software development. Most platforms identify visitors by assigning a unique id cookie to each and every visitor to the site thereby allowing them to be tracked throughout their web journey, the platform then makes a rules-based decision about what content to serve.

Again, behavioral data can be combined with demographic and past purchase history in order to produce a greater degree of granularity in the targeting.

Self-learning onsite behavioral targeting systems will monitor visitor response to site content and learn what is most likely to generate a desired conversion event. Some good content for each behavioral trait or pattern is often established using numerous simultaneous multivariate tests. Onsite behavioral targeting requires relatively high level of traffic before statistical confidence levels can be reached regarding the probability of a particular offer generating a conversion from a user with a set behavioral profile. Some providers have been able to do so by leveraging its large user base, such as Yahoo!. Some providers use a rules based approach, allowing administrators to set the content and offers shown to those with particular traits.

Network Behavioral targeting

Advertising Networks use behavioral targeting in a different way to individual sites. Since they serve many adverts across many different sites, they are able to build up a picture of the likely demographic makeup of internet users. An example would be a user seen on football sites, business sites and male fashion sites. A reasonable guess would be to assume the user is male. Demographic analyses of individual sites provided either internally (user surveys) or externally (Comscore \ netratings) allow the networks to sell audiences rather than sites.[3] Although advertising networks used to sell this product, this was based on picking the sites where the audiences were. Behavioral targeting allows them to be slightly more specific about this.

This service is offered by (among others):Front Porch,[4] Tacoda, Burst, NebuAd[4], Phorm, ValueClick.


Concerns

Many online users & advocacy groups are concerned about privacy issues around doing this type of targeting. This is a controversy that the behavioral targeting industry is trying to contain through education, advocacy & product constraints to keep all information non-personally identifiable or to obtain permission from end-users. AOL created animated cartoons in 2008 to explain to its users that their past actions may determine the content of ads they see in the future.[5] Canadian academics from the at the University of Ottawa Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic have recently demanded the federal privacy commissioner to investigate online profiling of Internet users for targeted advertising.[6]

Contextual advertising

Contextual advertising is a form of targeted advertising for advertisements appearing on websites or other media, such as content displayed in mobile browsers. The advertisements themselves are selected and served by automated systems based on the content displayed to the user.

How contextual advertising works

Contextual advertising is targeted to the specific individual visiting a website (or page within a website). A contextual advertising system scans the text of a website for keywords and returns advertisements to the webpage based on what the user is viewing.[1] The advertisements may be displayed on the webpage or as pop-up ads. For example, if the user is viewing a website pertaining to sports and that website uses contextual advertising, the user may see advertisements for sports-related companies, such as memorabilia dealers or ticket sellers. Contextual advertising is also used by search engines to display advertisements on their search results pages based on the keywords in the user's query.


Service providers

Google AdSense was the first major contextual advertising program. It works by providing webmasters with JavaScript code that, when inserted into webpages, displays relevant advertisements from the Google inventory of advertisers. The relevance is calculated by a separate Google bot, Mediabot, that indexes the content of a webpage.

Since the advent of AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, Microsoft adCenter, and others have been gearing up to make similar offerings.


Impact

Contextual advertising has made a major impact on earnings of many websites. Because the advertisements are more targeted, they are more likely to be clicked, thus generating revenue for the owner of the website (and the server of the advertisement). A large part of Google's earnings is from its share of the contextual advertisements served on the millions of webpages running the AdSense program.

Contextual advertising has attracted some controversy through the use of techniques such as third-party hyperlinking, where a third-party installs software onto a user's computer that interacts with the Web browser.[citation needed] Keywords on a webpage are displayed keywords as hyperlinks that lead to advertisers.


Agency roles

There are several advertising agencies that help brands understand how contextual advertising options affect their advertising plans. There are three main components to online advertising:[citation needed]

1. creation — what the advertisement looks like
2. media planning — where the advertisements are to be run
3. media buying — how the advertisements are paid for

Contextual advertising replaces the media planning component. Instead of humans choosing placement options, that function is replaced with computers facilitating the placement across thousands of websites.

In-text advertising

In-text advertising is a form of contextual advertising where specific words within the text of a webpage are associated with advertising content.


Description

Although contextual advertising in general refers to the inclusion of advertisements adjacent to relevant online context (e.g., Google AdSense), in-text advertising places hyperlinks directly into the text of the webpage. Most in-text advertising has the following characteristics:

1. The text associated with an advertisement is identified by a double-underline to differentiate it from regular hyperlinks.
2. An in-page window containing advertising content appears when the cursor is positioned over the corresponding text.


Criticism

The use of this type of advertising in news and journalism websites has been criticized by journalism ethics counselors as "ethically problematic at the least and potentially quite corrosive of journalistic quality and credibility."[1] However, publishers such as the Indianapolis Star who use in-text advertising have reported that despite early objections by some readers, such complaints have "tapered off".[2]

History of Affiliate

Origin

The concept of revenue sharing—paying commission for referred business—predates affiliate marketing and the Internet. The translation of the revenue share principles to mainstream e-commerce happened almost four years after the origination of the World Wide Web in November 1994.

The consensus of marketers and adult industry insiders is that Cybererotica was either the first or among the early innovators in affiliate marketing with a cost per click program.[2]

During November 1994, CDNOW launched its BuyWeb program. With this program CDNOW was the first non-adult website to introduce the concept of an affiliate or associate program with its idea of click-through purchasing. CDNOW had the idea that music-oriented websites could review or list albums on their pages that their visitors may be interested in purchasing. These websites could also offer a link that would take the visitor directly to CDNOW to purchase the albums. The idea for remote purchasing originally arose because of conversations with music label Geffen Records in the fall of 1994. The management at Geffen wanted to sell its artists' CDs directly from its website, but did not want to implement this capability itself. Geffen asked CDNOW if it could design a program where CDNOW would handle the order fulfillment. Geffen realized that CDNOW could link directly from the artist on its website to Geffen's website, bypassing the CDNOW home page and going directly to an artist's music page.[3]

Amazon.com (Amazon) launched its associate program in July 1996. Amazon associates could place banner or text links on their site for individual books, or link directly to the Amazon home page.

When visitors clicked from the associate's website through to Amazon and purchased a book, the associate received a commission. Amazon was not the first merchant to offer an affiliate program, but its program was the first to become widely-known and serve as a model for subsequent programs.[4][5]

In February 2000, Amazon announced that it had been granted a patent (6,029,141) on all the essential components of an affiliate program. The patent application was submitted in June 1997, which predates most affiliate programs, but not PC Flowers & Gifts.com (October 1994), AutoWeb.com (October 1995), Kbkids.com/BrainPlay.com (January 1996), EPage (April 1996), and several others.[2]


Historic development

Affiliate marketing has grown quickly since its inception. The e-commerce website, viewed as a marketing toy in the early days of the Internet, became an integrated part of the overall business plan and in some cases grew to a bigger business than the existing offline business. According to one report, the total sales amount generated through affiliate networks in 2006 was £2.16 billion in the United Kingdom alone. The estimates were £1.35 billion in sales in 2005.[6] MarketingSherpa's research team estimated that, in 2006, affiliates worldwide earned US$6.5 billion in bounty and commissions from a variety of sources in retail, personal finance, gaming and gambling, travel, telecom, education, publishing, and forms of lead generation other than contextual advertising programs such as Google AdSense.[7]

Currently the most active sectors for affiliate marketing are the adult, gambling, and retail industries.[8] The three sectors expected to experience the greatest growth are the mobile phone, finance, and travel sectors.[8] Soon after these sectors came the entertainment (particularly gaming) and Internet-related services (particularly broadband) sectors. Also several of the affiliate solution providers expect to see increased interest from business-to-business marketers and advertisers in using affiliate marketing as part of their mix.[8]


Web 2.0

Websites and services based on Web 2.0 concepts—blogging and interactive online communities, for example—have impacted the affiliate marketing world as well. The new media allowed merchants to become closer to their affiliates and improved the communication between them.[9][10]

New developments have made it more difficult for unscrupulous affiliates to make money. Emerging black sheep are detected and made known to the affiliate marketing community with much greater speed and efficiency.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts.

Affiliate marketing is also the name of the industry where a number of different types of companies and individuals are performing this form of Internet marketing, including affiliate networks, affiliate management companies, and in-house affiliate managers, specialized third party vendors, and various types of affiliates/publishers who promote the products and services of their partners.

Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing, e-mail marketing, and in some sense display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner.

Affiliate marketing—using one website to drive traffic to another—is a form of online marketing, which is frequently overlooked by advertisers. While search engines, e-mail, and website syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e-retailers' marketing strategies.[1]

E-mail marketing

E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every e-mail sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to:

* sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business,
* sending e-mails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately,
* adding advertisements to e-mails sent by other companies to their customers, and
* sending e-mails over the Internet, as e-mail did and does exist outside the Internet (e.g., network e-mail and FIDO).

Researchers estimate that United States firms alone spent US$400 million on e-mail marketing in 2006.[1]

Advantages

E-mail marketing (on the Internet) is popular with companies for several reasons:

* A mailing list provides the ability to distribute information to a wide range of specific, potential customers at a relatively low cost.
* Compared to other media investments such as direct mail or printed newsletters, e-mail is less expensive.
* An exact return on investment can be tracked ("track to basket") and has proven to be high when done properly. E-mail marketing is often reported as second only to search marketing as the most effective online marketing tactic.[2]
* The delivery time for an e-mail message is short (i.e., seconds or minutes) as compared to a mailed advertisement (i.e., one or more days).
* An advertiser is able to "push" the message to its audience, as opposed to website-based advertising, which relies on a customer to visit that website.
* E-mail messages are easy to track. An advertiser can track users via autoresponders, web bugs, bounce messages, unsubscribe requests, read receipts, click-throughs, etc. These mechanisms can be used to measure open rates, positive or negative responses, and to correlate sales with marketing.
* Advertisers can generate repeat business affordably and automatically.
* Advertisers can reach substantial numbers of e-mail subscribers who have opted in (i.e., consented) to receive e-mail communications on subjects of interest to them.
* Over half of Internet users check or send e-mail on a typical day.[3]
* Specific types of interaction with messages can trigger (1) other messages to be delivered automatically, or (2) other events, such as updating the profile of the recipient to indicate a specific interest category.
* E-mail marketing is paper-free (i.e., "green").


Disadvantages

Many companies use e-mail marketing to communicate with existing customers, but many other companies send unsolicited bulk e-mail, also known as spam.

Internet system administrators have always considered themselves responsible for dealing with "abuse of the net", but not "abuse on the net". That is, they will act quite vigorously against spam, but will leave issues such as libel or trademark infringement to the legal system. Most administrators possess a passionate dislike for spam, which they define as any unsolicited e-mail. Draconian measures—such as taking down a corporate website, with or without warning—are entirely normal responses to spamming. Typically, the terms of service in Internet companies' contracts permit such actions; therefore, the spammer often has no recourse.

Illicit e-mail marketing predates legitimate e-mail marketing. On the early Internet (i.e., Arpanet), it was not permitted to use the medium for commercial purposes. As a result, marketers attempting to establish themselves as legitimate businesses in e-mail marketing have had an uphill battle, hampered also by criminal spam operations billing themselves as legitimate ones.

It is frequently difficult for observers to distinguish between legitimate and spam e-mail marketing. First, spammers attempt to represent themselves as legitimate operators. Second, direct-marketing political groups such as the United States Direct Marketing Association (DMA) have pressured legislatures to legalize activities that some Internet operators consider to be spamming, such as the sending of "opt-out" unsolicited commercial e-mail. Third, the sheer volume of spam has led some users to mistake legitimate commercial e-mail for spam. This situation arises when a user receives e-mail from a mailing list to which he/she subscribes. Additional confusion arises when both legitimate and spam messages have a similar appearance, as when messages include HTML and graphics.

One effective technique used by established email marketing companies is to require what is known as the "double opt-in" method of requiring a potential recipient to manually confirm their request for information by clicking a unique link and entering a unique code identifier to confirm that the owner of the recipient email address has indeed requested the information. Responsible e-mail marketing and autoresponder companies use this double opt-in method to confirm each request before any information is sent out.

A report issued by the e-mail services company Return Path, as of mid-2008 e-mail deliverability is still an issue for legitimate marketers. According to the report, legitimate e-mail servers averaged a delivery rate of 56%; twenty percent of the messages were rejected, and eight percent were filtered.[4]

Due to the volume of spam e-mail on the Internet, spam filters are essential to most users. Some marketers report that legitimate commercial e-mail messages frequently get caught and hidden by filters; however, it is somewhat less common for e-mail users to complain that spam filters block legitimate mail.

Companies considering the use of an e-mail marketing program must make sure that their program does not violate spam laws such as the United States' Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM),[5] the European Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003, or their Internet service provider's acceptable use policy. Even if a company adheres to the applicable laws, it can be blacklisted (e.g., on SPEWS) if Internet e-mail administrators determine that the company is sending spam.

Blog marketing

Blog marketing is the term used to describe internet marketing via web blogs. These blogs differ from corporate websites because they feature daily or weekly posts, often around a single topic. Typically, corporations use blogs to create a dialog with customers and explain features of their products and services.

Many organizations use blogs with their user community. This allows them to share and preview product features, functions, and benefits before the products are released. Blogs are an excellent way to gather feedback and to make sure products meet the needs of users. Blogs have become the next generation marketing tool to corporate websites which merely post collateral and do not provide any interactive feedback. Blogs are also supplimentary to a User Group. User Groups happen annually for example while blogs provide users constant daily and weekly feedback.

Blogs are Basic websites which are updated Regularly. They act as a Private news interface for any Company / Website. With regular updates being handled by the company executive team, product marketing, and product strategy teams. The need for fresh content on the web makes the Blogs a preferred destination for Resources. Blogs have been focused as a primary platform for Marketing since the early 2006.


What is a Blog?

"Blogs are web sites that allow you instantly publish content about a certain topic or theme."

Blogging then is defined as the act of publishing content with blog. But...publishing content with a blog and publishing with a regular web site are like night and day both in how they work and in what they are used for.

So what is the difference then between a web site and a blog?

A regular web site is designed to publish content for all manner of reasons. Regular web sites are static and infrequently updated. Regular web sites are great at content delivery but they can also be impersonal in how they publish content and inform their audience.

Blogs are instant publishing tools that allow you easily update your content often. Blogs are said to be dynamic content delivery systems and even content management systems. Blogs are published as two-way conversations that are more personal than web sites and are humanized by the voice of the very human blog publisher who is generally the one actually publishing content and responding feedback from readers. [1]

Blogging Tools

Blog Marketing has evolved since the start of Blogger. There has been various Blog Software options on the Web today which are free, the most popular among them being Wordpress and Blogger. Blogs are also available in Content Management Systems like Joomla (an open source CMS).

Blog Marketing versus Traditional Collateral Marketing


Blog Marketing

* Interactive
* Collaborative
* Community
* Online User Group
* Frequent Updates
* Smaller digestable topics
* More of a personal approach
* Blogs can include links to collateral as well as webinars


Traditional Collateral Marketing

* Collateral can be too boilerplate
* Collateral must be downloaded from a website
* Collateral and corporate websites often do not change
* Cost of producing collateral may be an inhibitor for start-ups
* Time to Market
* Impersonal

Search engine marketing(sem)

Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs). According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, SEM methods include: search engine optimization (or SEO), paid placement, and paid inclusion.[1] Other sources, including the New York Times, define SEM as the practice of buying paid search listings.[2][3]

Market structure

In 2006, North American advertisers spent US$9.4 billion on search engine marketing, a 62% increase over the prior year and a 750% increase over the 2002 year. The largest SEM vendors are Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter.[1] As of 2006, SEM was growing much faster than traditional advertising and even other channels of online marketing.[2]


History

As the number of sites on the Web increased in the mid-to-late 90s, search engines started appearing to help people find information quickly. Search engines developed business models to finance their services, such as pay per click programs offered by Open Text[4] in 1996 and then Goto.com[5] in 1998. Goto.com later changed its name[6] to Overture in 2001, and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, and now offers paid search opportunities for advertisers through Yahoo! Search Marketing. Google also began to offer advertisements on search results pages in 2000 through the Google AdWords program. By 2007 pay-per-click programs proved to be primary money-makers[7] for search engines.

Search engine optimization consultants expanded their offerings to help businesses learn about and use the advertising opportunities offered by search engines, and new agencies focusing primarily upon marketing and advertising through search engines emerged. The term "Search Engine Marketing" was proposed by Danny Sullivan in 2001[8] to cover the spectrum of activities involved in performing SEO, managing paid listings at the search engines, submitting sites to directories, and developing online marketing strategies for businesses, organizations, and individuals.


Ethical questions

Paid search advertising has not been without controversy, and the issue of how search engines present advertising on their search result pages has been the target of a series of studies and reports[9][10][11] by Consumer Reports WebWatch. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also issued a letter[12] in 2002 about the importance of disclosure of paid advertising on search engines, in response to a complaint from Commercial Alert, a consumer advocacy group with ties to Ralph Nader.

Pay per click

Pay per click (PPC) is an Internet advertising model used on search engines, advertising networks, and content websites, such as blogs, where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an advertisement to visit the advertisers' website. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. When a user types a keyword query matching an advertiser's keyword list, or views a webpage with relevant content, the advertisements may be displayed. Such advertisements are called sponsored links or sponsored ads, and appear adjacent to or above the "natural" or organic results on search engine results pages, or anywhere a webmaster or blogger chooses on a content page. Content websites commonly charge a fixed price for a click rather than use a bidding mechanism.

Although many PPC providers exist, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter are the largest network operators as of 2007. Minimum prices per click, often referred to as costs per click (CPC), vary depending on the search engine and the level of competition for a particular phrase or keyword list—with some CPCs as low as US$0.01. Very popular search terms can cost much more on popular search engines. The PPC advertising model is open to abuse through click fraud, although Google and other search engines have implemented automated systems to guard against abusive clicks by competitors or corrupt webmasters.

Categories
--------------
Pay per click campaigns can be categorized into two major categories: sponsored match (or keyword) and content match. Sponsored match campaigns involve the display of advertisements on search engine results pages, whereas content match campaigns involve the display of advertisements on publisher websites, newsletters, and e-mails.[2]

There are other types of pay per click programs that target product or service searches and product comparison sites. Search engine companies may participate in more than one category. PPC programs do not generate any revenue solely from Web traffic for websites that display the advertisements: Revenue is generated only when a user clicks on the advertisement itself.

Keyword-based PPC
---------------------------
Keyword-based pay per click advertisers bid on search terms—keywords consisting of words or phrases, and possibly product model numbers. When a user searches for a particular keyword, the list of advertiser links appears, where the ordering of those links is based on the amount bid for the given keyword. Keywords are the very heart of PPC advertising, and are guarded as highly-valued trade secrets by the advertisers. Many advertising firms offer software or services to help advertisers develop keyword strategies. Content Match, a service offered by Yahoo!, distributes the keyword ad to the search engine's partner sites and/or publishers that have distribution agreements with the search engine company.

As of 2007, the following are notable PPC keyword search engines:

* Ask.com
* Baidu
* Google AdWords
* LookSmart
* Microsoft adCenter
* MIVA
* Superpages.com
* Yahoo! Search Marketing
* Yandex

Product engines
----------------------
Product engines (a.k.a. product comparison engines or price comparison engines) are search engines for products, and let advertisers provide "feeds" of their product databases. When a user searches for a product, links to advertisers are displayed for that particular product. More prominence is given to advertisers who pay more; however, the user can typically sort by price.

Some product engines such as Shopping.com use a pay per click model and have a defined rate card.[3] Other engines such as Google Product Search, part of Google Base (previously known as Froogle), do not charge for the listing, but still require an active product feed to function.[4]

The following are notable PPC product engines:

* NexTag
* PriceGrabber
* Shopping.com
* Shopzilla


Service engines
----------------------
Service engines allow advertisers to provide feeds of their service databases. When a user searches for a service, links to advertisers are displayed for that particular service. More prominence is given to advertisers who pay more; however, the user can typically sort by price or other criteria. Some pay per click product engines have expanded into the service space, while other service engines operate in specific vertical markets.

The following are notable PPC service engines:

* NexTag
* SideStep
* TripAdvisor


Pay per call
----------------

Pay-per-call is a business model for advertisement listings in search engines and directories that allows publishers to charge local advertisers on a per-telephone-call basis for each sales lead (i.e., call) the publishers generate. The term "pay per call" is sometimes confused with click-to-call, which along with call tracking, is a technology that enables the pay-per-call business model. Pay per call is not restricted only to local advertisers: Many of the pay per call search engines allow advertisers with a national presence to create advertisements with local telephone numbers. According to the Kelsey Group, the pay per call market is expected to reach US$3.7 billion by 2010.[5]


Pay per delivery

Pay per delivery is a variation on pay per click used in e-mail marketing. E-mail marketing campaigns are charged only on the basis of e-mails that are delivered successfully.


Pay per action

Pay per action (PPA) is a variation on pay per click adopted by many search engines. An advertiser pays a specified amount upon successful completion of some action (e.g., conversion, sales lead, or sale). PPA was a beta test for advertising distribution within the Google Content Network. However, Google announced in July 2008 that the program will be discontinued in August 2008.


History

In February 1998 Jeffrey Brewer of Goto.com, a 25-employee startup company (later Overture, now part of Yahoo!), presented a pay per click search engine proof-of-concept to the TED8 conference in California.[6] This presentation and the events that followed created the PPC advertising system. Credit for the concept of the PPC model is generally given to Idealab and Goto.com founder, Bill Gross.

Google started search engine advertising in December 1999. It was not until October 2000 before the AdWords system was introduced, allowing advertisers to create text ads for placement on the Google search engine. However, PPC was only introduced in 2002; until then, advertisements were charged at cost-per-thousand impressions. Yahoo! advertisements have always been PPC-based since their introduction in 1998.

For a more in-depth presentation of PPC's history, see Fain and Pedersen (2006).[7]


Use in "paid to surf" websites

Pay per click search engines enlist members, known as affiliates, to display webpages called portals, which display various keywords. PPC affiliates will advertise their portals to paid to read (PTR) websites, in the hopes that the PTR affiliates will click a keyword, and then click one of the results. The PPC affiliates receive a small commission for each search.

Owners of paid to surf websites may advertise their own search portals, sending more advertisements—and essentially more money—to their affiliates who click more keywords and search results. However, this process is frowned upon, as many consider these webmasters to be forcing their affiliates into committing click fraud, as the majority of the paid to surf website's revenue may come from the webmasters' PPC commissions.

Search engine marketing(seo)

Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs). According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, SEM methods include: search engine optimization (or SEO), paid placement, and paid inclusion.[1] Other sources, including the New York Times, define SEM as the practice of buying paid search listings.

Market structure
-----------------------

In 2006, North American advertisers spent US$9.4 billion on search engine marketing, a 62% increase over the prior year and a 750% increase over the 2002 year. The largest SEM vendors are Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter.[1] As of 2006, SEM was growing much faster than traditional advertising and even other channels of online marketing.[2]

History
-----------
As the number of sites on the Web increased in the mid-to-late 90s, search engines started appearing to help people find information quickly. Search engines developed business models to finance their services, such as pay per click programs offered by Open Text[4] in 1996 and then Goto.com[5] in 1998. Goto.com later changed its name[6] to Overture in 2001, and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, and now offers paid search opportunities for advertisers through Yahoo! Search Marketing. Google also began to offer advertisements on search results pages in 2000 through the Google AdWords program. By 2007 pay-per-click programs proved to be primary money-makers[7] for search engines.

Search engine optimization consultants expanded their offerings to help businesses learn about and use the advertising opportunities offered by search engines, and new agencies focusing primarily upon marketing and advertising through search engines emerged. The term "Search Engine Marketing" was proposed by Danny Sullivan in 2001[8] to cover the spectrum of activities involved in performing SEO, managing paid listings at the search engines, submitting sites to directories, and developing online marketing strategies for businesses, organizations, and individuals.


Ethical questions
-----------------------

Paid search advertising has not been without controversy, and the issue of how search engines present advertising on their search result pages has been the target of a series of studies and reports[9][10][11] by Consumer Reports WebWatch. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also issued a letter[12] in 2002 about the importance of disclosure of paid advertising on search engines, in response to a complaint from Commercial Alert, a consumer advocacy group with ties to Ralph Nader.

Advertising, Online

I was creating a starter deck to introduce online advertising to freshmen at college, when I came across this wikipedia post and realized the power of wikis, collaboration, and blogging one again.

The organization of articles on wikipedia is fantastic and they categorically introduced and explained online advertising from a 360 degree perspective.

What I loved the most is that how well they have structured online advertising into different sub topics. Just brilliant!

Quoting a part of what I loved:

Internet marketing, also referred to as online marketing, Internet advertising, eMarketing (or e-Marketing), is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. When applied to the subset of website-based advertisement placements, Internet marketing is commonly referred to as Web advertising (Webvertising) and/or Web marketing. The Internet has brought many unique benefits to marketing, one of which being lower costs for the distribution of information and media to a global audience. The interactive nature of Internet marketing, both in terms of providing instant response and eliciting response, is a unique quality of the medium. E-marketing is sometimes considered to have a broader scope since it refers to digital media such as web, e-mail and wireless media, but also includes management of digital customer data and electronic customer relationship management systems (E-CRM systems).

Internet marketing ties together creative and technical aspects of the Internet, including design, development, advertising, and sales. Internet marketing methods and strategies encompass a wide range of services: