Friday

Get Your Name Out There! Advertising

Blog readership spiked 300% from 2004-2008*

In the olden days (hmmm 10 years ago) the only methods of advertising were television commercials, radio, billboards, newspaper or magazine ads or direct mail. The expense not only included the ad, but also the creative. So, you could expect to pay thousands of dollars just to get your name out there. Not to mention, the cost of direct mail included postage and purchasing a good mailing list. Then you waited for tear sheets or a monthly report of your "spot" rotation...hoping that your commercial found it's way into the day-part that was deemed your target.

The entire world of advertising has been turned on its head with the advent of the computer, blogs, twitter, and websites. Now when we think of advertising we think in terms of banner ads, 125x125, rotating, skyscraper and blinking ads or tweets. We search for blogs that target our market, or reach outside of it to gather customers that may have not noticed us in the past.

How do you choose what type of ad or what blog to place your advertising on? You should first take into account how well maintained the blog is. By maintained, does the blog owner update posts often? Is it visually appealing, or is it difficult to read? If it's hard to read people are not going to remain very long and will probably miss your ad. Does it attract a regular readership, or engage its readers? Are they commenting? The blog owner should be able to provide you with its statistics. Their page rank, total, returning, pageviews and unique traffic. How many people are subscribed to their blog, or receive their RSS feed.

Then the question becomes how do you measure the success of the ads you place on all of these blogs and websites? Now that's where you come in. In the past, advertising might be measured by the number of calls you received after your advertising ran. Or, if you saw a blip in sales just after a direct mail piece was mailed. These same methods will hold true, but if you are selling online, you will also want to connect to google analytics or some other tool to measure your site traffic. You need to keep track of where your ads are and when they run and then compare that to the referring sites and the number of people visiting you from that site.

Keep in mind that sometimes the quantity of people visiting you from the referring site, while important, isn't the only reason to have your ads out there. You are also aiming for name recognition. Consumers need to see you in many different places and many times to feel comfortable with your brand. Once they are comfortable they are more inclined to look further at your product and then make the decision to purchase. Brand recognition also provides you with a valuable tool, people look to you to set the standard for that genre of product.

I know that this can all be very overwhelming and I hope to share more information with you about advertising and how you choose and measure it. I wrote an article a while ago about the Cumulative Effect of Advertising that you may also be interested in.

I would love to know what your thoughts are about advertising on blogs, or your questions. Just comment and I will discuss in an upcoming blog post.

* Jupiter Research Corporation

12 reviews:

Finding Charm said...

Thank you for sharing. You must also be in marketing? I'm a marketing manager by day. Good to find someone else out there. I love the B2C much better! So much more fun.

Maybe an article on Facebook ads would be good???

Heather Leavers said...

You are (as you know!) my advertising guru!

Edna / HandmadeDiva said...

This is a very interesting and well written article Rose. Many thanks.

Edna / HandmadeDiva said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Edna / HandmadeDiva said...

Oh, and I just love that sign. "baths 25 cents". Reminds me of Gunsmoke, the old television series, and the olde, olde days in general. Even though I wasn't born then.

Waterrose said...

Thanks for commenting. In the past I was involved in marketing and advertising. I also have a degree in Marketing. I enjoy sharing information to help other artists and crafters.

grace wieber said...

I may be coming late to the party. However, better late than never. I found my way here via your Etsy Forum post and I am glad I did. Thank you for the guidance. ~Gracie

WieberArt said...

Now all we need is to find those design blogs that will cater to our niche. Thanks for the direction and encouragement.

crochetgal said...

An excellent blog post! Thanks very much for sharing it.

Amanda said...

Very informative blog post! Thank you!

Carla said...

I appreciate this so much. Thank you for sharing your wisdom! Carla @ crownbindery.etsy.com

Michelle said...

Thanks for posting this again in the forums, it gave me a lot to think about. Now to just find my niche...

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