The marketing game can be a tricky one in online and offline businesses alike. This article will outline ways that you can help avoid the pitfalls of the marketing game.
First off, free is not always good. Yes it is cheap, but sometimes – if not often – cheap is exactly what you get. What you must keep foremost in your mind with any type of marketing is knowing where to devote your hard work for the best possible outcomes.
Sometimes time is money. What I mean by that is sometimes the time that it takes to post ads to "free" classifieds sites could have been spent as less time and a little money with far better results.
The problem with "free" classified and other posting sites (aside from forums) is that most of the "readers" are actually the marketers themselves, so you must ask … who reading the ads are really going to click on them?
Google Adwords is a great way to spend a little money but get a lot in return. If you use the old Overture keyword tool, then you can pick keywords within your niche that are the most popular, and get targeted clicks to your site.
I am sure that you have heard that being listed in the search engines is not as important as getting targeted clicks through pay-per-click (such as Google Adwords) or other paid services. In a sense I agree, however I cannot understate the importance of being listed in the major search engines.
Even though the clicks may not be as targeted as a paid advertisement, visitors coming from Google and other search engines can help your site a great deal. The key to getting more targeted traffic from the search engines is to be targeted with your keywords.
A lot of marketers that have not had great success from the search engines tend to use just random keywords for the sake of getting more visitors due to showing up in more searches. This simply does not make sense to me. For instance, if you are wanting to sell your car, and get the most targeted people that would be interested in your car, why would you put keywords in your ad for say … dogs?
If you are selective with your keywords and stick to what you are selling in your keywords, then people searching those keywords will be targeted to your site. Chances are, if they are taking the time to type into a search engine search bar keywords relative to your site, there is a good chance, if you have otherwise optimized your site to appear in at least the top five sites, that you will get a click through from a potential customer that is interested in your product.
This would be the good form of free advertising. However, you must flip the coin because if though listings in search engines do not cost money, they do cost time and effort to get the rankings needed to be of help in your marketing. They require "tweaking" your site so that it is optimized to its fullest potential. And, increasingly the practice of search engines is to rank according to site popularity, incoming and outgoing links, and keywords. For instance, if you have a site that has the same keywords as a competitor, but your competitor has fifty (solid) incoming (that is links from other websites pointing to your competitors site) links, then that site will take precedence over yours in the search engines, possibly taking sales away from you.
In conclusion, though there are certainly pitfalls in "free" classified ads, there are many potentials in pay-per-click campaigns such as Google Adwords and also with search engines … if you are willing to spend the time instead of the money to get your site in the top five.
- Bruce T. Woodward
Profiting4Less.com
Bruce has been in internet marketing for over five years and is the owner of Profiting4Less.com