| Journal: TWUK | Section: |
| Title: | Issue Date: 10/07/00 |
| Author: | Page Number: 18 |
| Copyright: Other |
the net result
this week: on-line advertising
Much as you may wish it were otherwise, sooner or later you will have to consider spending some money on an on-line advertising campaign.Whether your budgets and aspirations mean advertising on the major portals or on a local community Web site, the same rules apply to what can seem a daunting process.
Here I will try to demystify the processes and help you get the most from your budget.
When it comes to on-line advertising, there are four main issues to focus on – how to reach the customers you want to target, how to optimise the reach and frequency of your advertising, how to design your advert to maximise results and how to monitor and track responses. All easier said than done? Let’s take these points one by one.
Targeting the right people is probably easier on the Internet than with any other medium.
Most Web site owners will be able to give you plenty of information about their users and, if you have a reasonable budget, you should look to appoint an agency. An agency can help you find the best Web sites for your audience and, in most cases, buy space cheaper than you would be able to on your own.
You can target by content, behaviour, users, technology and demographics. Only want your adverts to appear on Monday mornings? Fine. Just interested in running adverts when the temperature in a particular destination hits 30C? Noproblem.
Reach and frequency are difficult to cap in off-line media. Not being able to limit the number of times someone will see an advert can mean campaigns being run at less than their optimum efficiency.
With on-line advertising, you can set parameters so that for example no-one sees a particular advert more than four times. One of the great benefits of on-line advertising for marketeers is the ability to change creatively very quickly.
You can run several different adverts for the same message and re-weight the priorities around those delivering the best responses.
The beauty of this is you will be able to see the relative performances of each creative style within hours of the campaign starting.
Because of this, you can produce several very different ads, being brave and taking risks where appropriate, knowing if something goes wrong, you can always change it.
When it comes to campaign monitoring and tracking, on-line delivers results faster and clearer than could ever be achieved off-line.
Results can be tracked and analysed by site, by day of week, by hour of the day or whatever is of interest to you.
Better still, you can see who actually clicked through and who made a purchase.
Yet despite all this good news, responses to banner advertising in the UK is averaging at 0.7% and falling.
A massive increase in the number of sites and networks seeking advertising (up 22% in the last quarter) is growing faster than the increase in Internet users.
Users are also becoming more selective, which means advertisers have to work a lot harder to get responses.
A banner with a bit of animation is no longer sufficient to grab attention and new technology methods have been created to take it to the next level.
And a final word on costs. Adverts are costed on a cost per thousand (CPM)basis.
You’re actually booking a specific number of impressions – the number of times someone will see the page your advert is on.
For example, if you book 300,000 impressions, the site shows the advert exactly 300,000 times, automatically counting the number of times it appears, and removes it when the number has been reached.
The cheapest CPM you’re likely to get will be around £4 but you’ll get unspecified, low quality, run-of-site positioning.
Upmarket Web sites such as financial pages may charge a CPM of £65 because of the quality of their customer. Average UK CPMs are around £22.
My advice is start small, monitor your results carefully while you establish what works and then roll out from there.
Advertising on-line: a much easier way to target your customers
Top 10 do’s and don’ts
n Start out small, learn what works and what doesn’t and scale up from there.
n Ensure you have water-tight tracking in place before you start so all your results can be quantified.
n Ensure the link from your advert goes directly to the relevant page on your site, not your home page. Forexample, if you’re advertising a specific holiday to Kerala, the link should go directly to page featuring those Kerala holidays. There is no exception to this rule.
n Don’t rely on on-line advertising. You can burn a lot of money this way. Make it one part of your marketingstrategy, not the only part of your marketing strategy.
n Take risks with your creativity in a test environment. You may be surprised at what delivers the best results.
n Don’t just test different creative executions but also different products, offers and audiences.
n Don’t spend more than you budgeted, no matter how good an offer you receive.
n Use the data you collect to sell more products andservices to a loyal customer base.
n Ensure your planning means you deliver the right message to the right person at the right time.
n Link your on-line advertising with your off-line advertising, PR and direct marketing.