Why You Need a Different Approach to Advertising Online
Advertising your business used to be reasonably straightforward. You would design an advert and place it in relevant publications, hoping to get a good response and some new customers as a result.
Alternatively you may have printed a similar advert on a flyer to be distributed in your local area. Another method of getting yourself and your business noticed would be to organise a direct mail campaign at great expense and hopefully get a two to three per cent response as a result.
All of these methods have one thing in common however. Once the advert has been published or the flyer or direct mail item delivered, that’s it – the advertising stops. It doesn’t continue twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.
The arrival of the Internet has changed all that. At no other time in history has a medium been invented which allows for cheaper or even entirely free advertising that doesn’t always have a limited lifespan.
In fact, devoting more time to promoting your business online can dramatically increase your chances of retaining your customers’ attention. Think about a business blog, for example. The more entries you add to it, the better and deeper and fuller it gets. Customers have more to read and they will therefore stay on your site for longer, finding out more about your business every second they spend there.
Of course the biggest benefit to promoting your business online is having your own business website that can be viewed right round the clock. Even when you are at home you know that your website is out there working hard for your business and attracting interest, traffic and customers. That simply doesn’t happen offline – not in the same interactive contextual anyway.
It’s certainly true that your advertising budget will go a lot further online than it will offline. You can reach far more people and create more streams of traffic that will keep on going long into the future, and if your business has a global appeal then the Internet is by far the easiest way to reach that global audience than any other method of attempting it offline.
The Internet has enabled many businesses to compete on a level playing field. It has also reduced the amount of money you need to spend on advertising if you are on a tight budget. When you are doing well and you want to extend your current business advertising you can do so for relatively little outlay. Furthermore, it has allowed businesses to interact with their customers on a more personal level.
In short, the Internet has completely revolutionised the way we advertise and is a potent tool for businesses to use in the advertising process.
Bian Salins is the Managing Editor of BT Tradespace — an online community where businesses can advertise and sell products & services and everyone has the opportunity to shop, chat and share their opinion.
