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Smart Practices

Read about best practices that are “smart” for you to use… when planning and managing your online advertising efforts. Beginner’s to experts welcome!

Some featured Smart Practices:

• Getting to know your target audience

• Just what is cost per action advertising?

• Are your ad dollars ready for social networking?

Learn More

We make it easy to learn all the new and not-so-new online marketing and advertising terms… and help you figure out what they mean for you.

Here are a few important ones:

• Effective CPM (eCPM)

• Landing Page

• Search Engine Optimization

Helpful Links

We’ve found some great sites, blogs, and resources for you to keep an eye on (just like we do!) Since the best marketers always want to keep informed.

Check out these links to resources:

• Online marketing and advertising

• Industry associations

Smart Practices

Best practices that are “smart” for you to use… when planning and managing your online advertising efforts. No long articles or blogs to read… just relevant and helpful information provided right when you need it.

Beginners to experts welcome!

Topics

Online advertising should be a big part of your marketing budget

Getting to know your target audience

How to figure out which ad networks to use

Just what is cost per action advertising?

Are your ad dollars ready for social networking?

Make testing your online ads easy and effective

Sending paid traffic to your homepage may not be a good strategy

Getting the number one ranking with paid search may not be the best strategy

Was your ad campaign a success?

Learn More

We make it easy to learn all the new, and not-so-new, online marketing and advertising terms... and help you figure out what they mean for you.

A   B   C   D   E   F   G   I   K   L   M   N   O   P   Q   R   S   T   W  

Above the fold: Any area of a web page that can be viewed without having to scroll down. Why do you care? Ad space above the fold is usually more expensive since it’s very likely to be viewed by visitors to the web page. Most online ad networks define suitable above the fold placement as within 500 or 600 pixels of the top of the page.

Ad Banner: You use ad banners to promote your product or service on a website. The ads are shown in a box, rectangle, or “banner” format with a graphical or interactive image to entice users to click. When they do, they’ll be taken to your site or promotional web page. Check out the IAB standard ad banner shapes and sizes:

http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_industry_services/1421/1443/1452

Ad Flight: The period of time an online advertising campaign runs from start to finish.

Ad Inventory: The amount of advertising available for sale on a website. To determine how much ad inventory is available, you have to consider how many ad slots your selling (e.g., ad banners), how many web pages will show ads, and the number of page views these pages receive during a specific period of time (e.g., per day).

Ad Network: A company that controls the ad inventory for a collection of websites. Buying advertising from an ad network can be more efficient since you don’t have to deal with all the individual sites that make up the network. And the bigger the ad network the more users you can reach with your advertising. Just keep in mind there are different types of ad networks… so do your research to find the best ones to meet your needs!

See our Smart Practice: How to figure out which ad networks to use

Ad Publisher: See Publisher

Auto-Responders: An email that’s automatically sent to a user after they submit their personal information (including email address). For example, when you buy a book from Amazon, you immediately get a “confirmation” email. This is one form of auto-responder. You send auto-responders when a customer takes an action that includes providing you with their personal information… like when they sign up for your offer!

Ad Server: A computer system made up of server hardware, ad serving software, and an Internet connection, that delivers and tracks online advertisements. Ad serving is usually handled by an independent third party to minimize potential disputes between the advertiser and the publisher regarding ad performance statistics… since these are maintained by the third party.

Business-to-Business (B2B): When a business sells to other businesses, not consumers. B2B companies want to advertise on websites that reach people who influence the target businesses’ buying decisions. For example, a company that sells payroll software will want to advertise on sites that attract financial and accounting professionals. Makes sense right? Just keep in mind, it’s often much more expensive to advertise on B2B websites than on consumer oriented sites.

Banner Ad: See Ad Banner

Behavioral Targeting: An ad targeting method for determining which users should see your ads. Behavioral information is collected from user browsing activities such as their web searches or the sites they visit. This information is then used to determine what ads to show. For example, you may have spent time on a website researching cars and then visited a pet site upon which you were shown a car ad… you get the idea!

Blog: Short for “web log”, a blog is an online personal journal or collection of short articles on a topic the “author” finds interesting. There are blogs on almost every topic imaginable. Why do you care? Because blog readers tend to be very engaged so find blogs that your target audience reads… and advertise on them!

Brand Awareness: It means how “aware” your target market is of your brand. Improving brand awareness should be a goal of your online advertising. Why? One big reason consumers shop at a store or buy a product is because they’re familiar with the brand. And many people will choose a branded product even if they suspect another product is better. That’s the power of branding!

Clicks: When a web user clicks on your ad. Once they click, they’re redirected to your site or promotional web page. Just remember, generating clicks is important… but what happens after the click when the user lands on your website is more important!

Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of web page viewers who click on a particular advertisement. For example, if 100 visitors saw a web page with your ad and one clicked on your ad, then the click-through rate would be 1%. Click-through rate is a good measure of an ad’s effectiveness. The current industry standard CTR for an ad banner is about 0.25%, so don’t be discouraged if your ad is being seen a lot but isn’t generating very many clicks. Instead, compare your click-through rate to this industry average to get a better sense of how your ad is performing.

Content Categories: Online newspapers and magazine have content categories such as news, sports, business, fashion, recipes, etc. And ad networks have hundreds or thousands of websites that fit into categories such as autos, business, music, and technology. Why does this matter? You should advertise in the content category that makes the most sense for your product. Keep in mind the words “channel” or “sections” are sometimes used instead of categories… but they mean the same thing.

Contextual Targeting: This targeting method focuses on placing ads on web pages with content related to what the ad is selling. For example, pet food ads on an adopt-a-pet site or a sports ad placed on a fantasy sports site. On popular sites, this type of ad space may be sold out but there are lots of smaller sites and blogs that have great “contextual” content. Most online magazines and newspapers also have content categories that make sense to try.

Cost Per Action (CPA): With this “pay for performance” pricing method, you pay for advertising base on how many desired “actions” are completed. Typical actions include: completing an application, signing up for a free gift card, or even placing an order. CPA is a great way to advertise since you’re paying for an action that has a good chance of resulting in a customer (or does, if the action is a product order!) Just keep in mind that you need to have a very compelling offer to entice users to take an action.

See our Smart Practice: Just what is cost per action advertising?

Cost Per Click (CPC): With this “pay for performance” pricing method, you pay for advertising based on how many times your ad is clicked on. For example, let’s say you place an ad with Google and the cost per click is $1. If your ad is clicked 100 times then you owe Google $100. What makes this pricing method so attractive is that you only pay for results... in this case clicks! Cost per click is also called pay per click.

Cost Per Lead (CPL): With this “pay for performance” pricing method, you pay for advertising based on how many leads are generated. For example, let’s say you place an ad with Ticketmaster.com and the cost per lead is $10. If your ad generates 10 leads then you owe Ticketmaster.com $100. What makes this pricing method so attractive is that you only pay for results… in this case leads!

Cost Per Order (CPO): With this “pay for performance” pricing method, you pay for advertising base on how many orders are generated. CPO is a great way to advertise since you’re paying for an actual order. CPO pricing typically ranges from 5% to 25% of the dollar value of the order. Cost per order is also called cost per transaction (CPT).

Cost Per Post: With this pricing method, you pay a blogger to write or “post” about your business. The goal is to create “buzz” about your company or product in the social media community you care most about. This pricing option is available from a number of blog ad networks. Just be aware that some blog networks will leave it to the author to decide what they write about you… good or bad!

Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM): With this pricing method, you pay for each thousand times your advertising appears on a web page. And every appearance is considered an “impression”. For example, if the CPM is $10, then you owe $10 for every 1,000 impressions. Still confused? Keep this simple formula handy: What You Pay = Total Impressions / 1,000 * CPM And in case you’re wondering, the “M” in CPM is for the Roman numeral for 1,000.

Cost Per Transaction (CPT): See Cost Per Order

Conversion Rate: The percentage of website visitors who take a desired action. For example, if 100 users come to your site and one places an order, then the conversion rate is 1%. Keep in mind, you can have different conversion rates for different types of actions such as: newsletter signups, white paper downloads, surveys completed… and of course orders! And each conversion rate helps you understand how your website is performing.

Daypart Targeting: This targeting method focuses on the time or “part of day” that the advertisement is shown. It originally comes from radio and the concept of advertising for the morning commute, evening commute, and lunch hour. Each daypart has unique characteristics and audience size. For example, most people come online and read the news first thing in the morning. You should think about the time of day your target market is most likely to be interested in your ad. If this matters, then you should consider daypart targeting!

Demographic Targeting: This targeting method focuses on placing online ads in front of users that meet your target market’s demographic profile. Typical demographics include: age, gender, ethnicity, occupation, income, etc. The simple way to do this is to identify sites with users that match your target market’s profile. For example, if you’re targeting men, then advertising on ESPN.com may makes sense. Many ad networks also have demographic oriented categories such as: women, men, and teens. Keep in mind that demographic targeting tends to work best for advertisers of broad product categories (think consumer products). If that’s not you, then you may want to consider using demographic targeting in combination with contextual or geographic targeting.

Display Ad: An online advertisement that “displays” your marketing message with graphical or interactive images not just text. The most common example of a display ad is an ad banner. Display ads are mostly used for creating brand awareness as compared to text ads that are used to entice users with a specific offer. And display ads are usually sold on a CPM basis.

Effective CPM (eCPM): A great way to calculate and compare the revenue generating effectiveness of ads running on different websites and content categories. Just look at what your ad has earned from each website or category running your advertising. Then see how many impressions you needed to generate those revenues. Divide the revenue by the impressions and multiply by a thousand (to get back to a per thousand basis) and compare. Make sense? Just in case… here’s the formula:

eCPM = Revenues / Impressions Used * 1,000
You’ll quickly see where you’re getting the most bang for your buck!

Email Advertising: Ad banners, text links, and sponsorship advertising that appears in email campaigns such as email newsletters and alerts. Email advertising can be very effective when it’s sent to a targeted list of email subscribers. For example, online magazines usually have good subscriber lists for their email newsletters. Just keep in mind that email advertising may be more expensive than website advertising because it’s targeted and since there are fewer ad placement opportunities.

Email List Publisher: A database marketing company that controls email lists in which the subscribers have given permission to receive third party marketing offers. Why do you care? Email marketing works… so you may want to consider using an email list publisher to send your marketing offers to those email lists that it controls. And some email list publishers are happy to work on a CPA basis so that you only pay for results!

Focus Group: A small group of people (usually 5 to 8) who react to ideas and designs that are shown to them related to your product, website, or advertising. Focus groups are good for getting a quick sampling of opinions and feelings towards your ideas and designs from prospective customers.

Frequency Cap: A limit on the number of times a website visitor is shown a particular advertisement. Frequency capping is a good idea so that you don’t burn out a visitor that has already seen your ad, say three times, and still hasn’t acted on it. This is especially true of rich media ads which can be especially engaging or annoying! On the other hand, if your goal is brand building then the extra exposures may be a good thing.

Geo-targeting: See Geographic Targeting

Geographic Targeting: This targeting method focuses on placing online ads in front of users that live in certain geographic areas. Geographic targeting is really important if you don’t want to waste marketing dollars on people who live too far away to shop at your store. The most precise “geo-targeting” uses site registration databases to tie back to the zip code, city, area code, DMA (Designated Market Area), state, time zone, or country that you care most about. Internet protocol (IP) addresses also give some insight into where users live and therefore where your ads should appear.

Impressions: The number of times an ad is shown on a web page and (presumably) seen by users.

Interstitials: A full web page advertisement that is displayed before the actual website you requested in shown. Normally the ad is shown for a short time (e.g., 15 seconds). Interstitial ads are also known as transitional ads.

Keyword: The word or phrase you enter into a search engine when searching the Internet for information.

Keyword Targeting: This really isn’t a targeting method so much as targeting users based on the search terms they use. You bid to buy keywords your prospects will use when searching the Internet; and your text ad will show up in the search results. Sounds simple right? The trick is to test lots of keywords to find the ones that work best!

Landing Page: The web page a user “lands” on after clicking an ad banner, search listing, or other online advertisement. It can be your home page, a web page within your site, or a page customized for users clicking on a particular ad. Just remember, the more the landing page directly relates to your ad, the better your chances of turning a “clicker” into a customer!

See our Smart Practice: Sending paid traffic to your homepage…

Lead: A web user that’s considered a prospective customer because of an action taken and personal information provided. For example, a lead is generated when a user clicks on an ad banner and then fills out an online form to get a coupon, sign up for a free product trial, or download a whitepaper. Why do you care? Leads are much easier to convert into customers than clicks. So start focusing more of your marketing efforts on generating leads!

Lead Generation: This term means using your online advertising to generate leads for your sales team or direct marketing efforts. Generating leads should be a goal of every business since leads are easier to convert into customers than clicks!

Minimum Suggested Order: A term we use for the minimum order size that we suggest you place if you’re going to use a certain ad publisher. Minimum suggested order is not necessarily the same as the minimum order size that an ad publisher requires. In some cases, you want to spend more than their required minimum to really see how your ad will perform with their website audience.

Monthly Rates: With this pricing method, you pay for advertising by the month. Some sties let you pay on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Sometimes these sites don’t have lots of visitors, so they find it easier to price using periodic rates instead of the usual cost per thousand impressions (CPM). In other cases, the ad publisher may have automated and standardized ad placement opportunities to better serve smaller advertisers and maximize how they sell their ad inventory.

Monthly Visitors: The number of unique visitors that come to a site on a monthly basis. This is a good measure of how many people you can potentially “reach” by advertising on a website. The number of monthly visitors ignores the fact that some users will visit a site many times during a month… since the number of actual visitors your advertising can reach doesn’t change.

Natural Search: See Organic Search

Online Magazine: Most popular magazines have an online version for Internet users. And just like in their print version, they have different sections that appeal to the specific interests of their target audience. For example, a women’s magazine site will most likely have a “fashion and beauty” or “recipes” section. And while it can be expensive to advertise on these sites… it may be worth it if you want to associate your product with a well known magazine brand.

Online Newspapers: Most newspapers have an online version with content categories such as news, business, sports, entertainment… just like in the print version. Many also get lots of monthly visitors and don’t charge too much for online advertising. So, definitely consider online newspapers for your advertising mix… especially if you want your advertising to reach a particular community, city, or region of the country.

Organic Search: The process by which the search engines (i.e., Google, Yahoo) determine the most relevant websites to display when a user does an Internet search. The main thing to understand is that your organic search “ranking” is influenced by the content of your site, the number and quality of websites that link to your site, plus other factors… but not by how much you pay to have your website show up in the rankings. That’s “paid search”. Organic search is also known as “natural search”.

Page Views: The number of web pages that have been viewed by unique visitors. Why do you care? The number of page views is also a gauge for how much advertising inventory is available since it’s often sold per thousand impressions (page views).

Paid Search: A type of online advertising in which you pay search engines to show your ad next to relevant search results. The way paid search works is simple: you bid to buy keywords you think your prospects will use when searching the Internet; and your text ad will show up in the search results. The more you bid, the higher your website will “rank” in the search results. It’s a standard way to find customers when advertising with Google, Yahoo, and other search oriented ad networks.

See our Smart Practice: Getting the number one ranking with paid search…

Pay For Performance: A term first popularized by pay per click search engine advertising. It now means any form of online advertising whereby you only pay if a user takes some desired action after seeing your ad. Definitely give it a try!

Pay Per Click (PPC): With this pricing method, you pay for advertising based on how many times your ad is clicked by web users. For example, let’s say the price per click is $1 and your ad is clicked on 100 times. You’ll owe $100. What makes this pricing method so attractive is that you only pay for results... in this case clicks! Pay per click is also called cost per click.

Periodic Rates: We use this phrase to represent time-based rates such as daily, weekly, or monthly rates. Many websites, especially if they don’t have lots of monthly visitors, find it easier to price by time period instead of the usual cost per thousand impressions (CPM).

Podcast: An audio or video file that you can play on your computer or portable media player; and that’s broadcast over the Internet. Think “iPod” and Internet “broadcast” to get the idea of where the name comes from. Sometimes Podcasts are one-time events or “shows” but often they’re a series of shows. Why do you care? Podcasts represent another type of advertising opportunity that may make sense for you to consider.

Post-Roll Video Advertising: Form of online video advertising in which a video advertisement is shown after the user selected video is played. For example, if you click on a CNN news video, there may be a short video ad (say, 30-seconds) that plays after your news video finishes playing.

Pre-Roll Video Advertising: Form of online video advertising in which a video advertisement is shown before the user selected video is played. For example, if you click on a CNN news video, there may be a short video ad (say, 30-seconds) that plays before your news video starts playing.

Pricing Methods: There are lots of pricing methods used to determine the cost of online advertising. The most typical are: cost per thousand impressions (CPM), cost per click (CPC) or pay per click (PPC), cost per action (CPA), and cost per lead (CPL). There are also websites that charge by the day, week, month, or by the email campaign. And with the emergence of social media, video, podcasts, and mobile, you can be sure that new pricing methods are on the way!

Psychographic Targeting: This targeting method focuses on first understanding the personality, interests, attitudes, values, and lifestyles of your target market; and then creating profiles that give you insight into their behavior and how best to reach them with your advertising.

Publisher: The website or ad network that displays or “publishes” your advertising. Finding publishers that reach your target audience is what online advertising is all about!

Purchasing Behavior: The process a user goes through in realizing a product or service need, determining and evaluating alternatives, and then making the purchasing decision. You need to really understand your target market’s purchasing behavior to influence this process… so that it’s your product that ends up in the shopping cart!

Qualified Lead: A prospect that has met some minimum criteria regarding their interest in the product or service being offered. There are a number of factors that determine the quality of a lead such as: how the lead was generated and the information provided by the prospect. For example, a user that filled out an online form to “win an iPod” is probably more interested in the contest than hearing about your product. On the other hand, someone who has filled out an online mortgage application is probably very interested in hearing from a bank’s loan officer… and therefore a very qualified lead!

Rate Card: The list of advertising products and pricing offered by a publisher. Just remember, for many publishers the rate card is a starting point for negotiating the actual ad rates you’ll end up paying. In most cases, publishers will provide discounts “off of rate card” depending on how much advertising you buy, the promise of future orders, and how important they perceive your business to be.

Reach: The number of unique website visitors in a particular time period. For example, the number of monthly unique visitors tells you how many visitors you can potentially “reach” with your marketing message in a month. The number of unique visitors ignores the fact that some users will visit a site many times… since the number of actual visitors you reach doesn’t change.

Return on Investment (ROI): A measure of the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Return on investment looks at the incremental profits generated by your marketing investment divided by the marketing investment. The formula is actually pretty simple:

(Profit – Investment) / Investment

For example, if an ad campaign that cost $20,000 generated $30,000 in profits, then the ROI calculation would be as follows:

($30,000 - $20,000) / $20,000 or 50%... that’s a great ROI!

Of course, it’s not always easy to determine the incremental profit that’s generated… and what about the branding benefit that’s hard to quantify? The key is to figure out how you’ll determine the numbers (as best you can) and then consistently apply this method to the results of your different marketing campaigns. This will help you understand where you should be spending your marketing dollars… to get the best return!

Rich Media: A type of advertising technology that results in better graphics, audio, or video within the advertisement. For example, have you seen those ads that float and move around on the web page? Definitely worth considering since rich media ads can be much more engaging for users.

Roadblock: When an advertiser owns all the advertising on a particular page or section of a website and achieves 100% share-of-voice. Normally, roadblocks are sold by the publisher on a daily or weekly basis. Roadblocks are a very effective way to ensure there are no competing messages fighting for your audience... but they’re not cheap so plan accordingly!

Run Of Network (RON): A type of ad campaign in which your advertising will appear on any page of any website that’s part of an ad network. Since there’s no ad targeting involved, RON tends to be the least expensive advertising you can buy on an ad network. As a general rule, having some targeting is better than RON… but if you have a product with broad appeal (e.g., consumer products) then RON may end up being more cost effective.

Run Of Site (ROS): A type of ad campaign in which your advertising will appear across an entire website. ROS advertising tends to be lower cost since you haven’t purchased specific pages (e.g., home page) or sections of the site. As a general rule, advertising on more relevant pages is better than ROS but if you can find a website with a user profile that really matches your target audience, then ROS may be more cost effective.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM): The process and strategy for improving your websites ranking with the search engines. SEM includes both improving search engine optimization for natural search and developing and managing your keyword strategy for paid search.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The process by which you try to get your website to appear as high as possible in the search results for relevant keywords. This process includes planning and modifying your website, web pages, web links, and content to improve “relevance” in natural search listings. Since search engines are always changing how they determine natural search rankings, SEO is really part art and part science. With that said, SEO is worth the effort since any improvement in search ranking can mean a big increase in the number of visitors to your site!

Search Engine Spider: A computer program used by a search engine to automatically fetch web pages to add to its database index. The program is called a “spider” because it crawls all the links that connect web pages. Why do you care? Making your website spider-friendly will help your natural search engine ranking, and is an important part of the search engine optimization process.

Sell-Through Rate: The percentage of ad inventory that was sold. Why do you care? The lower the sell-through rate the more willing the publisher will be to discount against their rate card, and vice versa. That’s why most ad publishers are very willing to provide discounts for high volume or long term advertising deals. Now most publishers won’t tell you their sell-through rate but you can get a sense by taking a look at their website to see how many ad slots seem to be missing advertising (or are showing not-for-profit advertising).

Short Message Service (SMS): A means by which short text messages are sent between mobile phones. Why do you care? If you want to advertise on mobile phones, chances are pretty good you’ll be using SMS text ads. There are already a number of mobile advertising providers if you want to consider this emerging advertising medium.

Social Networks: A website where the main objective is to get users to join groups, share opinions, discuss interests (e.g., music), and otherwise interact. Facebook and MySpace are good examples of social networking sites. The big question is: how effective are social networking sites for advertising?

See our Smart Practice: Are your ad dollars ready for social networking?

Sponsorships: A type of advertising that prominently displays and associates your brand with a featured online event, web page, section of a website, or other web content. For example, you can sponsor online surveys, polls, podcasts, videos, featured articles, email newsletters, sweepstakes, contests… or even the home page! And sponsorship advertising can range from just displaying your logo to presenting an extensive “advertorial” of why your product is the best. In some cases, sponsorship can simply mean non-standard advertising. When in doubt, just ask the ad publisher as they’ll be happy to clarify!

Target Market: The people you think are most likely to want to buy your product or service. They are also the ones you’re trying to reach with your online advertising. Just remember, the better you know your target market, the more effective you’ll be with your online advertising efforts!

See our Smart Practice: Getting to know your target audience

Web Traffic: The number of visitors to a website.

Weekly Rates: With this pricing method, you pay for advertising by the week. Some sties let you pay on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Sometimes these sites don’t have lots of monthly visitors, so they find it easier to price using periodic rates instead of the usual cost per thousand impressions (CPM). In other cases, they may have automated and standardized the ad placement opportunities to better serve smaller advertisers and maximize how they sell their ad inventory.

A   B   C   D   E   F   G   I   K   L   M   N   O   P   Q   R   S   T   W  

Helpful Links

We found some great sites, blogs, and resources for you to keep an eye on (just like we do!) Since the best marketers always want to keep informed.

Beginners to experts welcome!

Topics

Online marketing and advertising

Search engine marketing

Direct marketing

Web analytics

Industry associations

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Online advertising should be a big part of your marketing budget

Whether or not you’re new to online advertising, it’s a good idea to review the many reasons why it should be a big part of your marketing budget.

Here are 7 reasons why:

1. Your customers are online. More than ever, consumers use the Internet to research and select     products to purchase… even if they plan to buy offline! Your advertising will prompt them to     consider your products and services too.

2. Your competitors are online. Not only are direct competitors advertising online, but also     companies that now use the Internet to target your customers. How to fight back? Make sure     customers see your advertising to remind them why they like your products best.

3. Online advertising is cost effective. You can reach a large audience quickly and at lower cost     than many other media. And if you use search marketing, you only pay when you get results!

4. No big investment needed to get started. You can launch a simple website for a hundred     dollars, and begin marketing it for another couple hundred. And it’s easy to scale as you test and     learn what works best.

5. Everything is immediate. You can launch advertising quickly… and get results almost     immediately. Said another way, if you need customers tomorrow, not next month, advertising on     the Internet may be the way to go!

6. The Internet has gone local. No need to worry about wasting ad dollars on the Internet masses.     Just target the neighborhood you care about with local advertising options such as the online     yellow pages.

7. Lots of ways to target your audience. The Internet is a great channel for reaching specific     audiences and market niches. You can target based on where customers live, their demographic     profile, behavior, and special interests. See… lots of ways!

Remember, with online advertising you still need to develop a good marketing strategy, target your audience, test, measure and improve… just like with any other marketing program. And then you’ll be on your way to generating results!

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Getting to know your target audience

Rarely are customers just like us… but it's our job to predict what they need and when they'll need it. So put in the hard work of seeing the world through their eyes... because marketing success begins with knowing your target audience!

To better profile your target customer:

1. Think about why they want to buy... and why now. You need to understand your customer’s     purchasing behavior and answer the question: “what are my customer's pain points?” Or said     another way, what’s causing the desire for your product and what’s creating the urgency to buy     now?

2. Describe your target market in as much detail as possible. Create a demographic profile     using age, gender, income level, etc. And find out where they live, since geographic targeting can     be a good way to reach customers.

3. Understand what they like and don't like. Psychographics tries to get at the lifestyles,     attitudes, interests and values of your target market. It’s definitely worth considering since the     Internet has so many great lifestyle and interest-based sites to advertise on.

How do you find information on your target audience?

• Ask your customers, especially as they are your best prospects for more business! Survey and listen, listen, listen to what they tell you.

• Review purchasing data and look for patterns. For example, where a customer lives gives insight into who they are and why they buy.

• Survey web site visitors. It's easier than ever to survey using email and web-based forms so definitely give this a try.

• Set up a blog or join a community where your customers hang out so you can hear their issues and create a dialogue (listen closely!)
  

• Search the Internet for information on your industry and customers. There are lots of sites and blogs about your target audience. And many provide market data for free!

• Conduct focus groups. Though potentially expensive, focus groups can provide hard to find insight into customer behavior.

• And keep listening and learning. Your target market will evolve... so will your understanding of who they are and what drives their buying behavior.

The better you know your target audience, the easier it’ll be to reach and engage them with your marketing message… and turn them into customers!

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How to figure out which ad networks to use

Did you know there are hundreds of advertising networks to choose from? Yes… hundreds! How do you figure out which ones to use for your online advertising efforts?

Here are 5 things to help you narrow down the list:

1. Branding or Performance. What's the main goal of your advertising efforts? Developing brand     awareness or generating customers? Focusing on one of these goals will help you decide which     ad networks to consider. Especially since ad networks are usually display (branding) or     performance (generate customers) based. And how they price will tell you which is which. CPM     pricing means branding, while pay per click, cost per action (CPA), and cost per lead (CPL) mean     performance.

2. Broad or vertical approach. If your product has “broad