Advertising online seems to be fairly straight forward. You call your Google Adwords Consultant and ask him/her to place some advertising around a few of your favorite keywords. This often generates the traffic results you are looking for and you can rest easy.
I would like to suggest 3 points that may start you on a different train of thought.
1) Facebook advertising
Advertising on Facebook has become the first competitor to Google Adwords since forever. The big strength with Facebook is the ability to fine-tune the demographic that you advertise to.
Facebook collects rich demographic data from its users and allows you to target you audience in very unique ways. In South Africa the main weakness would be that the Geotargeting options are limited, in that the smallest geographic area you can target is the whole of South Africa.
2) Niche Markets show high levels of loyalty
Banner advertising has lost its flavor over the last years or so, however niche market websites that provide banner advertising may be a great way o establish your presence in the mind of your customers. This type of advertising may become very useful for B2B advertising.
The effect created with this type of advertising has a similar effect to advertising in a print based trade magazine.
3) Google will always drive traffic
Google is a great medium to drive traffic to your website. I still advise clients to take on Google Campaigns as part of the internet marketing campaign. The trick is to use Facebook and Niche Market websites to drive traffic that may produce a higher return on investment.
Take this away
The nature of internet advertising means that you can make big and small changes quickly. Why not take advantage of this?
Be ready to constantly tweak your campaign to get more return from it. Most campaigns that I consult on involve a strategic mix of Facebook, Google and Niche Market Advertising, and are tweaked according the to success levels of each advertising avenue.
If you would like me to look at your online advertising campaign the please contact me and lets meet to discuss this in more detail.
