Fargo Advertising Hints: Brands live in people's minds.

Unthink your Brand
With such a choice of media at their finger-tips, marketers and brand managers have never had it better, but neither has it been more of a challenge to keep up with consumers. In these heady days, it is not a question of reinventing your entire marketing plan, but rather recognising how your internet marketing strategy can help you ‘unthink your brand’ and liberate your communications.

Your customer's online journey to your brand is likely to start with a search engine or a piece of display advertising, both key opportunities to strike up a conversation with your consumer

Its important to remember that brands live in people's minds. We all have our own perception of brands based on advertising, our own experience, word of mouth and so on. What internet technology provides us with is a whole set of new and exciting ways to influence this perception, establishing a dialogue with consumers in ways we could never before. As consumers are increasingly empowered to take control of brands online through a variety of social media such as user-generated content and blogs, brand managers must 'unthink' much of the traditional approach to brand management and learn how to use these forms of social media to liberate their brand communications.

Fargo Advertising & Marketing Hints

Fargo Advertising & Marketing Online

Internet Advertising Tips

The world of internet advertising changes constantly so it's very important to keep up with trends. We're not saying you should necessarily follow them, but at least know what's going on out there. Infotech websites and magazines are a good resource - they frequently run stories on internet marketing.

The following guidelines relate to traditional banner ads but can apply to most forms of online advertising.

Target Your Banners
Make sure they are on websites which fit your market. Banners which are linked to keywords in searches perform much better than random placements.

Get Attention
Conventional wisdom says you should try to grab attention through animation, bright colours, etc. The idea is sound, but be careful. Gaudy is not always good and visitors may be put off by "in your face" ads. Sometimes understatement can work wonders - a subtle ad might actually be what sets you apart.

Try Different Banners
Use a variety of banners and track their click-though statistics (the number of people who click on them). Be systematic - find out which ones work best and concentrate on them.

Call to Action
Banners allow visitors to take immediate action and you should take advantage of this. Use words like "Click here".

Make it Obvious
Although intrigue can sometimes work, the general rule is to make it obvious. Make sure the viewer knows exactly what the ad is for and what they can expect to happen when they click on it.

Be Honest
If you try to deceive people into clicking your ad, there are two things which will happen:
(1) The viewer's first impression of your business/product will be that you deceived them, i.e. you can't be trusted.
(2) The viewer's pointless visit to your site will have cost you in click-through rates, bandwidth and/or other resources.
Unless you're running a grossly unethical business the only useful visitors to your site are those which are genuine. The others are just slowing you down.

Be Specific
It may help to limit your message to a particular area of your business. Instead of advertising your business name, advertise a direct link to a particular product or special offer.

Involve the Audience
Interactive banners have been shown to work well. Again, be careful not to overdo it.

Change Your Banners
If they are going to be seen by the same people many times, keep them fresh.

Sex Sells
Like it or not, it's a fact.

Keep the File Size Down
Most banners should be under 15KB.

Fargo Advertising & Marketing: 6 Tips for the Online Advertising Marketplace

1. Choose your advertising medium carefully.

Advertising on the Web takes on many forms. There are many ways to advertise on the Web that choosing the best format and medium has become a challenging task for every online marketer.

The first key consideration is that the advertising format (e.g. banner, contextual advertising, ezine advertising, etc.) you choose should fit your objectives. Research and read on the different types of advertising formats, and know the factors for success of each format. Visit discussion forums (e.g. Webmaster World) to determine how other advertisers are using the various formats, and what their experiences and level of success.

Once you have decided on the advertising format, carefully choose the best vendor for your ad dollars. If you will be doing banner advertising, what sites should you advertise and show your banners? Or are you better off to use an advertising network that uses a pool of publishers? If you are thinking of pay-per-click advertising, for example, determine which of the players (e.g. Overture, Google) can provide the best results. Sometimes you need to experiment to see what medium works best for you.

2. Understand and continuously monitor your advertising purchases.

Advertising is a game of trial and error. Some advertising vehicle may work for you, and some may not. Be sure that you know where your results are coming from, and be ready to react on them immediately. You can choose to increase your spending in the medium that works and decrease your ad dollars in venues that bring disappointing results.

For example, you are an advertiser using the Google Adwords program to drive traffic to your site. A recently launched feature of this program called the broad content matching is for your ad to be placed not only in the search engine result pages (SERPs) of Google.com but in third party sites that matches your keyword (Adsense publishers). If you use this new feature, track which site gives you the better conversion: the SERPs vis-vis Adsense publishers. Examine what vehicle gives you better branding and better conversion for your ad dollars. Some smart advertisers are even going straight to the Adsense publishers that gave them the best conversions.

3. Know your conversion.

It is important to keep track of the return on investment (ROI) of every advertising purchase made. If your goal in advertising your web site is to increase sales, which advertising vehicle is giving you the best conversion for every buck spent?

Keep in mind, though, that conversion is not simply a factor of your advertising vehicle. Do not always put the blame in your medium if you fail to convert. The most salient elements of the offer, such as price and premium offered, can spell the difference in getting the best conversion. The ezine newsletter where you advertised for a month may give you a stream of targeted customers; but if your web site looks poorly done and your copy fails to entice them to purchase your product, then you will see poor results from your advertising.

4. Work and rework your advertising copy or creatives.

Continuously experiment on what copy or banner creatives and formats work well for your purposes. Do not be afraid to change your advertising materials when you think that you are not getting the results that you expected. Before the start of a campaign, work

5. Maximize your customer and media time.

When a potential customer clicks on your ad or banner, you can increase your revenues if you can maximize your sales from the customer. The customer should have an opportunity to check out (and hopefully) purchase your other products and services. Don't underestimate the power of by the way sales: while the customer is browsing or shopping in your site, your system should be capable of showing other recommended and similar products.

If you are running an e-commerce site, choose a shopping cart with upselling and cross-selling capabilities. Upselling means soliciting the purchase of goods or services following an initial transaction. It is the strategy of pushing new products to current customers based on their past purchases. Cross selling, on the other hand, involves placing similar products in a retail setting; while it involves using such functionality as Other Products You May Be Interested In in an online medium. These strategies are designed to widen the customer's reliance on your business and decrease the likelihood of the customer switching to a competitor.

6. Use integrated marketing plans.

Don't focus solely on one approach; remember that there are various ways to market your business. And you may find that some of them are cheaper or more effective compared to the others. Depending on your budget, you can diversify your advertising by employing other marketing techniques, such as publicity and public relations, and offline advertising. Online advertising works well if you complement it with other techniques, such as aggressive link swapping and search engine optimization.

Fargo Advertising & Marketing Team

Fargo Advertising: You will be effective in youronline marketing.

Advertising Fargo Moorhead: You will be effective in your online marketing:

1) Have a well-designed website: If you are going to market your company and products on your website, you need to make sure that it is well designed. In being well designed, the website page and links not only need to look sharp, but everything needs to be accessible and easy to find. People will often pull up a poorly designed website and immediately leave it in search for one that it better designed and more inviting! Don't shut out your potential customers just because of a poor design! There are design firms which specialize in website design, or you can get a free-lance designer to work for you. If your funds are tight, you can even hire a college graphic design student to work for you- college design students are usually very qualified to design websites, but they cannot charge as much because they do not have a degree.

Are you interested in marketing online? Online marketing is a completely different world of marketing from other marketing approaches. With online marketing, also called internet marketing, you will be reaching all different kinds of global audiences, and the possibilities for reaching different kinds of groups are endless! Here are a couple of tips so that you will be effective in your online marketing:

1) Have a well-designed website: If you are going to market your company and products on your website, you need to make sure that it is well designed. In being well designed, the website page and links not only need to look sharp, but everything needs to be accessible and easy to find. People will often pull up a poorly designed website and immediately leave it in search for one that it better designed and more inviting! Don't shut out your potential customers just because of a poor design! There are design firms which specialize in website design, or you can get a free-lance designer to work for you. If your funds are tight, you can even hire a college graphic design student to work for you- college design students are usually very qualified to design websites, but they cannot charge as much because they do not have a degree.

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