The New, Local Advertising Network

When small businesses are seeking to web base advertise with powerful Local Merchant Advertising Program I would advise them to choose carefully as where to advertise effectively, and to pay attention on what is out there in local web based advertising for your small business.

Over the past few years a transition has been taking place in the world of advertising.

Due to the issues with phones disappearing in the household, phone directory advertising has been largely expensive and ineffective. metropolitan newspapers are virtually drying up. Direct mail has been very expensive and largely ineffective. Magazine’s are a dying breed. This leaves TV, Radio expensive alternatives, or web based advertising as an alternative.

With Internet being the growing trend, not all web based advertising is created equal.

In my research I have found that not not all companies who provide such service is created equal.
One would think excellent companies such as Google and Yahoo, obviously the leaders in the industry due to shear size would be the logical choice in where to advertise.

According to Wired Magazine Jan. 2006 Pay per click services are wrought with fraud of companies clicking in to their competitors using up their advertising pay per clicks costing companies hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of wasted ad dollars.

In a widely cited recent study, MarketingExperiments.com, an online marketing research outfit, reported that “as much as 29.5 percent” of the clicks in three experimental PPC campaigns on Google were fraudulent” according to their research.

According to various research as high as 80% of small businesses have no appreciable web advertising market, and up to 90% of small businesses are not earning any kind of appreciable income, nor sufficient traffic, due to lack of knowledge, lack of a e-commerce plan in place, tracking system, no SEO (Search Engine Technology) and the majority of such have informational sites buried somewhere in the world wide web.

The following is what every business should look for in a advertising package creating a web based advertising campaign…

Is the ad affordable? Does it have a way to drive business to the advertisers door?
The Alexa Ranking of the site they are advertising at.
The Amount of advertising spots, on the site. Is it a small banner or a full page ad?
Is there a purpose to come to the site, other then to see advertisement?
This is the problem with local directories, there is no real purpose to be on the site.
Does the web site advertise them only on their site, or do they advertise the business outside the site?
Does the site come with the ability to create multiple coupons on the fly?
Does the site allow a good amount of information on the ad or is it just a banner?
Does the advertising software create a customer data base builder with the advertising?
Is there any reward to customers for going to the ad, or does it contain a customer rewards program?
Is their an effective Search Engine Optimization with the advertising program?
Does the program come with a trained marketing/advertising expert to work with the business owner advertising on the site, or is it a one time sale where you never hear from them until it is time to renewal?
Does the advertiser have the opportunity to run multiple campaigns locally, or nationally to their interested customers. (Capturing Customer Information is Vital for Future Advertising Campaigns)
Does the advertising package include any other way for the local business to earn revenue for their ad?
Is there opportunity rewarding incentives to the customer, to refer other customers?
Is the ad targeting local areas, or is it just a broad national ad?
Does it cost the business for the potential customer to visit the business ad?
Is there a customer feedback option to receive positive or negative feedback, and ability to post this by the business?

After a great amount of exhaustive research to these questions I found companies who provide these services that are both effective and affordable for small to mid size companies seeking a viable merchant advertising program. Local community merchants may effectively advertise their business successfully if they know who and what they are looking for to accomplish a successful web based campaign.

There are free membership sites maintained a great amount of daily visitors with a purpose to join a community, who offer local merchants revenue sharing for referral of their customers with cash back incentives from major advertisers to receive generous cash back, on every purchase, and local merchants who share their customers should seek sites who offer generous revenue sharing to those merchants/

I found this concept was better then any incentive I received from other very nice sites such as Twitter, You Tube, MySpace, or FaceBook who did not offer any incentives to refer others to their sites, nor data base builders, free advertising samples, despite the fact many major companies use these sites, there appeared to be no monetary purchase to do so.

Merchants who advertise on directories, communities, well traveled sites also want to be sure their business related ads are being advertised by the site vendor to areas outside of the community, such as on the major search engines, that their ads are zip code driven, plus any other extras one would expect in a merchant advertising package.

Better yet if the site allows some sort of cash referral incentives to the local merchant who advertise on their sites, and the ability for the local merchant to create and use the live data bases in exchange of referring their customers to the site or site page ad.

It is important to that the site have available local marketing or ad experts who will follow up with the local merchant advertiser for ongoing support after the sale of their ad as opposed to just disappearing until renewal time.

If you can find a site that is willing to offer local support agents to train a merchants own employees, in an effort to create an employee rewards program, so they may be involved in the business campaign. They do exist but are few and far between to find such service.

Some companies will offer email campaigns, most at an extensive cost for a local merchant although if you are willing to do your research will find those out there who are making this an all inclusive package at very affordable rates in these tight economical times, is very important for small business owners.

I invite business owners, marketing experts, and others interested in effective web based advertising to do their own research of the many of the companies who provide web based advertising, but to complete their due diligence of research as to who offers what at the most affordable packages.

It is my considered opinion that web based advertising is vital for local business to start to develop web advertising campaigns and seek comprehensive companies offering powerful advertising programs for small businesses who are looking for much needed effective local advertising programs.

By: RJ Suitor

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