Online Advertising - What Works?

Mr Biz

With so many free and some relatively cheap websites out there for advertising online in Ireland, which sites work best for you?
Do you try every "free" site and hope for the best or generally use pre pay methods such as Google Adwords and Facebook? From speaking with people earlier it would seem that Facebook is getting more popular when it comes to advertising.

Appreciate any feedback

J_Wholesale

Google Ads. They work very well for us. Free sites have always been a waste of effort and time.

Axwell

It depends on your target market and your product.

With facebook you can do targetted ads but most people that would use facebook would fall between the 16-30 age group I would say.

With Google ads its obviously not restricted to those that just use facebook but depending on your product and the competition you could be paying a lot CPC to get your ad ahead of the rest and also competing with a lot of people in the generic search results.

I dont the free options work at all as with most of them there is no way to regulate who gets advertised by priority and it becomes a free for all. At least with with Google Adwords and Facebook its based on a CPC (cost per click) method.

tomED

Axwell is spot on - it's all about your target market.

We've had clients in the past who were paying €15 per click and getting a return and then of course there are the ones who are paying 50c a click and getting very little return.

There are good stats on Damien Mulleys blog in terms of Facebook usage in Ireland - http://www.mulley.net/2007/10/21/facebook-stats-for-ireland-131660-ireland-based-people-on-it-now/

Surprisingly the 25-35 age group is larger than 18-25 age group!

Another study run on Mulley's behalf is a good read too http://mulley.ie/research/MulleyFacebookStudy.pdf

All in all, Facebook is new and seems to have a decent ROI. In fairness banner ads and Adwords were highly effective in their early days because of their freshness.

If I was running your campaign, I would spend time building a campaign based on your budget and adapt as you go along. The beauty of online marketing is that you can be instantly reactive to a situation and maximise in the area that is most effective.

Mr Biz

Thanks for that.. Obviously Google Adwords is king if used correctly and good investment made. Facebook if targeting the right demographics.

Some good tips here
http://promotedprofits.com/10-strategies-to-put-your-adwords-campaign-on-steroids/

Personally I feel there's no harm in promoting a Facebook business page through popular free/low cost websites gaining followers on a weekly basis.
One way to explore your demographic is by using Kurrently @ www.kurrently.com - a real-time search engine for Facebook and Twitter.

tomED

Mr Biz wrote: »

Personally I feel there's no harm in promoting a Facebook business page through popular free/low cost websites gaining followers on a weekly basis.

I personally don't see the point. If you want to maximise your return, you shouldn't opt for the cheap and lazy approach. Do it right and get the proper return for the work you've put in.

There is also an issue of Brand image. A cheap free option gives off that sense of being cheap - it will be hard for you to break away from that image if and when your company decides to move forward.

Mr Biz

There is also an issue of Brand image. A cheap free option gives off that sense of being cheap - it will be hard for you to break away from that image if and when your company decides to move forward.

Understand your point. However, depending on the product/target market it can't do any harm starting off. For example, a few people I spoke with recently basically blitzed free/low cost sites to build up their Facebook fan base, then switched to Facebook advertising. Now that they had a large fan base, it was easy to attract new fans/clients from their Facebook advertising. Again, it depends on your product/target market. It won't work for everyone.

tomED

Mr Biz wrote: »

Understand your point. However, depending on the product/target market it can't do any harm starting off. For example, a few people I spoke with recently basically blitzed free/low cost sites to build up their Facebook fan base, then switched to Facebook advertising. Now that they had a large fan base, it was easy to attract new fans/clients from their Facebook advertising. Again, it depends on your product/target market. It won't work for everyone.

Would be interesting to see this example - as I don't know how "blitz"ing low cost sites helped build their facebook following to anything substantial enough to get a return.

Mr Biz

In this case, a new company, home gym equipment sale/rental. They advertise through various free/low cost websites (from the start), generating business and Facebook followers along the way.
Many of these ads are viewed a 100's of times per month. I know of one company who spent over €5k on Golden Pages advertising yet get a better response on DoneDeal @ €40pm

Axwell

Mr Biz wrote: »

In this case, a new company, home gym equipment sale/rental. They advertise through various free/low cost websites (from the start), generating business and Facebook followers along the way.
Many of these ads are viewed a 100's of times per month. I know of one company who spent over €5k on Golden Pages advertising yet get a better response on DoneDeal @ €40pm

The Golden Pages is on the way out as most people wouldnt even use it to find anything anymore, they simply do a search in Google so advertising on there is throwing money away and im sure no matter what site they advertised on they would get a better response to be honest.

After the target marget as I said above it really depends on the product as to whats going to work better. You can obviously advertise on the free /low cost sites and get people clicking to look at your website and in turn from that your facebook page but if the product doesnt suit the market looking at those sites you arent going to gain anything from it at all and they will just click to your site and probably not even make it to your facebook page. At least with target maketing you know its being shown to the right age group/target market who are going to be interested in the product and that every click is from someone relevant who could be a potential client every time.

Axwell

Lmao_Man wrote: »

I used this site a few times :


Affiliate Link

They give you €10 for free to test it out,with that it got me a few sales going to continue to use them now and hope for the best.

Can't go wrong really.

Please dont do that and take people for idiots - linking to your own affiliate account on another site and trying to use boards for your benefit.

Lmao_Man

Sorry about that,but I honestly think it's a good site.

Here's the link :

www.simply.com


As I said before,I found it to be good.

Edit - not sure if you get €10 without my link but you might,if not let me know.

tomED

Mr Biz wrote: »

In this case, a new company, home gym equipment sale/rental. They advertise through various free/low cost websites (from the start), generating business and Facebook followers along the way.
Many of these ads are viewed a 100's of times per month. I know of one company who spent over €5k on Golden Pages advertising yet get a better response on DoneDeal @ €40pm

Again, would love to see this business as I find it hard to see where they benefit. DoneDeal and Gumtree are useful for certain types of businesses or services and much better value than the Golden Pages... again depending on the business.

100's of visits a month isn't likely to turn into massive business - so therefore I wouldn't class it as a strategy for generating business. It can definitely be part of a complete marketing campaign, but that's all.

Axwell

Lmao_Man wrote: »

Sorry about that,but I honestly think it's a good site.

Here's the link :
www.simply.com
As I said before,I found it to be good.

Edit - not sure if you get €10 without my link but you might,if not let me know.

They either advertise your ad on google adwords which you can do yourself or put you on their own proprietry international network to advertise. This network is made up of people that have signed up to be publishers, so they sign up and then get paid to show your ads on their sites.

Their own network could be tiny and your ad seen by hardly anyone and the whole things is just based around affiliate marketing hence you putting your link above.

It may have worked for you but its not a great scheme and doesnt fit in with the original post in this thread as he wasnt looking for an affiliate marketing scheme.

Drake01

Advertising plays a significant function in the expansion of a business, especially for small businesses. If a company fails to get a well intended promotion strategy, then it will affect the company’s growth in a big way. One can get good results with the aid of professional advertising agencies. These people are best in advertising a product and they will definitely help you in promoting a business.