MARKETING: Do Your Homework!

Advertising is a major part of our industry. Knowing where and when to advertise can be crucial to your online internet business. Although advertising is extremely important, getting the most for your advertising dollars can be a tricky and a overwhelming task.

There is a common misconception among marketing directors that bigger means better. Many assume that if a resource site has a lot of webmasters posting on their boards that any ad they place there will do excellent.

The truth of the matter is, that if you stick strictly to bigger resource sites not only are you using up most if not all of your advertising budget but you're also limiting the amount of branding you could be doing.

Limiting you ask? Let me elaborate.

It's pretty much common knowledge that the more traffic a resource site receives the more you're going to pay for advertising spots. I'm sure that comes as no surprise to anyone that has checked the market and requested quotes and rates before starting an advertising campaign.

As we all know every company sits aside so much cash for their advertising budget. Most are pretty strict about staying within the guidelines of the budget playing close attention not to excide the allotted amount.

Let me layout an example for you here.

A marketing director request and receives advertising rates from 10 resource sites, 3 of which appear to be the top 3 in the industry while the other 7 are mid level resource sites. The top 3 resource sites all charge $2000 a month for a banner ad and the other 7 charge $500 for pretty much the same type of spot. For this example we'll say that the marketing director has a budget of $6000 a month that can be spent on advertising.

Most would take the ad spots from the top 3 resource sites therefore depleting their advertising budget and only getting 3 banner ads placed. When in fact they could have taken all 7 of the mid level resource sites ($3500 total) and one of the top 3 resource sites ($2000) which then leaves them $500 left over to play with.

Now let's do the math shall we? $6000 a month for 3 ad spots or $5500 for 8 ad spots end result? Taking the 8 gets more links out there which helps with branding, it also gets your banner advertisement on a variety of resource sites considering that every resource site has different personalities and will attract different types of webmasters.

Another tip that I like to offer people that ask for my opinion on advertising is to do your homework. Research the traffic rankings on the resource sites that you're looking to advertise with. There are several tools out there that will help give you a general idea on how a site is fairing traffic wise. Sure there's no way to get a 100% accurate report but you can at least get an idea of where they're ranked.

Also do a search on the most common terms for resource sites.

1. Adult Webmaster Resource
2. Adult Webmaster Resources
3. Webmaster Resource

See how the site you're considering doing business with ranks. I think many would be surprised if they checked these two on all the sites that they're advertising with at just how everyone fairs in the list.

Sure marketing can be a tough job with lots of research it's important to keep in mind. You get out of it what you put into it. If you don't do your homework chances are the ad spots you place will be worthless and your company won't benefit from them at all.

Marsha Youngs
Rated Hot - Comprehensive Webmaster Resources