Before advertising online, research market

By Jonny Buroker

You see it every time you do an online search and you'll find it on many Web sites -- ads that you may or may not click on.

But millions of ads are getting clicked on every day. Those clicks are driving traffic to the advertiser's Web site and are generating lots of additional revenue for many businesses.

In 2006, $16.8 billion was spent on online advertising.
If you've thought about advertising your business online, you need to do one very important thing before you embark on an advertising campaign: conduct research.

Understand target audience

Your target audience is the group of people out there searching for your products and services and that you most want to reach with your online ads.

Understanding your customers: where they live, their gender and their income level will give valuable insight into how you might advertise to them online.

For example, if your customers generally live within 10 miles of your business you can geo-target your ad to only show up to searchers within that 10 mile radius.
By determining who your target really is and what they actually think and want will make your advertising more focused and effective.

Research keywords

Keyword research is critical for any online ad campaign. Many businesses think they know what keywords they would use to describe their business, instead of the keywords their target audience actually uses to search.
Don't use company or industry jargon if it's not part of your target audience's normal vocabulary.

Also, if you can find "long-tailed" multiple keyword phrases that people are searching for but that not a lot of advertisers are bidding on, your clicks will be highly targeted and less expensive.

The key to online advertising is to know what searchers are looking for and give it to them. By carefully researching your keywords, you can be sure that the traffic that finds your Web site is targeted traffic -- they found what they were looking for through your ad.

Check search volume

You've researched your target audience and your keywords, but you also need to determine the search volume associated with your keywords to determine if your ad will be presented to enough searchers to generate enough visitors to your site.

There are several keyword tools online that provide search volumes as well as related keywords that should be included in your keyword list.

By conducting your research in advance, you now are in position to start your ad campaign on any one of the major search engines.

One company, Reach Local, allows a business to run the same campaign simultaneously on all of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL and Superpages.com), eliminating the need to manage multiple campaigns across multiple engines.

Jonny Buroker is an Internet Marketing Consultant with WSI -- We Simplify the Internet, serving south central and southwest Wisconsin.

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