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Online Marketing is Hot Again

BY TOBIAS DENGEL

President of Leads.com

Internet advertising is hot again, and for good reason - marketers are seeing highly successful campaigns with a return on investment that they cannot find in any other medium. But gone are the days of the banner ad. As illustrated by the highly successful Google IPO, the internet today is all about search.

Why is internet marketing so effective?

Search is really nothing more than the 100-year-old yellow pages model gone online. Why have print yellow pages been so effective? Because marketers get their message to consumers as they're actively making a purchasing decision. No one picks up the print yellow pages to look for a plumber unless he or she needs one.

This concept translates directly into internet yellow pages and search engines on sites like Google, Yahoo!, AOL and MSN. No one searches for a term unless they are ready to buy or at least are researching the topic. That's why being listed first under "new cars" is so important to Ford, or "DVD players" is to Circuit City. Similarly, it would be of great value for a real estate agent to be the first listing under "New York Real Estate" in the Yahoo! Yellow Pages or on Google.

Consumers are rapidly adopting the internet to find local products and services. Currently, it is estimated that 1/3 of all searches for local businesses are conducted on the internet, as opposed to print yellow pages. The chart below shows the ongoing migration from print to internet yellow pages. Given this trend, businesses should be moving about 1/3 of their print yellow pages advertising budget to the internet:



Because so many consumers are using the internet, and online advertising inventory is priced very inexpensively, the internet is generally the most cost-effective medium for businesses to attract new customers:



Launching a Local Internet Search Campaign

Consumers currently use a variety of the leading internet sites to find local merchants. These can be grouped in to two broad categories: Internet Yellow Pages and Local Search Engines. The main players are online sites such as Yahoo!, Google, AOL, MSN, Yellowpages.com, Switchboard, Infospace and others.

As a small business or local merchant, the key strategy should be to take a broad approach and appear prominently on all of these platforms. While it is possible to purchase ads on most of these sites online through their "self-serve" applications, that approach is very time-consuming, more expensive and often results in less-than-stellar results.

Your best bet is to use one of the burgeoning new local internet ad agencies, such as Leads.com. It generally costs less than you would pay on your own since they have negotiated bulk wholesale pricing, and you get expert advice in designing your ad, deciding where to place it, and tracking your results (as opposed to remembering passwords and logging into each of the major search engines).

Leads.com is offering a special to Logoworks customers: Call 866-LEADS-12 to receive a free, no-obligation Online Marketing Evaluation that tells you how many people are using the internet to look for your products and services in your city or metro, and how to most cost-effectively market to them. Mention that you're a Logoworks customer and receive $100 off your first month.

Click here to visit Leads.com and conduct a free trademark search

Tobias Dengel is the co-founder and President of Leads.com, the leading internet advertising agency helping businesses find new customers in specific cities or metro areas. He was previously a Vice President at AOL. Tobias holds a BS in Engineering and a BS in Economics, both from the University of Pennsylvania.

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