Contextual Advertising

Using Contextual Advertising To Generate Leads

Would you like more targeted traffic to your website?  Contextual advertising could be the answer you’re looking for, especially if your business targets a specific niche.

What is Contextual Advertising?

It is an online advertising model where relevant ads are displayed on websites or other online media, based on the content that is on that web page.  The advertising network searches the page for keywords and then delivers an advertisement that matches those keywords.  For example, if you were reading a website about sports – and they use contextual advertisement – then you would only see ads related to sports.

For the advertiser it means that their ads are being displayed on pages related to their products or services.  Chances are, if someone is reading that page, they may be interested in that topic – in this case, sports.  That increases the chances that they will also be interested in your product or service.

Is Contextual Advert The Same as PPC (pay per click)

No, pay per click is a model of how you pay for advertising, not how it is displayed.  However, in many cases PPC is used alongside contextual ads – for example, Google Adwords and Adsense.  When you type something into Google it searches the web and then displays the pages it thinks are most relevant based on the terms you typed in (your keywords).  For example, if you type in ‘tropical fish’ it will give you a list of pages that use the term ‘tropical fish’ in order of relevance and importance.

On the right hand side of the results page Google also displays what it calls ‘sponsored results’ – this is Google Adwords and is a perfect example of a contextual ad.  The ads that are displayed there are relevant to the keywords that you typed into Google.  In this case you would expect to see advertisements related to ‘tropical fish’ – fish tanks, pet shops and the like.  Each advertiser chooses the keywords that are appropriate to their advertisements and will only show up when those terms are searched for – i.e. contextual.  They only pay however, when someone clicks on that ad – that is PPC.

Google Adwords combines the two – contextual advert and PPC – to great effect and has become one of the world’s largest advertising networks.  Adsense is based on the same concept.  Adsense allows website publishers to put small bits of code onto their website that deliver Adwords-style ads based on the text that is on the website page.  So a page about boxing would have small boxing-related text ads appear on the page.  When someone clicks on these ads, the revenue generated is split between Google and the website owner.

Google is certainly not the only advertising network that uses contextual ads and contextual advert does not have to use PPC.

The purpose of contextual advert is simply to make any advertising more relevant to what is on the website. That should mean that advertisers get a better response (and more targeted leads) and customers are not annoyed by irrelevant ads.

What Next?

We Do It For You: If you’d like help finding a contextual advertising solution to fit your business, Click here for more info about the lead generation services we provide

Do It Yourself: For more lead generation ideas, Download our free report

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Contextual Advertising & Online Marketing Services & Pay Per Click & Website Marketing Strategy

Online Marketing Tools

What Are the Best Ways to Market Your Business Online?

Every business with a website wants to make the best use of online marketing tools to help them attract new leads and visitors to their website.  Of course, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of internet marketing tools that you could use. So how do you choose the best ones for your business?

Finding the right tools depends as much on your business and your goals as the tools themselves. But generally online marketing tools can be lumped into one or more groups, including but not limited to:

  • Advertising
  • Content – like websites and blogs
  • Email
  • Multi-media

Advertising as an Online Marketing Tool

Advertising online is much like advertising offline – you need to choose the best places to advertise based on your target market.  Once you’ve chosen the best places to advertise, you’ll also have a choice of advertising types – largely split into display advertising and pay per click advertising.

Display advertising is exactly what it sounds like. Your advertisement gets displayed on a page and if people are interested they can click through to your website. The amount you pay will either be based on a flat fee or on a cost per impression.

Cost per impression means that you will pay every time your ad is displayed to a website visitor. This is usually expressed as a cost per thousand (CPM). For example, if you agree to pay $10 CPM then you will pay $100 for every 10,000 times you advertisement is displayed on screen.

Pay per click can look identical to display advertising but you only pay when a person clicks on your ad to visit your website. If nobody clicks, you pay nothing. Google runs the most popular pay per click advertising network called Adwords.

Further Reading:

Content as an Internet Marketing Tool

Online content comes in many forms but in most cases you will be talking about written content either on your own website or created for other websites but linking back to you.  Good content helps you perform better with the search engines (read our free report on search engine optimization basics). It can also help demonstrate your expertise or the quality of your products.

Further Reading:

Lead generation content

Email as an Internet Marketing Tool

Email can be a very effective online marketing tool provided you use it in the right way – otherwise you run the risk of being classed as a spammer. The right way is based on permission marketing.  Permission marketing starts with you asking potential customers to provide their contact details, usually in return for some kind of information or special offer. The prospective customer will know and accept that they will receive future marketing communications from you.

Email can be particularly useful as it can help you automate a lot of your marketing and lead generation systems. In particular, you can use auto-responders, small software programs that send pre-written emails at set times, to help you follow up with prospects and deliver useful content.

Further Reading:

Multi Media as Online Marketing Tools

The Internet allows even the smallest businesses to use a variety of media to market themselves. It is now easy for businesses to use everything from video to recorded audio to live webinars to market themselves. The possibilities are endless.

Further Reading:

What Next?

We Do It For You: If you’d like help with choosing the best online marketing tools, Click here for more info about the lead generation services we provide
Do It Yourself: For more lead generation ideas, Download our free report

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Online Lead Generation

Getting Started with Online Lead Generation

Do you want to develop leads online?  The Internet can be a great place to develop and grow your business.  In particular it offers a perfect opportunity to attract customers, build your prospect list and ultimately help you close new business. The good news is that internet lead generation is not all that different from traditional offline lead generation.

Yes, the Internet changes the way that people look for information. Yes, the Internet allows you to automate lead generation.  But, ultimately the steps involved in good lead generation are the same:

  1. Attract prospective customers through marketing and advertising
  2. Build a list of prospects from this initial interest
  3. Develop this list to identify the best prospects
  4. Close the sale

Let’s take a look at each step:

1. Online Lead Generation Step One: Attract Prospects Through Advertising and Marketing

Imagine your website as if it were a store. Your first job is to attract people to your store using effective marketing techniques.  You can’t sell anybody anything until they’re in your store.  Some of the marketing techniques to consider include:

  • SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – This is about making sure your “shop” (ie website) is easy to find and that all the products and services are displayed and described properly.  Do this well online and you will perform better with the search engines.  SEO is very complex, however, so I recommend you check out my FREE ebook for more detailed information.
  • Advertising – Advertising online can take many forms. You can use contextual advertising to get your business found next to relevant content. You can try PPC (pay per click) advertising through the search engines to have your ads displayed in search results.  You can even use simple display advertising as offered through a variety of advertising networks.
  • Content – Lead generation content is content that is designed to attract online searchers looking for solutions to their problems.  If you create great content on your website – or even outside of your website through lead generation articles – this will help you attract new, interested visitors to your website.
  • Social Media – Build a relationship with your target market through Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube, etc.  Be polite and offer helpful information so they know, like and trust you.  Every once in a while, give them an incentive to go to your website, such as offering a discount.  Don’t do this too much, or they’ll think you’re only interested in self-promotion.  But doing this sparingly, along with providing useful information for your target market, can go a long way.

It’s also worth remembering that you can still use effective offline strategies like direct mail to drive traffic to your website as well.

2. Online Lead Generation Step Two: Build Your List

Once you have started to generate traffic to your website then the next step is to turn some of that traffic into a list of prospective new customers to follow up with.  Usually this will involve you creating an incentive for them to provide their contact details, the first part of any good permission based marketing campaign.  That incentive could be a special offer, or, more likely, further useful information.

What form this information takes is up to you.  You could consider a blog that people can subscribe to, a free newsletter, or a webinar that people can take part in, for example.

3. Online Lead Generation Step Three: Develop Your List

Once you start building a list the next question becomes, ‘what do I do with this list?’.  The goal has to be to move people from being interested to being willing to buy your product or service. Of course not every prospective customer on your list will end up becoming a customer.

That’s fine.

However, it is important for you to find ways of separating those with a genuine interest from the ‘tire kickers’.  Tools like newsletters and autoresponders can help you automate much of this process.

4. Online Lead Generation Step Four: Close the Sale

Of course the final step is to close the sale.  You can create online marketing tools that will encourage customers to buy from you.  But unless you are actually selling a product via your website, you will almost always have to close the sale through direct contact with your prospective customer or client.

However, if you set your lead generation program up effectively; the advertising you use, how you build your list and what you do with that list can all help ensure that the people you actually spend time selling to are the most qualified prospects you could hope for.

What Next?

Do It Yourself: For more lead generation ideas, Download My FREE eBook


Articles & Contextual Advertising & How to Buy Leads & Lead Generation & Lead Generation Techniques & List Building Strategies & Online Marketing Services & Pay Per Click & Qualified Lead Generation & Website Marketing Strategy

Advertising Network – How Can it Help Your Business?

Online or offline, an advertising network (or ad network) is a business that connects advertisers with media owners. They help advertisers place ads in a variety of relevant media.  They help media owners earn money from the readers, viewers, visitors and listeners they attract.

Online networks work mostly with websites but also they place advertising on blogs, in software applications and in email for example.  The advertising itself can range from text links to banner ads to rich media like audio and video.

If you are an advertiser, placing your ads with an ad network can be a great way of distributing your advertising across a wide range of different websites and media.  This can help gain you exposure in less competitive places.

Usually you will be able to decide what kind of websites and blogs that your advertisements will appear next to.  If, for example, you want to advertise to teachers then it may be possible to arrange through an ad network to have your ad displayed in places that fall into their ‘education’ category.

In most cases big media companies sell only their remnant space through adv networks – i.e.the advertising space that they have been unable to sell themselves.  Occasionally this will mean lower rates for the advertiser but this is not guaranteed.

Types of Advertising Networks and Determining Which Will Suit Your Business Best

In most cases advertising networks can be lumped into two groups:

  1. Top tier networks deal directly with their own advertisers and publishers. Search engines like Google are a good example of a top-tier network.
  2. Second level networks will also have a few of their own advertisers, but generally they make their money by syndicating the ads of the top tier networks.

Throughout both groups you will also find representative, blind and targeted adv networks.

  • Representative networks represent a named list of media properties.  They sell advertising space on specific websites and because of this, they tend to represent websites and other online media at the higher end of the market – the brand name of the website is important.  If you want to advertise on highly prominent websites and have the budget to work with, representative advertising networks is the way to go.
  • Blind advertising networks go the other way. You don’t get to decide or even know where your ads will appear, but the benefit is that you tend to pay much less for your advertising.  They are able to give you these prices because they buy up advertising space in bulk and then resell small packages to advertisers at a marked up price.  You will still often be able to decide the kinds of sites that you will appear on so that your advertisement for children’s toys does not appear on an adult orientated website – but the real draw is price.
  • Finally, targeted adv networks use information about consumers’ online habits (i.e. where they click, what they are reading etc…) to target specific advertisements to them.  Many of the bigger individual websites offer this kind of contextual advertising.  Targeted networks are best if you are looking for a specific kind of customer.

Whatever kind of network you choose to work with, always do small test runs of your online advertising first.  If these tests are successful, you can increase your advertising budget in confidence.  If they are unsuccessful, you can choose to move your budget to a better use.

What Next?

  • We Do It For You: If you’d like help choosing an advertising network, click here for more info about the lead generation services we provide

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Online or offline an advertising network (or ad network) is a business that connects advertisers with media owners.
They help advertisers place ads in a variety of relevant media.
They help media owners earn money from the readers, viewers, visitors and listeners they attract.
Online networks work mostly with websites but also they place advertising on blogs, in software applications and in email for example.
The advertising itself can range from text links to banner ads to rich media like audio and video.
If you are an advertiser, placing your ads with an ad network can be a great way of distributing your advertising across a wide range of different websites and media.
This can help gain you exposure in less competitive places.
Usually you will be able to decide what kind of websites and blogs that your advertisements will appear next to.
If, for example, you want to advertise to teachers then it may be possible to arrange through an ad network to have you ad displayed in places that fall into their ‘education’ category.
In most cases big media companies sell only their remnant space through adv networks – i.e.the advertising space that they have been unable to sell themselves. Occasionally this will mean lower rates for the advertiser but this is not guaranteed.
What kinds of Advertising Networks
Are There and Which Will Suit
Your Business Best
In most cases advertising networks can be lumped into two groups.
Top tier networks deal directly with their own advertisers and publishers. Search engines like Google are a good example of a top-tier network.
Second level networks will also have a few of their own advertisers but generally they make their money by syndicating the ads of the top tier networks.
Throughout both groups you will also find representative, blind and targeted adv networks.
Representative networks represent a named list of media properties. They sell advertising space on specific websites and because of this they tend to represent websites and other online media at the higher end of the market – the brand name of the website is important.
If you want to advertise on highly prominent websites and have the budget to work with, representative advertising networks are the ways to go.
Blind advertising networks go the other way. You don’t get to decide or even know where your ads will appear but the benefit is that you tend to pay much less for your advertising.
They are able to give you these prices because they buy up advertising space in bulk and then resell small packages to advertisers at a marked up price.
You will still often be able to decide the kinds of sites that you will appear on so that your advertisement for children’s toys does not appear on an adult orientated website – but the real draw is price.
Finally, targeted adv networks use information about consumers’ online habits (i.e. where they click, what they are reading etc…) to target specific advertisements to them. Many of the bigger individual websites are starting to offer this kind of contextual advertising.
Targeted networks are best if you are looking for a specific kind of customer.
Whatever kind of network you choose to work with, always do small test runs of your online advertising first.
If these tests are successful you can increase your advertising spend in confidence. If they are unsuccessful you can choose to move your budget to a better use.
What Next?
We Do It For You: If you’d like help choosing an advertising network, Click here for more info about the lead generation services we provide
Do It Yourself: For more lead generation ideas Download our free report
Return from Advertising Network Page to lead generation techniques

Contextual Advertising & How to Buy Leads & Target Marketing