Advertising on the Web - Part 2 - Branding, Awareness, and Response
Here's the indiscreet, telemarketer-esque question you need to ask yourself when fielding a Web advertising campaign: What are you selling?
Are you trying to drive traffic to your site, to sell your product directly through the ads you run, or just to generate awareness about your company, product, or Web site?
The good news is that you can do all of these on the Web - often at the same time!
Branding and Awareness Whether you're launching a new product or just trying to increase an existing product's visibility among your target audience, you can do it on the Web. An MBinteractive study done for the Internet Advertising Bureau shows that users who have viewed your banner are extremely likely to come away remembering it, often positively.
Direct Response This is another of the Web's major strengths. Whether it's sales, leads, or raw traffic you're looking for, it's fairly easy to get hard numbers quickly on any of these from your Web campaign and to calculate the return on your advertising investment. And because the Web works for branding, you're getting an added benefit even before the user clicks on your ad!
Once you've decided what combination of these two objectives you're trying to achieve, you'll be better able to evaluate which sites, which units, and which prices are right for your campaign. Why? Well, if you're holding sites responsible to your direct response goals, you're probably looking for a pretty strict return on investment.
