10 options to reach potential customers beyond search engines

Key Internet advertising options for 2011

In a recent post, I asked readers of SmartInsights to give their views on Internet advertising. Although some who completed the survey were in favour of online advertising and use it regularly, the majority have either not used it or or tried it once and not used it again since it's less effective than other techniques.

This follow-up post is to show that there are an increasing number of options to use Internet advertising. These have the option that you can reach your audience outside of the search engines. This has the clear advantages that:

• A finite number of searches occur for each keyphrase each month
• The cost per click in many categories often makes Adwords expensive
• People won't search if their unaware of a product type or category
• Your ads outside the search engine can help increase searches for your brand term or increase conversion due to familiarity and trust
• You can integrate display ads with those who have visited your site through retargeting or remarketing

Many of these options are now available via Google Adwords through new features introduced in 2010 which opens up display advertising to small business owners. We also have the options within social media at the end of the post. Here are the ten options:

1. Targeting using direct media buys at media owner site.

The traditional approach where you or a media-buying company approaches site owners direct. For this approach or the ones below, you can use either Google searches or ad planning tools like the Doubleclick Ad planner to identify sites with the right audience. You may be able to negotiate a better deal at a CPM level or a pay per performance (CPC or CPA/CPL) deal. It is possible to advertise run-of-site (sitewide) or in particular sections or channels.

2. Using content targeting via the Google Display Network.

You can use the Google Display Network within the same interface and account that you use to manage Google Adwords you can target ads on a range of sites to target visitors, but only on pages relevant to your keywords.

3. Use managed placement targeting via the Google Display Network.

In this case, you use a similar approach, but are more refined in how you target individual sites for advertising using placement targeting.

4. Targeting using remarketing via the Google Display Network.

In this case, you only display relevant ads when someone has already clicked on one of your paid search ads. Your ads are then seen on third-party sites in the display network. This form of remarketing (or behavioural targeting) was launched in 2010 and has proved extremely effective since conversion is much easier to achieve.

5. Targeting with Google InVideo Ads within YouTube.

Did you know that YouTube is now the second largest search engine in many countries? This gives a fantastic opportunity to reach an audience with a specific interest depending on what they"€™re viewing. View info on YouTube advertising.

6. Targeting with Google Promoted Video Ads within YouTube.

Promoted Video Ads are another YouTube advertising option is promoted video ads within YouTube available by Adwords.

7. Low-cost display ad networks.

With much remainder inventory, even large sites will sell-off some inventory, giving you the option to buy at a lower risk cost-per-click basis. See Ad Networks guide.

8. Remarketing using display ad networks.

Similar to remarketing within Google, you serve ads on an ad network to visitors who have previously visited your site. They may not have converted, so the reminder encourages them to buy for the first time, or again. Sometimes remarketing options are quite sophisticated with the option to display similar product categories.

9 and 10.  Social network ads.

Both Facebook and Linked-In offer good cost per click options for delivering targeted ads within their communities.

• Facebook advertising
• Linked In advertising

So that's the ten options, please share your experiences with these or other options that aren't included here.