Advertising for Online Businesses

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Advertising for Online Businesses

The internet is a huge business and its constant and significant

growth attracts more and more businesses to be online. In 2004, online

sales reached $117 billion (www.comscore.com with more than 812

million internet users (www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm). All

these internet users are potential customers and it is essential to

exploit such an opportunity.

However promotion is crucial, not only to increase traffic. A basic

principle is: if people do not know you, they can not buy anything

from you. With the incredible increase in the number of existing

websites, it is likely that you may not be noticed. The internet not

only gives you the opportunity to sell online, it also enables to

advertise online and the advantages are numerous. However, there is a

trend to forget offline advertising and its benefits as it is

generally more expensive, indeed not affordable, especially for small

businesses.

This paper deals with the importance of integrating both online and

offline advertising when running an online business in order to run an

effective campaign which will generate traffic, sales and increase

profits. It first briefly describes what is considered as online and

offline advertising and then goes on to discuss the importance of

combining the two methods.

Online advertising corresponds to advertising done on the web or

through emails. It consists of search engines and directories,

banners, pop-up, emails, newsgroups, affiliate programmes, viral

marketing and the content of the websites. Some of these elements

exist with variations. For instance, banners can be static, animated

o...

... middle of paper ...

...networldstats.com/articles/art044.htm

* www.leveltendesign.com/kb/articles/blending_online_offline_promotions.php

* www.paynetsystems.com/blog/2004/12/offline-advertising-strategies.html

* www.successfuloffice.com/dont-forget-about-offline-advertising.htm

* www.thinkmetrics.com/comparing-online-and-offline-marketing.php

* www.webpronews.com/ebusiness/smallbusiness/wpn-2-20021226OnlinevsOfflineAdvertising.html

Book

· Wright, R. (2003) The Ultimate Dictionary of Business and Marketing,

London, Earlybrave Publications Ltd

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[1] Direct-Response Advertising - talking directly to the customers by

TV, radio, mail, the internet, telephone and inviting a response

(Wright, R. (2003) The Ultimate Dictionary of Business and Marketing.

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