How effective is Internet Marketing?

[Trixi]

It depends on what kind of site you have. I worked at an agency for years, and I worked with a lot of different companies there. Some products that I've seen perform badly are designer clothing, bank/mortgage sites, products under $20, flowers, products over $2000 (people want to see those in person) and real estate, particularly if you are trying to find buyers.

Products that do well are mainstream products that can be bought anywhere, gift products, marketing data collection, sporting goods, hotels, diet aids, technology, business services.

There is more to online advertising than just Pay Per Click and banner advertising. The most revenue producing products are shopping feeds and affiliate programs. I like commission junction for affiliate sites and Google base (which is FREE), shopzilla, nextag or shopping.com for shopping sites. There are products that will automatically place your feeds into each shopping portal. Check out merchantadvantage.com for a great product that does that. The great thing about affiliate advertising is that you only pay the commission, so you can never lose money (except for the start up fees)

I've had luck with banners, particularly if you are introducing a new product that would work well as an impulse buy. Don't spend more than a few cents per mil, or you will lose money. A safe place to try is Google Image Ads. Make sure that you disable sites like myspace, youtube and facebook, or you will just throw money away. If you look around online, you will probably find a coupon for $50 in free advertising to try out Google or MSN. $50 should be enough for you to run a test and see if it works for your site.

Optimizing can bring you more traffic, but the quality of that traffic will determine your success. You will need to do more than optimize, you will need to make sure that they new keywords you are using are really the best ones to make sales on your site. You will want to make sure that your landing pages include everything the searcher wants to know and that your site is easy to use. People trust sites that look professional, so if your site looks hokey or home made, you should invest in a professional overhaul. That money will come back to you pretty quick.

I left the SEM/SEO agency about a year ago. If you are a big, profitable company, it will be worth the money to go through an agency rather than spend twice as much hiring someone on to do it in house. But if you are a smaller company with some free time or large enough that you can afford a full timer, do that. Anyone can do this. Google tells you how to optimize and helps you with online advertising skills. You will pay an arm and a leg going through an agency, and they're top priority is income, not giving you as many conversions as possible. If you find one who you only have to pay for sales, use them. Good luck finding one though.

You can do it yourself. You just have to be willing to spend some time online working.

**** Don't be sold to here. You are here to ask a question, not to find an SEM SEO company. There are some SHADY SEM/SEOs. SHADY!! Be sure that you investigate whatever company you use toughly. Make sure that they are Google Certified and Yahoo Ambassadors. Make sure that they do everything in Best Practices, and be sure that they don't base their optimization on linking alone. If they guarantee you placement, they are lying. Good luck!