Do they want it?

I think I’ll start off the Digital Mountain Consulting Blog with some helpful advice to local advertisers.

Advertising has always been two things at once. First, a way to get customers in your door. Second, a way to see what the market wants. We don’t usually focus on the market test aspect of advertising because it is expensive and time consuming. Oh, did I mention it was always REALLY hard to measure how an ad/product/offer performed? If “they” don’t want a product you probably don’t want to spend your time making and advertising it.

Enter online advertising. Advertising on the web allows us to KNOW what interests those who view our ads. Their interest is expressed in clicks. A good ad will have a more clicks per 1,000 views than a less interesting ad.

With web advertising you may derive some useful information from the system by producing a series of market test banner ads, or even text ads. Make one for each item you’re interested in testing the demand for and see which ones get the best “CTR” or Click Through Rate. This way you can see which products/offers web viewers are most interested in. Online advertising is like a voting system.

Just a thought to help you get the most value from the advertising system. Incidentally, it does not cost extra to create and run extra ads. You just use views when the ads are delivered, as always.