5 Main Types Of Advertising Techniques Online
Many people are confused by the different types of advertising techniques online. In today’s blog post, my aim is to classify all the techniques into 5 main types. I will also discuss the key to success in each of them.
Ready? Here we go……
1) Content Advertising
The first type of advertising technique is content advertising. It basically uses content to draw visitors’ attention. It is the main type of advertising technique because the entire internet is made up of content (or information).
The following traffic strategies all fall under content advertising technique:
- Submitting articles to article directories
- Posting articles to Squidoo, Hubpages or Blogger
- Posting articles to your own blog or content website
- Press release
- Paid reviews at other people’s website
- Yahoo answers
- Social bookmarking at Digg, Propeller etc
- Post videos in video sites
- Posting comments in forums
In content advertising, you draw traffic from 2 sources. You either get the traffic from the website where the content is posted or from the search engine.
Existing traffic from the website is given. There is nothing much you need to do other than making sure that your content is good and your title is interesting.
The real challenge lies in getting traffic from the search engine. Your aim is to get high ranking in the search engine and direct the traffic from the search engine to your content and then to your website. This is done through careful keyword research and search engine optimization.
2) Link Advertising
This type of advertising technique typically uses a short link with some description to attract the visitors directly to your website.
The following traffic strategies all fall under link advertising technique:
- PPC advertising
- LeadsLeap advertising
- Classified advertising
- Submission to directories
- Link exchange partnership
- Banner advertising (image version of link advertising)
- Craigslist advertising
- Email signature
In link advertising, you draw traffic from just 1 source, that is the existing traffic from the website where your link is posted.
The key in link advertising is your OFFER.
Many advertisers expect people to click on whatever link they post. When no one clicks, they wonder why people are not responding.
Remember, people are NOT AT ALL interested in your ad. They are only interested in how they can benefit. If your ad fails to convey the idea that you have something good for them, they simply won’t click!
3) Viral advertising
This kind of advertising technique is similar to word of mouth advertising in the offline world. The idea is to encourage your existing traffic to bring more traffic to your website.
The following traffic strategies all fall under viral advertising technique:
- Offer your products’ affiliate program, including finding joint venture partners
- Place a “Tell-a-friend” script on your website
- Distribute viral screensaver, software or ebooks
Success in viral advertising depends a lot on your ability to create a buzz in your community. You need to package your product into something that is unique and interesting so that people are interested in spreading the words for you. Viral advertising can hardly work for a “me-too” product.
4) Incentivized advertising
The forth type of advertising technique is incentivized advertising where the traffic is rewarded to visit your website.
The following traffic strategies all fall under incentivized advertising technique:
- Traffic exchange programs
- Auto-surf advertising
- Paid to read advertising
- Safelist advertising
Success in this type of advertising depends mainly on your offer and the way you present it. Most advertisers who fail either do not have a good offer or they fail to deliver the benefit of their offer across to the target audience.
5) Obtrusive advertising
The last type of advertising technique is obtrusive advertising where the traffic is forced to view your ad. The most typical examples are popup and popunder advertising.
The first rule in obtrusive advertising is to avoid untargeted traffic, which happens to be quite common in this kind of advertising. If your ad is shown to a pool of people who are not interested in your offer, you are simply barking up the wrong tree!
If the traffic is targeted, your success in obtrusive advertising depends mainly on your offer and the way you present it, similar to incentivized advertising.
Final note……
As you can see, online advertising is not as complicated as what it seems to be. I hope that by understanding the main types of advertising techniques, you can be better prepare your advertising campaign. All the best!
I think this is my favorite post yet. This pretty much sums it up for anyone who needs to understand different types of traffic generation techniques. Just think when one utulizes all of these tactics together, or even just a few they are going to see the results they’ve been looking for.
These are great techniques. I never really got in to obtrusive advertising though.
Truly an excellent post. Explains the main types of online advertising and traffic generation in a short and concise manner. I like it. I’m on my way to post this one to my blog. Keep it coming!
This is some great information that you have compiled here. Many people only try one form of advertising and when that doesn’t work they give up… When people use all these together they are going to start getting the traffic they are looking for.
Never thought of that way before. The advertising categories make a bit easier to understand about marketing and advertising. So nice work on opening my eyes on how to look on internet advertising.
The information in this post is very dense. I think anyone on need of traffic can surely use this and begin to build their list as well as income….Great onfo
Amazing post! I like the simplicity of posts here. Feel proud to be a member & so I have personally referred over 100 people to LeadsLeap till date. Advertising is a challenge for everyone but it can become easy once we know the basics as mentioned by Kenneth.
I am learning so much ahout online advertising. Being new to this wis making this information all the more relevent form me.
Make sure that the website adheres to IAB standards, and that the vendor creating your ads also follows them. Unique Content
This is a GREAT article that clears the fog covering online advertising!
Thanks, Kenneth!
Willy Lim
The Financially Free Advisor
InterNETwork Marketing in Asia
Another amazing summary post. You are definitely one of the few internet marketers out there who can actually sum up everything in a nutshell. Thanks so much
Hi Kenneth,
I hate obtrusive advertising and so do a lot of other people, thats why i would never use it! not on my blog anyway. As for the rest of the techniques SPOT ON. Most surfers are pretty internet savvy and will not click on your ads, so you have to be a little more clever in how you place your links, but you want to get your reader exited and itching to find out what it is you are offering, MaxHomeBits
Great Post Kenneth
Thanks for the explanation. I don’t use advertising on my site now, but I may in the future and this will be informative for me.
Thanks again.
This is really great..however for me..a not so savvy internet navigator..I understood a small portion..or should I say I understood it but have not a clue on how to do it..All the organic measures are great but you really need an understanding of the internet…carol stanley author of For Kids 59.99 and Over
Very useful tips, indeed. Thanks
great tips, yes, thank you.
learning so much about marketing and advertising, and can never learn enough, still newish to all this, but learning as I go along, and enjoying it! What is URI?
Nice list Kenneth. I like how you list them in order with the best ways to advertise near the top. Although I think it would be a toss up as to what type is better, link advertising or viral advertising. Actually LeadsLeap would fit in both of those categories, wouldn’t it?
Coincidentally I was just in the process of putting together a similar list. I plan to put it on a web site then post the list in my forum and offer to show members how to put up their own site with their own affiliate links. It should be finished by early next week.
Mike
I like the division of advertising into five categories and what fits where. Your article makes it easy to create a campaign with each of those elements included.
Nick
I am very hungry because to money thanks you
I have used many of them and they do work. Others seems to be ineffective like Traffic exchange.
The key to success is HOW you offer your product or service.
Almost daily I see something that I do not understand. Usually this happens on surf sites or list sites. I click on a email that someone has paid for either in time or money, and the dreaded “Site Not Found”message comes up.
At first I just ignored this and collected my credits.
Then after thinking that it was strange that someone would pay to have a non existent site promoted I took a closer look. The answer was in the address bar. In most instances the address was not right because the person forgot to put a dot where it was needed when they typed in the address. What a costly oversight.
http://wwwyoursitewontwork.com will not work because there is no dot after the www
http://www.yoursitewontworkcom will not work because there is no dot before the “com” part.
Another common one was a missing letter. There was one that had a address like this
http://www.yoursitewontwrk.cm Missing letter in address.
I am guilty of this as well. Recently I ordered some banner adds for my site http://www.getstartvideos.com in my order I forgot to put the s on videos The company that I ordered the banners from emailed me and told me that the link lead to nowhere, and they were right.
So the message here is that you need to double check your url very carefully before you submit it for advertising. It could be costly or at least take away a promotion opportunity.
Thomas Northrop
http://www.getstartvideos.com
all of above ways to advertising is best. But I think Link Adv. is best at all because it’s more targated that others also for SEO it’s good.
http://www.fastmoneyproducts.com