Wednesday, August 13, 2008

How To Advertise Without Adwords

By Brian Basch


Two of the most popular trends in advertising are Google Adwords and Google Adsense. In fact they have become so popular that marketers seem to have forgotten about the other options available to them. Some of these methods will actually save you money.

Adwords is a method of pay per click marketing. Here is how it works; advertisers are charged a nominal amount every time their ad is viewed. Although the charges are usually less than a dollar, they can accumulate into a larger amount. This is especially true of popular keywords, as these can create a large quantity of worthless leads. It is certainly a risk and if you are not careful your campaign can eat up your advertising budget.

The good news is that Adwords is not your only option for online advertising. Contrary to popular belief it is not the most widely used advertising method. Savvy marketers will recognize the fact that there are many options available for them. When they think beyond Adwords the advertiser will discover more profitable and cost effective methods of advertising.

Utilizing the power of social marketing is an effective way to advertise without Adwords. You can use blogs and forums to your advantage. You will find communities of people who are keen to discuss subjects that interest them. These 2 methods of social marketing will give you wonderful exposure. A simple blog about a particular product, that links back to your website, can give you plenty of free traffic.

You can also try placing ads on other websites. You will need to be cautious before you do this. One thing to consider is the nature of your market and just whom you are trying to reach. To understand your market you must do some analysis on your potential clients. There are 3 different types of advertising available to you when placing ads on different websites. You can use text or banner ads and either pay for each click through, like pay-per-click advertising, or pay a flat fee to the webmaster for the duration of your ad.

The following 2 methods involve using website content. This is a powerful way to advertise on another website. Companies will pay writers to provide their website content. They know that good content will increase traffic and build their credibility. Smart advertisers can take advantage of this and get some free exposure. They can submit their own articles complete with bios and ask these companies to use the articles as valuable web content. These articles will in turn allow back links to be created.

This form of link building is dependent on the visitor reading all the way through the article and then clicking through on the link at the end of the article. Unfortunately many readers have an extremely short attention span, this means that they will not always use this link. Because you do not want to waste valuable leads you can use a few links within the article. This will allow the visitor to use these links for further information. This kind of content is known as hosted content. Not everybody will accept articles with links but some do. They may ask you to pay for a linked article as this will take visitors away from their site.

When using these methods online promoters are able to make more profits. At the same time they will avoid the risks involved with Adwords. In fact with these methods they will not have the humiliation of losing money.

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