The New Year is just beginning but I am sure that savvy online marketers are already perfecting their marketing campaign to make this year successful. Success calls for early and careful planning and marketers would want to make use of the right tools and medium to reach their target audience. As you cross your Ts and make plans, have you considered blog advertising for 2010?
Blogs became very popular in 2004 and since then smart marketers have been using them as a medium of target advertising. Blog advertising has since increased in popularity but many marketers still do not use it or use it right. You mainly have two broad options regarding blog advertising. You can create and maintain your own blog (with the help of professionals) or you can use the already established blogs of others at a fee.
Why Blog Advertising in 2010
Due to the nature of blogs they offer some advantages when used as an advertising medium. One of the advantages is an increased visibility. Many blogs have a wide readership base and attract thousands of more unique visitors every month.
You can expose your product to them. Implementing a blog advertising campaign is relatively cheaper. The cost/benefit ratio is very impressive. Blogs can also be a good source for target traffic.
If you are able to create and build up your own blog the benefits are even more. It is easier to increase the page rank of a blog than a website because of the frequency of posts.
Your own blog establishes you as a guru or opinion maker in your field. You build sustainable networks, increase your product’s visibility and enhance your corporate image. It would also boost your customer interaction and increase your indexed content. Blog ads also create quality back links that would help improve your search engine ranking.
Advertising Products
Blogs is a veritable advertising tool because they are popularly run by opinion-makers, niche influences and people who are considered gurus in certain industries. The blogs of some of these opinion-makers enjoy a loyal and large readership base. These groups of impassioned readers are also savvy smart consumers and they include not just students or semi-literate readers. These days, some blogs are read by the main stream media, white collar jobs workers at work and even government politicos.
However, blog advertising may not suit just any type of advertiser, neither should an advertiser just place advert material on just any blog. Blog advertising in 2010 may not be the best advert option for entrenched old brands as their ads may not be though provoking or interesting enough. Adverts that work well on blogs have to be as rich and edgy just like the content on the blog.
Blog advertising would better suit, new products launches, press releases, news-makers and medium scale advertisers. Agencies represent only a fraction of blog revenue because they might be skeptical about creating non-conventional advert and offending their executive clientele.
The best and most successful blog ads have been conceived and implemented by small scale advertisers, where the person who pays for the ads understands the unique nature of blogs ads.
Designing a Blog advert for 2010
Your blog ad must be human enough. To work well on blogs it must carry a human voice to make it connect well with people. The ads must have a bit of humanity and substance and not just focus on incentives or special offers. Your ad should appeal to the sensibility of the readers. Sarcasm and humor are good and if you could add appealing new hooks it becomes even better. Giving exclusive is a good idea, just like Eminem, who gave out exclusives of a new song on a blog. Readers love exclusives.
Your blog advert in 2010 has to be very creative and rich in content. You could use a headline, followed by an image and some creative text, or an image, followed by some headlines or text. It helps to make the ads look like an extension of the blog content, it should blend in. some blog networks or owners only accept specified ad formats while others may accept ads of all formats.
Since target advertising is always more successful you need to be sure that the blog you create or choose to place advert material on is related to you and your product. You need blogs that are related to your niche. That way you can maximize on click through rate as more of the readers would be more likely to click.
Your aim is not to just expose your advert material to the largest random audience possible. Your aim should be to expose your advert material to as large an audience that is interested or are likely to be interested on your product.
To succeed in 2010, you need to start planning and implementing your marketing strategy early. Blog advertising in 2010 can just be the tool you need to reach the desired top.