Internet Marketing Strategy Blog By Roy Sencio

I had the opportunity of sitting down with some friends last night, these guys are my hangout and travel buddies; though I have not been out with them in a while, and have missed a few sojourns on account of my busy weekend schedule.

One of them is an advertising agency insider and she confirmed what I had long suspected, but before I get into that, let me tell you what she mentioned. Advertisers are spending less and less on traditional advertising mediums such as newspapers or TV, and are spending more on other below the line activities and events that are of a direct response nature like maybe direct marketing or events. In fact she states that of an advertiser’s marketing budget 25% actually goes into traditional media with the huge 75% into below the line endeavors.

“Below the line” is a reference to advertising techniques that are less conventional than the usual channels of advertising like TV, radio, print, etc. “Below the line” activities typically focus on direct means of communication, most commonly direct mail and e-mail, often using highly targeted lists of names to maximize response rates.

As early as 1997 I had already been reading about target marketing and was already a practitioner of such; and already back then it was known that the old “we have it all for everyone” marketing model would soon be replaced by the “I have these for the type of people that are into these” type of marketing.

Now what is it that I had confirmed?

Fact 1 - Traditional advertising placements are no longer as effective, and advertisers look for new ways to get their messages across.

Fact 2 - You cannot gauge immediate effects of traditional advertising, but you are able to do so with below the line activities such as direct mail or even internet advertising, with the direct response and the ability to monitor customer behavior.

Let’s say you sell scented candles and are having an SALE with a 10% offer and advertise it on TV. Each time that TV ad is aired, there is no telling exactly how many people caught the ad. So assuming 10 people viewed your ad on TV there is no knowing exactly how they react to the ad or if they take a specific course of action as you would have wanted them. In fact, response to your ad may take place much later, or never at all.

Let us now put the same ad, still in video format, on the internet. While displayed on a web page, you are able to tell exactly how many people viewed your ad, and what’s more you are able to tell how many people clicked on your ad in order to get more information. Knowing how many people click on your ad, from the total number of people who viewed it tells you something about your product or your ad, and you can tweak the ad in order to make it more relevant to viewers, encouraging them to click the ad to get more information.

From this process, you are also able to monitor, how long later an ad viewer who later requested for information actually turned into a sale or conversion.

So there is the process for you. A viewer sees your ad, finds it relevant or interesting and clicks on it, is brought to a page with more information or where they can leave their contact details like an email address that you can then use to send follow up messages to or other sales offers to, and finally the conversion. The conversion is of course the final objective that you want the process to lead to, it could simply be a sale or a purchase of the item you are advertising, or any particular action that you want your visitor to perform or take.

Today, markets have gotten more diverse, there are a myriad of sales opportunities and products that you can present to equally numerous niches. However, customers are more elusive, audiences are less receptive to traditional advertising, which makes internet marketing and other forms of below the line advertising a cheaper yet effective alternative to getting that advertising message across.

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