Where do you spend your advertising $$$?

**mattSantill** · 02-09-2008 05:36 PM

I have been doing most of my business locally... but now I am moving on to the wonderful world of Ecommerce.

I'm interested in where I can get the most bang for my buck in advertising.

So if any online business folks have any advice.... it would be greatly appreciated.

I sell surveillance products..... I can spend up to $500 a month on advertising if necessary.

**BusinessAdviser** · 02-09-2008 06:30 PM

Hopefully the responses you get will help spark some ideas, but I don't know that it would be a good idea to merely advertise where others advertise.

See, efficient marketing is all about getting your message DIRECTLY TO YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE. Thus, you need to identify your target audience and then focus on a marketing strategy that most effectively and efficiently targets this audience, not just advertising where others in the wonderful world of Ecommerce advertise.

**mattSantill** · 02-09-2008 07:43 PM

i'm looking for general marketing ideas ... anyone use google adwords and have any luck? or marketing products on bizrate or other consumer comparison sites?

**BusinessAdviser** · 02-09-2008 08:13 PM

So you're looking for "general marketing ideas?" My mistake. I thought you were looking for where you could "get the most bang for my buck in advertising," which is NOT in "general marketing."

**mattSantill** · 02-09-2008 08:42 PM

Bang for my buck in general internet advertising .... it should be assumed that I'm not trying to advertise surveillance products on abercrombie.com
But I appreciate the marketing lesson....

does anyone have experience advertising products on amazon.com .........bizrate.com .... buyerzone.com... etc.
or all of them... and which sites offered the best return?

**Cameron** · 02-09-2008 10:54 PM

Facebook has the best audience targeting of any online advertising agency. I use them a lot for various affiliate campaigns.

**Dylan Phelan** · 02-12-2008 03:54 AM

Personally I don't spend much on marketing. My sites are well optimized, so I get enough organic traffic. Some of my products are in more competitive markets, so now and again I spend a bit on Adwords. The ROI is always great (for me at least)... but you have to know what you're doing. It's not just as simple as slapping together the campaign, giving Google some $$$ and there you go.. you must consider landing pages etc etc...

I agree with Cameron. Facebook is great for targeting a specific audience. I don't make much use of the FB marketplace, but am planning to use the FB flyers for a new site i'm developing.

**EasyAutoSales** · 02-12-2008 10:03 AM

Paid search is great if you know what you're doing. It takes time to get it right though...

Among some of the things you can test for:
- What words should you buy? Even if some words are driving traffic, are they driving sales?
- Dayparting the campaign - Are your shoppers finding you during the day at work or mostly at night?
- Ad copy - which ones work, which ones don't. How do they do with paired landing pages?

Many of the things are obvious but a lot of time they take some time to test and for you to tweak the right formula.

**mattSantill** · 02-12-2008 11:38 AM

I'll consider facebook.... but the systems I sell usually range from 5,000-20,000....
I'm not sure if a college social network would be a great choice...

**Dylan Phelan** · 02-12-2008 12:03 PM

Originally Posted by mattSantill

I'm not sure if a college social network would be a great choice...

um... I think facebook has become a little bigger than that now... although that's how it started out.

**TrafficFinder** · 03-10-2008 11:19 PM

I agree with optimizing your website. If you have it done correctly, there is no need to spend money on advertising. You can setup direct targeting keywords so when your client types in certain words on googles it sends them to your site. If you want to ad a cart to your site you could, this would get the sell. If you use ebay, bizrate, anything like that, you can always do a redirect. But, the most effective way is to optimize your site correctly and have free web traffic that is ready to buy what you're selling.

**Aletheides** · 03-11-2008 01:40 PM

You would be wasting your time with facebook.

SEO your site, add relevant content, and start targeting long tail keywords in your industry.

Ultimately this is the most effective and cost effective long-term route you can go.

**TrafficFinder** · 03-11-2008 01:50 PM

Aletheides ~ I agree 100%.

**capforge** · 03-11-2008 01:53 PM

I agree with Aletheides, except that sometimes, when Google shakes up the algorithm they use, you can have your sales go to zero literally overnight and take months to come back. So, I would suggest splitting your budget between SEO and the experimenting with long tail ad words campaigns that send traffic to specific landing pages. I assume you are fairly new at this business, if you only have $500 a month to spend, so go slowly and test everything and learn as much as you can so you can do things yourself until your budget gets bigger.

Also, check out marketingsherpa.com- they have free articles every week on online sales best practices, and most of them are really solid and usable.

**jackfranklin** · 11-21-2008 07:09 AM

efficient marketing is all about getting your message DIRECTLY TO YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE. Thus, you need to identify your target audience and then focus on a marketing strategy that most effectively and efficiently targets.