What is internet advertising?
I was on the phone today with a potential new client and after some “get to know you” type conversation he asked me a question that kind of stumped me. Not because I didn’t know the answer, I just wasn’t expecting it.
“What is internet advertising?”
I just took it for granted that the person who was going to hire me to work on his advertising campaign knew what internet advertising was and what it was all about. Silly me.
After explaining what it is that internet advertising is, and more importantly, what it is to me, we began to talk about goals, focus, costs, and putting a plan together. But, the question still rattled around in my mind. “What is internet advertising?”
Internet Advertising Defined
Success in internet marketing begins with what you believe that internet advertising is. Sometimes where you start isn’t always where you should start.
While I was explaining this internet advertising thing, I kept coming back to one thing over and over.
Internet advertising is being a loud voice to your market where you solve their problems with your products or services and build continuous, long lasting, and mutual relationships.
Take a minute to think about that for a second. I have been.
I’ve been thinking about it and the more I think about it the more I like it. In fact, let me rephrase that. I love it.
It think this is exactly what internet advertising, or any type of advertising, is.
Online Marketing Equation P + R = T
The ultimate goal to advertising a website online is traffic. That’s the T. Traffic is your income source. Without it, you’re not really accomplishing anything. But, the starting point for so many people when it comes to defining internet advertising is just the traffic. When really… that’s the ending.
You need to be a loud voice amidst the other clamoring voices to offer solutions to problems and to build relationships. So, it takes problems (P) plus relationships (R) to bring in the traffic.
What do you think?
I’ll be broadening out this definition in the days to come as I think about this some more. But, I was also wondering what you thought.
What do you think internet advertising is?
Think about it and drop your thoughts into the comments below. I’d love to hear them and hopefully begin to put together a grand definition as to what internet advertising is… in it’s simplest form.
