Anyone here work in marketing? Questions inside...

[Cuda1447]

I've come to my ATOT family in search of some wisdom. Of course I am doing research elsewhere, but I'm hoping to get some first hand perspective from anyone in the marketing field. I'll just list a couple of questions.


1. It seems to me online advertising via free mediums (social networking, craigslist, youtube channel, forums etc...) would be the most cost effective means of advertising. And in general would be very effective in todays day and age.

2. Banner advertising, worth it? Is it a YMMV thing where it depends on your banner and the site you're advertising on or... does is it just not really worth it anymore?

3. Advertising in newspapers/magazines etc... again, cost effective? That type of advertising is much more expensive. It is also very hard to measure its effectiveness. Target demographics are generally much broader and less specific, so that seems like it would be less effective? How would one go about choosing a newspaper or magazine to advertise in? Obviously you would ask questions like how many copies are circulated, how often, target demographic etc... But outside of the obvious questions, are there any tricks of the trade that would better allow one to determine which sources would be best to utilize?



Anything else anyone has to share would be welcome as well. Any books worth reading? Sites worth checking out that have information regarding these topics? Studies that have been done that could give me some insight? General advice or thoughts? Anything useful at all, I would be grateful to hear about.

If anyone would prefer, feel free to PM me as well.

 

[Texashiker]

1 - yes

2 - somewhat, it all depends if you can get banners on targeted audience sites

3 - very expensive, who "really" reads the small ads in the back of magazines? To get attention your going to need to buy ad placement, and I do not know how effective it is.

 

[Cuda1447]

1 - yes

2 - somewhat

3 - very expensive

Short and to the point, which is fine. If you want to elaborate anymore on any of those topics, that would be awesome

 

[Texashiker]

Short and to the point, which is fine. If you want to elaborate anymore on any of those topics, that would be awesome

My original reply has been edited.

I run a blog, a couple of forums and a youtube channel. Traffic can be tricky, stange and picky.

Traffic from my blog goes to 2 forums, a survivalist type forum and a shooting sports forum. Traffic from my blog to the survivalist forum has a bounce rate in the 25% range. Traffic from my blog to the shooting sports forum has a bounce rate in the 75% range. Why the dramatic difernce in bounce rate, I do not know.

If your able to do it, youtube is one of the best marketing tools on the net.

 

[Dr. Detroit]

Banners are great!

You have to pay a high cost of CPM's and do targeted advertising to see return on your marketing investment.

If it did not work - would you see Toyota spend money in this way. They are the USA's largest advertiser by dollars spent.

<========= works for an online publisher

 

[Cuda1447]

bump

 

[Texashiker]

Here are some stats for my sites:

My blog, traffic source, bounce rate:
google - 78.48&#37; bounce rate
yahoo - 75.45% bounce rate
bing - 78.52% bounce rate
survivalistboards.com - 65.85% bounce rate (forum is in same niche as my blog)
aol - 80.21% bounce rate
youtube - 58.33%

Notice the 30 percentage point difference between the search engines and youtube


Now lets look at the traffic sources for a forum I run,and the bounce rate:
google - 64.90% bounce rate
yahoo - 51.25% bounce rate
bing - 52.74% bounce rate
stumbleupon - 68.93% bounce rate
survivalboards.com - 21.31% bounce rate
youtube - 43.49% bounce rate
facebook - 34.90% bounce rate


The stumble bounce rate has dropped a LOT. Usually, social bookmarking traffic has a terrible, like 90% - 95% bounce rate.

My most targeted traffic comes from either related forums and blogs, or youtube. At one time my forum had a youtube bounce rate in the 25% - 30% range.

I do not buy banners for any of my sites.