Best deals in online ads - includes related article on efficient marketing on the Web - Internet/Web/Online Service Information

Home Office Computing, July, 1997 by Jenny C. McCune

Affordable Ways to Get Your Company Name Out on the Net

At the mail-order clothing company R. Freeman & Co., it's been a record-breaking sales year. That's partly because the two-person firm recently landed a $10,000 order from AT&T--after the telecommunications giant spotted Freeman's ad on the Web. "The order came in out of the blue," says owner Russ Freeman. "Some guy called up, said he was cruising the Net when he saw our ad and thought our shirts would be perfect for AT&T's corporate marathon."

Thanks to new advertising options on the World Wide Web, companies such as Freeman's are reaching untapped markets. In fact, the Alamo, California, firm has received customer orders from Norway to New Zealand. "These people never would've heard about us if it weren't for our online ads," he says.

What's best is that you don't have to have a billion-dollar budget to net new business on the Net. How much did Freeman's $10,000 order really cost him? Virtually nothing--because of his free membership in the barter ad service LinkExchange (www.linkexchange.com). But even if your firm doesn't have a Web site, you can still get your company name circulated in cyberspace. Here, we tell you where to point your browser to find affordable online advertising.

Electronic Directories That Deliver

If you're searching for places to trumpet your services, check out online yellow pages. You don't even need a home page to be included; you can simply list your address, phone number, and e-mail address. And some electronic directories offer such bells and whistles as local maps. This way, when prospects look up your company by name, category, or location, they also get a map that leads them right to your front door.

To find the best deals, of course, shop around: Not all yellow pages charge for listings. For example, BigBook (www.bigbook.com) will give you an all-text listing for free, and for $10 a month, you can get your ad linked to your Web site. When Pemberton Orchards Inc.--a mail-order gift basket firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which happens to have a site--went ad shopping, owner Tom Saidnawey turned to BigYellow (www.bigyellow.com). The cost: only $111 a year--a fraction of what a conventional yellow pages ad would run.

It's currently an online advertising buyer's market: There are more yellow page directories on the Web than you can shake a computer mouse at. Yahoo! turned up more than 445 sites at press time. The bad news is that they all may not reach your target market. According to Jill H. Ellsworth, author of Marketing on the Internet (John Wiley & Sons), it's a common mistake to focus more on quantity than quality. "It's better to get 10,000 hits from people who are interested than 100,000 from people who aren't," she says.

Yellow Pages Sampling:

CitySurf--

(www.citysurf.com);

World Wide Yellow Pages--

(www.yellow.com);

Virtual Yellow Pages--

(www.Vyellow.com).

Catch Customers With Classifieds

Thanks to commercial online services and electronic malls, yesterday's paper-based classifieds are today's birdcage linings. Just like help-wanted newspaper ads, electronic classifieds are another affordable way to get your name out. Web classifieds list ads by category, offer a few lines of text (although some advertisers let you add a simple graphic for an additional charge), and set rates based on the length and frequency of your ad. And like Internet yellow page listings, you don't need a Web site to reserve space. The downside is that electronic classifieds can be difficult for prospects to locate. 'Where's no consolidated point where you can find them," warns Joshua O. Testerman, coauthor of Web Advertising and Marketing (Prima Publishing).

So, if you're looking for an inexpensive way to advertise online, your best bet is to take out a classified ad with a commercial online cartier or electronic mall. For example, CompuServe charges $12.90 for a four-week period (20-line maximum); AOL charges from $10.95 to $19.95 a month for a four-line premier ad. An ad with 200 words or fewer running three months in iMall's classified section costs about $75 to $100. And if you have a Web site and care to link it, expect to shell out an additional $20 per month.

Classifieds at a Glance:

iMall--

(www.imall.com/ads/ads.shtml);

Galaxy Mall--

(www.galaxymall.com/Galaxy/

ClassifiedMenu.html);

AOL--

(keyword: classifieds);

CompuServe--

(go: classifieds).

To Barter Is Smarter Advertisers are abuzz over banners, the long, thin ads running along the top of Web site pages. Their novelty is that they allow prospects to click on your ad and link to your home page. Even though ad placement can cost you thousands of dollars a month, there are ways to afford banner ads--as clothing company owner Freeman discovered.

Through barter companies such as LinkExchange, you can swap space on your site to get an ad on another member's--for free. For example, if Freeman's site displays 1,000 banner ads, his account earns 500 credits. This means his banner ad will be displayed 500 times on other LinkExchange member sites. Credit amounts vary with the barter service, but it runs anywhere from one-quarter to one-half credit for each ad run. What's in it for the exchange? Barter exchanges make the bulk of their money selling higher-priced sponsor ads.