Online Advertising

There was a recent article in a publishing trade that does a fantastic job explaining the full power of online advertising. It is very easy to try to adapt consumer metrics to business to business media and become consumed with clicks, conversions and the ever-elusive ROI factor. I can assure you that there is no silver bullet. It will continue to be a challenge to quantify the direct impact of advertising, even as it moves online and we are able to leverage some extremely powerful technology tools.

The following chain of events explains how many people perceive online advertising and how many folks in my business sell it.

Impression -- Click -- Visit --Sale

This is a bit of an oversimplification but the point is that many can fall into a trap that either undervalues the investment or worse yet causes us to set an unreasonable expectation for measuring success.

Below is a more complete view:
























The more familiar we become with online advertising, the more we begin to understand the strengths of this medium (and weaknesses) and ways which we can create integrated programs that allow us to build our brand, deliver more information and reach well beyond the boundaries of print.

As more firms in our industry figure out a web strategy, the more challenging it will become to stand out in this high speed world. Therein lies the immediate opportunity: those who get there first will distance themselves quickly. If you are interested I have some multifamily-specific case studies that I would love to share. We will also be holding a seminar at the MFE Conference to give a primer to our exhibitors and sponsors firsthand.

There is no question that our customers are using the web to run their business and all of us should get engaged in the dialogue. It doesn't cost anything to explore and if nothing else it is exciting to see how the landscape is changing daily.

Click here for the complete article in Publishing Executive.