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Deciding on Campaign Duration

Timing your campaign is crucial to success. The duration of a campaign strategy could be one of major factors in deciding the success of the overall marketing strategy.

Campaign duration should be designed taking into consideration the traffic metrics, especially for event / occasion related traffic. The upcoming shopping season is a case in point. The traffic would see an upsurge in a couple of monthsfrom now and would continue well into the initial days of the new year. As an advertiser, yopu need to keep tabs on the rise and fall of the traffic that will include a buildup about 45 days before and continue through the 7-10 days after the year end, with crests and troughs in between. Unless you are visible throughout the period, you have missed out on the most productive period of the year.

It is also necessary to understand the target audiences' internet usage behavior. Search engine traffic during the period shows a downtrend so while you cannot altogether get off Google, Yahoo and alike, you need to concentrate a lot more on the human expression channels like 123greetings.com, whose traffic would match the surge in shopping behavior.

Spacing your ads through the traffic crests and troughs will help you get a better ROI. You need to be more visible during the high activity periods, maintaining a consistent presence other than the peaks.

Mapping your ads

Looks like the CPC advertising will throw up some interesting thoughts by the end of this shopping season. With services like Mappam, its looking that advertisers and publishers will have a lot in terms of action. But it reamains to be seen how specific the advertisers get with the geo-locations of advertisers and its effects on the ROI, as targeting by coordinates will be a great plus for local services, but it remains to be seen if the larger players take to such pin-point advertising, and if they do then does it justify the cost of managing the campaigns.

I got the feeling after some localized campaigns on Adwords for some regional brands that the returns were not so significant as compared to running audience based ads for the entire region. While it will not be fair to be judgmental, you should take into account the perceived benefits before going local with services with multiple presence.

I'd love to hear some success stories on localized advertising.

Targeting your Ads on 123greetings.com

Advertising on Sponsored Links on 123greetings.com is quite simple. In addition to a user-friendly interface, finding your audience too is easy. To start with, there are no keywords, and their search volumes to hunt for. Simply go through their ecard sections and determine where your prospective buyer comes in or in other words, your product/ service is relevant in.

With a huge number of reasons to celebrate and wish, as they put it, each ecard section has a unique visitor profile. for instance, the Birthday section would bring in birthday wishers, making it the ideal place to advertise your gift ideas. Similarly, if you have some Halloween items, just advertise on the Halloween section.

Such defined audience is the beauty of 123greetings.com, making it one of my favorite ad platforms. I also believe that this advantage of a pre-defined audience is what translated into positive ROI for my clients. Whats more, that as there is no search activity, as is the case with Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, et all, you have a very defined visitor activity on 123greetings.com. People are here to wish, and possibly compliment it with a gift, in addition to being receptive to various product/ service ideas, relevant to the ecard section.

Yes, you need to set your basics right, something I discussed earlier in Target Your Audience. With the right message for your prospective buyer, you are reaching out to them at the point of purchase.