1 – Not linking online adverts to their website…

If a potential consumer is online looking for a business then they are online for a reason – it is their preferred method of searching and in making a decision on whether to contact that particular business.  If they find your advert, research has shown that they will want to stay online and look at your website – if you scrimp on this area (Weblinks are now very low cost in most directories), you risk the chance of that potential buyer moving to the next relevant business advert in your area that does let them link to their website.

At Wampit®, we have even seen examples of businesses trying to avoid paying for a weblink by adding it to the info on their advert e.g. “Visit A1 cars dot com for more info”.

Seriously – not only does this look cheap, but businesses can’t really expect someone to then leave the directory and manually type in the web address into their search bar, or expect them to go back and Google the name in order to then link through to the site.

2 – Not asking people where they found your business…

Whether you have paid for your advertising or taken advantage of a free listing, how can you possibly know whether your advertising is working for you unless you ask people?  Again from experience we know that many business owners or their staff don’t do this.  It takes just a few seconds to ask everyone that calls you, orders online or even visits you how they found you.  From this simple exercise, within a month you will have built up a great picture of where your business is coming from and then you will be able to accurately adjust your ad spend accordingly.

3 – Not keeping your online details up to date…

If you have listed your business online, then you must keep your details up to date.  This helps keep your advert fresh and enables you to utilise you advertising more effectively by updating your advert with any latest offers or latest products / services.  Alternatively,  just using the advert to promote certain products / services that you want to focus on more at that particular time.

Some online directories may have already listed your business and are just waiting for you to ‘claim’ or ‘update’ the advert.  Most quality sites like the Wampit® business directory enable you to ‘claim & update’ your advert completely free of charge.

1. If an online business directory is free it can’t be very good…

WRONG – Free business directories promote themselves in many clever and cost effective ways across the Internet and business communities, enabling them to offer a free service to businesses.  They can generate revenue either via optional extras that a business can buy to enhance their free advert, through discrete banner advertising, or using a mixture of both.  In fact even the large established directories have recently changed their business models to enable various forms of free advertising.

2 – The higher cost online business directories must be better…

WRONG – For the large established business directories, the high cost of advertising is not just linked to the quality of the expected response, but also to the operational costs of that business.  Larger companies have many mouths to feed, operational premises to run, and high running costs – this means the cost of their advertising has to be higher to enable the business to turn a profit.

Many free business directories are purely online and do not have any of these crippling overheads and therefore can offer a free quality service.

3 – People only know about the big online directories…

WRONG – An online business directory on the Internet today relies more on its presence in Google rather that its brand / name.  With all good online directories like the Wampit® business directory, every free advertiser is given their own unique web page that is submitted  to all major search engines.  This results in a link to their free directory advert appearing within the search engines results.  As Google accounts for approx 85% of the search market it is important for online directories to get this bit right.

If you want to see how successful a particular directory is at getting its advertisers listed in Google, just type ‘site:’ followed by the company web address and you’ll see how many pages of a particular website Google has picked up and is displaying in their search results – try the following for example: site:www.wampit.co.uk

The global economy is naturally all about buying and selling and as such advertising is the lifeblood of the economy.  SME’s still tend to adopt more traditional forms of advertising such as directories, newspapers, radio ads etc as they are (generally) cost effective in comparison to their marketing budgets.

However national and global brands with multi million pound A&P budgets are increasingly looking for more creative and innovative ways to promote themselves and stand out in an increasingly competitive market place.

Take the popular US magazine Entertainment Weekly for example, who debuted video advertising in its September 09 edition by placing wafer-thin screens embedded in its pages that promoted CBS TV shows and Pepsi.  Gimmick or not, it demonstrated the corporate desire to innovate and appear current.

The traditional advertising model will be around for a long time yet, however the future of advertising clearly lies in digital mediums.  Google executive, Nikesh Arora, recently stated “People are shifting their spending dollars more and more to the online world – whether it be direct marketing, advertising, or branding and that follows industrial marketing logic, which is that you have to go where the eyeballs are, where the customers are”.  That coupled with the fact that for advertisers digital ad platforms allow accurate performance tracking, which is something offline advertising has always struggled with.

DOOH (Digital Out Of Home) advertising is an up and coming area with some really innovative concepts being developed.  French marketing technology firm Quividi are developing digital signage displays that have built in cameras that instantly identify a passer by’s age and gender using a facial recognition system and then delivers a product that it feels is appropriate – think Minority Report!

We already know what a valuable commodity ‘Consumer Data’ is and its link to effective contextualisation of ad messages / message customisation and therefore it is a natural progression that DOOH advertising will follow suit and the worth of digital signage will be as much in its ability to gather data as in its ad revenues.

Taking the idea of digital targeted outdoor advertising even further, Holosonics, a US based technology company has developed something called the audio spotlight, aptly named because it can create a tight, narrow beam of sound that can be controlled with the same precision as a torch onto a small area over 60ft away.  The DOOH market has naturally taken to this as it enables advertisers to accurately deliver not only their visual, but now also their audio message into a very targeted area.

So what of the online world?

Facebook:

With over 400 million active users on Facebook, this channel is potentially an advertisers wet dream, particularly as Facebook offers advertisers the opportunity to reach targeted and engaged audiences through Facebook ads. These ads are targeted at users based on their likes and interests rather than their searches and although still in its infancy, businesses are now investigating and trialling campaigns to work out how to effectively leverage Facebook ads into their online spend.

In Game Advertising:

Following on from the initial rush with advertising in ‘virtual worlds’ such as ‘SecondLife’.  Advertisers are starting to really understand the benefits of advertising within the gaming community and are being very creative.  For example, Zygna (the creator of Farmville) with a current valuation  of $4 billion are offering an new approach to in game advertising by incentivizing users to ‘interact with adverts’ by completing brand related tasks such as filing in a form or watching a video, in order to be rewarded with ‘virtual currencies’ to use within their game.

With the global gaming industry achieving over $56 billion in revenues it is fast becoming an important focus for media planners, particularly with the growth of social gaming (i.e. on Facebook).  As this area matures, advertisers will be able to utilise in game advertising across different platforms.

Twitter:

Twitter has at last announced the first of its money-making ventures through advertising, with its ‘Promoted Tweets’.  Twitter has teemed up with a number of commercial partners such as Disney/Pixar and Starbucks enabling them to place a ‘promoted tweet’ at the top of a ‘trending topic’ on the results page, with the aim to roll ‘promoted tweets’ out across live conversations once they have a better understanding of the users experience and advertiser value.

Twitter are measuring this first phase of ‘promoted tweets’ to ensure that they are useful to visitors (resonance).  Whether they ‘resonate’ with users will be measured by whether users interact with them, retweet them etc.  Twitter has stated that any ‘Promoted Tweets’ that do not resonate with users will not be allowed to continue. With over 4 billion tweets posted in the first quarter of 2010 alone, this is definitely one to keep an eye on and we at Wampit will be watching this space with interest.

Mobile:

Mobile ad spend rose by a third to 32% between 2008 and 2009, with brands from the entertainment, media and telecoms sectors spending the largest amounts on the medium, according to the IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers.   The UK spent 36.7m in the UK in 2009 despite a contraction in the advertising market in general.

So what next for mobile advertising?  It seem that it’s all about Location, Location, Location with ‘Location Based Advertising’ (LBA).  These are mobile adverts which target users based on their GPS location and have the potential to represent anything from a coupon for a coffee shop around the corner from where you are standing or a car dealer that has the same make and model of car as the one you where searching for on Auto Trader last night…   Advertisers could even target a banner advert aimed at a certain demographic that would only appear if you were in the vicinity of their business.  Although the market seems relatively small at the moment, the potential for growth is massive.

If all of that seems too ‘out there’ for your business, you could always contact Andrew Fischer at http://www.humanadspace.com/ – The first man to officially e-bay his forehead as advertising space – Genius!

Or if that doesn’t interest you, take a look at Wampit our established UK Directory with over 355,000 businesses listed.  We offer free business advertising including text, images, video and live Twitter feeds and it only takes a minute to register and create your free advert.

This is such an important area for businesses to consider, and could impact greatly on the number of potential customers you gain through your online business advertising.  As this area is so important, I am going to get straight to the point:

If you had a shop, would you stop passersby from entering unless they called you first, or alternatively expect them to have to ask around to find out how to get in?  Of course you wouldn’t, however that is exactly what you will be doing if you do not place a link on your business advertising to your own website. 

If you think about it, if you do not place a link on your business advertising you are only leaving a prospective customer with two options: 

1.  Call you on the phone: 

Expecting someone to call you on the telephone immediately after viewing some key details on your advert is not only limiting the number of customers that will call you, but could also force your potential customers to your competitors, particularly if they have an advert in the same place as you but do have a link to their website. 

A potential customer that is browsing an online directory is, at that moment, in the mindset of being “online” – why “force” them to have to go “offline” and make a phone call just because you haven’t given them the option of quickly and easily viewing your website?

When you walk into a shop after looking in the window, you rarely walk straight up to the store manager and demand to buy something.  You usually like to take your time and browse the store looking at prices, dimensions, colours etc before you ask for help.   Well – it is no different in the online world.  Due to the limited content available on most adverts, a customer is likely to want to explore your business offerings further in their own time by easily clicking on a link to your website. 

Your advert in effect is your shop window as it contains the key information / images etc that you feel will entice a potential customer to use you.  You need a “door” on that advert that enables someone to go directly into your “online shop” so you can keep the customers journey focused, and hopefully from there, once they have had all the information you can offer, they will either purchase/book online or call you, or visit your premises.

2.  Try to find your website on an alternative search engine: 

This one amazes me!  You would be surprised by the number of advertisers that waste valuable text space on an advert by putting things like “Google us to find our website”.  Think about it from a prospective customers point of view… can we really expect a customer to leave the site they’re on, remember the company name they have just viewed, launch Google and search for that company, find the link in the results and then click on the right one to launch your website?  Would you do that?  Especially when the their competitors advert may be just below them, with a link to their website.

Or the other one we see from time to time is “visit A7aerialsdotcom”.  Again this is expecting the potential customer to have to copy and paste or manually retype the text (correctly) into the browser and hit go.  Again, will customers be bothered to do this, particularly when some of your competitor adverts will have a nice simple link button on their advert directly to their web site?

I hope this blog has made you look again at the importance of linking your advertising to your website.  There are many online business search engines / directories out there, and they all offer a link to your website  (free or paid), however the price business directories charge is usually very low due to the importance and commonality of web links.  For example BT Tradespace offer a free web link, and here at Wampit we only charge £19 a year.  However, other directories are still charging anyting up to £300 so be careful and spend your money wisely.

For the reasons mentioned above, a web link is a vital part of your online business UK advertising, and if you have a business website your business advertising should always link to it from as many online directories as you can….

Wampit® is a free UK business directory offering high quality advert listings for all companies.  Simply visit wampit.co.uk to register, and create your free advert listing in minutes.

Wampit® was created by UK entrepreneurs Paul Holland and Adam Purrier who decided to use their wealth of experience gained within the advertising industry to create a new breed of business search engine / directory.

Adam and Paul believe that Internet business advertising is still ‘traditionally old school’ and ‘sales focused’ and wanted to bring in a more modernised approach to online business directories.

Working from offices in London, they decided to create a UK business search engine that is not only at the forefront of the developing online video revolution, but also takes in the ethos of social networking i.e. free rich content such as video and images and live twitter feeds.

Let’s break these down further to explain why Wampit® has focussed primarily on these two areas:

The Online Video Revolution:

• The growth of online video has been unprecedented with the number of videos viewed online in the UK growing nearly 50 per cent year on year (source – comScore).
• Businesses are starting to understand that video is something they now need to consider in their marketing arsenal, as it can be the closest thing they can offer their potential customers to actually being there.
• As with any “new opportunities” businesses such as online video production companies are a growth area charging up to £1000 for a professional business promotional video.  Wampit enables you to upload a video for free whether it has been professionally or home produced.
• With the quality of even basic digital camcorders and phones today businesses can make their own video/clip of their products, service, premises and upload it onto their free Wampit advert in minutes.
• The growth of online video is greatly supported by the belief that video increases online conversion rates by up to 300%

The Social Networking Revolution:

• 38 percent of British Internet users now have a social networking site profile which is up from 22 percent in 2007 (source – Ofcom)
• This means that people are not only used to but “expect to” create a profile for free using rich content such as video, images etc.
• Wampit is the first true business search engine that allows you to create your business listing for free using content such as images/video.
• The growth of social networking websites and blogs now account for nearly ten percent of the total time spent on the Internet, exceeding even email, according to a new study released by Nielsen Online.
• 17 per cent of all time spent on the Internet in August took place on either social networking or blogging sites – a 300 per cent increase from the previous year. (source – The Nielsen Company)
• Twitter has also rapidly become the darling of the Internet and approx 19% of Internet users now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others which is an 8% growth since April 09 (source – Pew Research)
• Wampit® is the first UK business directory that enables all businesses to simply create a “live twitter feed” onto their listing to display their latest tweets.

So you can now see why Wampit® has been created for UK businesses, and  in summary,  it offers quality free business advertising listings that are rich in content and innovative in their design (video/Twitter feeds).

Importantly the Wampit® site is clean and easy to use for businesses and users alike, with no superfluous information or third party advertising.  Businesses can register themselves and create their free business advert by completing one, easy to follow registration page.  Also, once registered they can log back in at any time to update / amend their details.

Each business that registers also gets their own individual “landing page” which Wampit® automatically submits to major search engines in order to provide further exposure for their listing, as well as drive traffic back to the site.

To find out more about what Wampit.co.uk offers visit: http://www.wampit.co.uk/freebusinessadvertising.aspx

Or just visit the site and create your Free Advert today: http://www.wampit.co.uk/

For further reading and information, please also visit the Wampit® blog comparing and recommending that you also advertise on the top 10 free business advertising directories such as  BT Tradespace (British Telecom), Free Index, Thomson Local, Yell.com  ( Yell Group / Yellow Pages / Yellow-Advertising ), Scoot and five others…

“Free” is the new currency on the Internet.  Think about some of the quality services that you can get completely free of charge today:  Skype, Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, iPhone applications and now “Advertising”.

This is still an area where UK businesses are naturally skeptical, and who can blame them?  Advertising has for a long time been something your pockets fear, you know you need to do it, and you know it’s going to hurt (hopefully only at first)!

There are no 100% guarantees in advertising that you will get X customers and £Y for an advertising budget of £Z whether you go with an established directory brand, or some of the smaller ones.

Indeed many of the larger well known UK business directories are forced to charge a certain amount for advertising, not just because they drive huge traffic to their sites, but also because they have a sales and back office workforce to support.

Advertising on the Internet is changing rapidly, and like Facebook, YouTube etc some of the best online directories are offering a predominately free service, which is on a par with the paid service the larger, older directories offer.   Although they will naturally receive less traffic than the bigger players, they are generally less competitive making it easier for your business to stand out.

Many of these free directory services have a lean and agile workforce meaning that they can offer a quality free service.  They can also quickly innovate and take new products to market, without treading the murky waters of office politics, complex logistics, processes and legacy IT systems.

There are a few worthwhile online directories that offer free advertising with many additional benefits, such as your own (behind the scenes) “landing page” that major search engines can crawl, and display a link back to your free advert.

For the sake of just a few minutes effort, it would be worthwhile listing your business on some of the quality free advertising directories.

To find the right online business directories for you, then take a look at our comparison table of Top 10 Internet Directories, and see what they offer for free.

We need to advertise our service just like you.  To do this we use traditional methods, e.g. press, flyers and networking.  However, we also take advantage of our own capabilities by creating our adverts targeted to peoples’ searches.

The following are adverts we’ve created on Wampit based on keywords.

Small Business Marketing Advertising Services Marketing Campaigns Marketing Ideas New Advertising Web Advertising Advertising Company It Marketing Local Advertising Business Advertise Advertising Promotion Brand Advertising Business Online Marketing Business Promotion Internet Marketing Business Business Promotional Advertising Strategy Market Advertising Marketing Your Business Product Advertising Advertising Service Business To Business Marketing Promotional Advertising Effective Advertising Internet Marketing Advertising Marketing Advice Advertise Your Business Small Business Advertising Marketing For Small Business Online Marketing Advertising Successful Advertising Advertising For Business Advertising Strategies Effectiveness Advertising Advertise My Business

Businesses Advertising Online Business Advertising Business Ads Advertising Promotions Advertising Tips Business Marketing Strategy Advertising A Business Advertising In Business Advertising To Business Internet Advertising Business Internet Marketing Online Business Advertising Your Business Business Advertisement New Business Advertising B2B Advertising Business Promotions Business Advertising Uk Local Business Advertising Advertising Objectives Publicity Advertising Advertising Business Internet Marketing Marketing A Small Business Sales Promotion Advertising Free Online Business Advertising Business Direct Marketing Advertise Business Online Advertising For Small Business Advertising My Business Business Advertising Agency Home Business Advertising Business Publicity E Marketing Advertising Target Audience Advertising Advertising For Your Business

Business To Business Advertising Small Business Marketing Strategy Business Opportunity Advertising Internet Online Marketing Advertising Business Business Maketing Advertising Your Business For Free Affordable Advertising Business Marketting Business Advertising Agencies Inexpensive Advertising Advertising For A Business Advertising For Local Business Advertising For My Business Advertising In A Business Advertising Programmes Business Advertising Your Business Online Business Advertising For Free Business Advertising Ideas Business Advertising On The Internet Business Advertising Sites Business Advertising Tips Business Advertising Websites Cheap Business Advertising Free Advertising Business Co Uk Free Advertising For My Business Free Business Advertising Uk Free Business Advertising Websites Free Internet Business Advertising Free Local Business Advertising Mobile Advertising Business Online Marketing Advertising Business Ways Of Advertising Your Business Business Campaigns

Business Marketer Business Target Audience backlinks backlink buy backlinks directory backlinks increase backlinks how to get backlinks seo backlinks pagerank backlinks page rank backlinks quality backlinks build backlinks add backlinks website backlinks cheap backlinks relevant backlinks paid backlinks uk backlinks need backlinks high quality backlinks good backlinks getting backlinks best backlinks buying backlinks create backlinks instant backlinks creating backlinks building backlinks backlinks fast generate backlinks gain backlinks sites for backlinks get quality backlinks get good backlinks one way backlinks backlinks for sale backlinks to site backlinks to website backlinking site backlinks seo backlink buy backlink

We have thousands of restaurants listed on Wampit.  A good portion of them also accept online ordering.  This post will show the most recent restaurant takeaways that haven enabled online ordering.

So why not treat yourselves tonight and order a takeaway from one of these businesses.

1. New Georges Spice Indian
2. Cinnamon Spice Indian
3. Prio Spice Indian
4. Radhuni Takeaway Indian
5. Best Recipe Indian
6. Cafe Masala Indian
7. Passage to India
8. Lincoln Tandoori Indian
9. Mumbai Spice Indian
10. Spicy Nights Indian
11. Mumbai Flavours Indian
12. Bombay Indian
13. Rasoi Indian
14. Bombay Style Indian
15. Xpress Indian
16. Tuminose Indian
17. Balti International
18. Sizzling Grill
19. Agra Indian
20. Spicy Flames
21. Uzair Balti
22. Spice Balti
23. Kismat Tandoori Indian
24. Khanum Indian
25. The Raja Indian
26. Cafe Balti Indian
27. Varsha Indian
28. Balti Castle Indian
29. New Mumbai Mix
30. Dilshad Indian
31. Bengal Chaa Indian
32. Yasser Tandoori Indian
33. Radhuni Indian
34. Balti Cottage Indian
35. Millennium House Indian
36. Banyan Tree Indian
37. Seetar Indian
38. Sonali Indian
39. Balti 2000 Indian
40. Spice Lounge Indian

Google AdWords

This is the first in a series of post looking at online advertising and increasing your return.

We’ll cover all the common PPC platforms, and ad networks and buying ad space directly.

This post starts at the most well known PPC platform, Google AdWords. Google started running this platform as we know it in early 2002 and it is now the dominant leader in the sector with a majority market share beating nearest rival Yahoo (previously named Omniture).

Let’s take a look at the Ad Words basics to get it up and running as quickly as possible.

After you have registered your account it’s a good idea to link it to your Google Analytics account if you have one.

First you need to perform keyword research. This means that you are looking for words and phrases that will lead targeted traffic to your site. There are a number of tools you can use to perform keyword research. My choice is Google’s Keyword Tool but there is a vast majority of SEO’s that use Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery.

You can read more about keyword research in our “How to do keyword research” post.

Next you need to write your adverts and bid on the keywords you chose from your research. If your budget is on the smaller side its best to go niche and specific when bidding on terms. I.e. bidding on blue suede shoes not just shoes. Doing this means the person clicking on blue suede shoes is probably looking for exactly that and you’ve got an increased chance of a sale (if you sell those blue suede shoes that is!)

You can read more about writing effective Google Ad’s in our post “How to write effective online ads” post.

If everything is done correctly you should be up and away. We’ll be taking a look at how to hone your ads and increase performance in the next post.

Google has a whole host of video tutorials here.

If you need and advice or have any questions I’d be happy to answer.

Remember Wampit target ads directly at your business niche so the more comprehensive your profile is, the higher the chance of click through.