Thursday, October 1, 2009

Online Advertisement – The Next Big Thing

With the present world being rechristened with digital era, the medium of promotions and advertising is also getting digital. More and more companies are following the online medium of promotions. It has become a promising platform for SMEs to build their brands, as it allow them to be flexible according to their ease and approach niche target audiences in an innovative manner. Online advertising needs a meager amount, but has the potential to be competitive with the large advertisers. This point has become the biggest USP for online advertising which is the need of the hour and latest buzz in the SME circuit after online marketing and matchmaking.

Advertising is one of the inevitable part of branding and promotions and with SMEs making a foothold in the international global business scene. Its indispensable for them to promote and advertise themselves and online medium is so economical that it entice every emerging entrepreneur.

Any one can start advertising at a meager amount of Rs. 200 – 300 per day and on the basis of results they can alleviate the expenses. Companies like carwaale.com, bazee.com earn most of their business through online promotions at various google sites.

Google ads have been the favourite among the SME sector. But now numerous SMEs are availing the services of google and other highly visited sites for their promotions like the popular B2B portals and B2B matchmaking platforms in order to hit the pertinent audience.

“SMEs contribute a significant portion of our ad sales revenue. We are seeing a good proportion of incremental spends from existing advertisers and there is a healthy growth in new SME advertisers signing up with us. A wide range of SMEs find value in advertising on the digital medium. They vary from car sellers to coaching institutes, chemical companies and stock brokers.” as told to business standard by Sridhar Seshadri, Business Head, online sales operations at Google India.

The flexibility provided by the campaigns like to pay on the basis of results make such online promotions once a worth try. And as most of them are producing significant results which thus streamline the business communication.

SMEs are looking for being advertise in various formats, from simple text to more intricate gadgets and videos concentrating their prospectives on the basis of pretext, keywords and content. Nevertheless, in general, for simple products and simple results, text is the preferred medium. It takes less than 5 minutes to actually make the advertisement and can be changed instantly as per the need. Hence, many SMEs prefer this.

Seeing the enthusiasm of SMEs in online media, companies like IndiaMART.com , Hellotrade.com are taking initiatives to educate the SMEs about online presence, ICTs, online promotions and online advertisements. IndiaMART.com is doing this through a drive which includes seminars, events and one to one engagement to enlighten the SME entrepreneurs.

With a hope that SMEs will enter this digital age in order to benefit themselves through the use of various online tools as B2B matchmaking, B2B marketplaces, B2B directories, promotions all of which are present online. But before all this, advertisement is the most nascent step which they have to follow and with the above listed scenario, the future seems to be bright for Indian SMEs.

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