Today the internet is a part of our everyday lives and people use the internet in a variety of ways. Personally, I get all of my news online. I do not get a paper delivered to my house in the morning, but I do read current news stories every day. One of my favorite sites is ESPN, I am a big sports fan! With the increases in search volume each year on Google, Yahoo and MSN its clear people are using the internet to find anything and everything. As a business, it is important to know when and where to market to your potential customers online. There are customers ready to buy now, and there are others who may not need your product or service yet but will in the future. The key to any successful marketing strategy is to get your message in front of both types of customers.

For customers ready to buy now, a Pay per Click (PPC) marketing strategy is an excellent way to ensure that your company name and message are in front of prospective customers when they search for your product or service. You bid on the most relevant keywords to your business and when someone searches for that keyword your ad is displayed. The message in your ad should be clear with a strong call to action. This customer is ready to buy and they are looking for your product or service, you need to be in front of them!

But what about the potential customer who doesn’t need your product or service now, but may need it in the future? They are still online doing a variety of things but not necessarily conducting a search for your product or service because they don’t need it…yet. A great way to account for these future customers is to run a Placement targeted campaign. When you incorporate a Placement targeted campaign in your overall marketing strategy you are essentially handpicking your audience. You can choose an entire website or a specific page within a website to have your ads displayed, for example the Lifestyle section of a news website. With this type of program you are getting your company name and message in front of potential customers in a more subtle way. This can lead to greater brand recognition for your company. When that customer is ready to buy, they may recall your company name from a previous placement targeted ad and go directly to your website instead of conducting keyword search, or be more apt to click on your PPC ad.

Of course, this is a somewhat simplified view and much planning is needed to effectively market both a PPC campaign in conjunction with a Placement targeted campaign. Here at MoreVisibility, we manage both PPC and Placement targeted campaigns for our clients because we recognize the importance of not just the customer ready to buy now, but also the customer who isn’t a customer…yet.

I was sitting at my desk working quietly as I overheard my colleague on the phone with a client. They must have been talking about making changes to their website and discussing the steps it would take. Then I heard him say in disbelief, “so you mean the website is going to be down for 48 hours?”

His tone caught me off guard a bit. Then I thought about it for a moment and totally understood. It’s just crazy how fast everything has evolved. I mean 48 hours is a weekend. Could it be so bad to be offline for the “weekend?”

I wanted to do some digging and see what kind if stats I could find. I came up with next to nothing. I found an old report from 2002 released by comScore that said the average daily spending during the week was $155 million and the average for weekend days was $97 million. Now these figures are obviously outdated, but I’m pretty confident that the trend still continues. When I think about it, for many of our client’s PPC campaigns, we use the ad scheduling feature. This allows us to set times when we want our ads to be displayed and times when we don’t. I asked some people around the office and thought about some of my clients. I can’t think of one client whose ads are paused on weekdays. However, there are many that are paused on the weekends.

This brings me back to original point. What does it mean to be offline for 48 hours? It means money; and that’s money out of your pocket! But if you have to, maybe it’s better to be off on the weekend.

I’ve always believed that technology, like the web, should be an enabler. It should make things easier, not harder.

When I research and shop online, I have reasonable, but elevated, expectations. I expect that the process of learning about a product or service and making a purchase will be as easy as it is in person or over the phone. I place extra emphasis on this because I have two children and extra-curricular activities; so most of my online shopping takes place in the wee hours of the night.

As a teenager, I remember lining up for concert tickets the night before they went on sale. A lot of fun for a teenager, but I’m much happier to pick and choose my tickets online. Yet, because most ticket sales go through TicketMaster ™, or are self served via Tickets.com or other solutions, it’s usually is a disappointing experience.

Occasionally, my wife and I will make it to a concert, but mostly we purchase tickets to sporting events. Baseball, in particular, is an event where the guy sitting across the aisle from you could be paying $20 less per ticket. I only care about my view and like to compare many options, something that most ticket services make very difficult online.

For Example: Looking for tickets for my beloved Cubbies, seating options include only Best Available (Read: Most expensive.) or you can pick a section that has availability for your game of choice. After choosing a section and entering the security image code, your tickets are displayed and the problems begin:

1. You are only shown one option in that section. Why not give 4-5 best options in the section that you selected? All seats in a section are not created equal!

2. To request different seats you have to start over! You have to select a section, enter the security code again, etc. and when you get to the new ticket selection, your other options are gone. Why can’t you just click on the displayed seating chart? Why can’t they follow Amazon’s Lead by offering additional recommendations: “If you like Terrace Reserved, you may also like these wonderful bleacher seats?” Or better yet, multiple seats in every section — have everything available on one page!

What’s most frustrating to me is that if I was purchasing in person or over the phone, the rep would quickly offer many available options. Why would you want your website to make it harder for your customers to do business with you?

Enter StubHub. StubHub is a ticket reselling marketplace that was acquired by eBay last year. I had the pleasure of using StubHub to look for tickets to a sold out game that I wanted to attend.

StubHub is what online ticket buying should be:

Select the event, select buy or sell and all available tickets are displayed. Results are sortable by quantity, section, row and price. And perhaps the best innovation, an interactive seating chart. As you rollover sections at your venue, the number of tickets and price range are displayed for each section and you can even turn on and off individual sections on the map.

I hope that the entrenched players learn something from StubHub and make online ticket buying what it should be – Easy.