There are so many advertising methods you can use for internet marketing it’s difficult to know where to start.

My personal preference is to keep my advertising relatively low key – links in articles like this one and links in emails that I send out.

But that doesn’t mean other methods don’t work. It’s a matter of personal choice and the likely return on investment.

Google AdWords

This is probably the most obvious form of advertising on the web.

It’s there on almost every search.

The idea is that you bid on a variety of keywords and Google charges you a price every time someone clicks.

The price is based on a complicated formula that includes:

• Keyword relevance – both on the advert and on the landing page
• Page quality score – much like the scoring system Google use to rank pages in the organic results. This will vary by page and even by the keyword terms related to the page
• Advert quality – amongst other factors, this is based on the click through rate with allowances for where the advert is shown. Google expect the top result to get a higher click through rate than one towards the end of the first batch of adverts. And that will be expected to be higher than one that doesn’t even show on the first page

The formula is actually based on the traditional media CPM advertising method but is translated to a cost per click as that’s what people generally prefer to use.

Probably the best place to learn about AdWords is to check out Perry Marshall’s free course and then decide what you want to do next.

Facebook Ads

This is an interesting alternative to AdWords.

Your adverts appear either in the side column – with low click through rates – or in the main feed, between regular updates on your friends. This can either be as an image advert or a suggested post.

Facebook defaults to CPM pricing but you can also pay per click (my preferred choice!).

It also allows you to select by a lot more factors than Google because Facebook knows a lot more about its users.

So you can choose by gender, age range, where people live and what they’re interested in.

You can even select a custom audience by uploading emails or phone numbers.

Facebook will match your choices and only show your advert to them,

I’ve not come across a decent course yet but am still looking.

Retargeting

Again, something I’m investigating at the moment and again not an advertising method I’ve found a decent course on yet.

Retargeting is the art of using those creepy ads that stalk you based on the sites you’ve recently visited.

They’re used by sites like Amazon and many others.

There are various platforms you can use to self select retargeting adverts.

Perfect Audience refused my site but don’t bother to answer support emails to help me work out why.

I’m currently building up impressions on the AdRoll but it’s taking an age to even reach 1,000 uniques which I sense is probably the sensible starting point to create a campaign.

So if you’ve got a relatively high volume site, I think there’s high hopes for retargeting but if your site is low volume then it’s probably not an option.

Solo Ads

The logic behind this advertising method is that you send out an email to someone else’s list with the idea that some of their subscribers will click and join your list as well.

As with every other advertising method, it takes time to fine tune things until you get profitable.

Paul Nicholls is someone I know who’s an expert at using solo ads and his case study is well written and includes full details of how he’s used solo ads to create a profitable list in the internet marketing arena.

Other advertising methods

Although it’s pitched as being free, there’s a time element in using things like article marketing and videos for your advertising.

This kind of thing is more my style – I create the article or video once and it stays in the search results for a long time.

It’s nowhere near as immediate as paid for advertising – it takes time for organic traffic to arrive. Anything from weeks to months to years depending on how competitive your chosen niche is.

And you’re always at the whim of the search engines – but you are with any method unless you’ve got a responsive email list.

My real preference here is article marketing.

Once you get up to speed, articles are relatively quick to create and can generate long tail keyword traffic – the kind of traffic that doesn’t melt down your server but does definitely spend money.

So it’s usually a case of quality over quantity with article marketing.

If you prefer not to write then videos are definitely worth considering.

They can be quick to create and, much like articles, stick around for a long time.

They’re my second best organic traffic source after articles but that could well be because I’ve got a lot more articles out there than videos.

If you’d like to check it out, I’ve done a short course on how to use videos in internet marketing.