So you’ve paid for placement on the search engines, and would happily pay by the click to get visitors to your site. But what would really be thrilling would be watching those visitors turn into sales — instant gratification. Just ask executives advertising on the Internet. What you may not expect, however, is most of these same executives are advertising on the search engines to increase long-term brand awareness.
One Internet marketing expert, Catherine Seda, says that even though Internet advertising is more commonly thought of as a short-term marketing vehicle, more businesses are seeing long-term benefits from paying for placement on the top search engines.
In a book just released, Search Engine Advertising, Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales (New Riders Publishing 2004), Seda writes that while companies very often track immediate sales to justify advertising expenditures, creating brand awareness is a growing secondary goal for advertisers More