Seth Godin writes about how simple your approach to online advertising should be in his post:

If your ads work, if you can measure them and they return more profit than they cost, why not keep buying them until they stop working?

And if they don’t work, why are you running them?

The time-tested response is that you’re not sure, that ads are risky, that you can’t tell. …

Digital ads are different (or they should be). You should know cost per click and revenue per click and be able to make a smart guess about lifetime value of a click. And if that’s positive, buy, buy, buy.

And if you don’t know those things, why are you buying digital ads?

We do a lot of online advertising through various providers and it is amazing how scientific you can get in order to gain real value from the medium. Online ads have totally changed the marketing landscape and we no longer rely on made up stats like “readership” and “circulation” that off line print media rely on the help justify their advertising costs.  I’m not saying don’t use “off line” media, as not all of your target audience are necessarily online, but it sure does help to focus your marketing efforts with stats such as cost per click and revenue per click.

The one thing about online advertising is that you need to actively track them.  Gone are the days of sending off an advert to your favorite magazine and then waiting for the phone to ring. Today, you can see exactly how your online ads are performing, who is viewing them and if they are delivering real business results. All in real time. Its amazing how the Internet is revolutionising marketing and the way we reach customers.

Your home page is one of your most valuable company assets. It is your online store front and is becoming more important in most companies marketing mix.  Customers when they land on your home page within about 5 seconds form an opinion of your company. Your home page’s format, colours and content provide customers with queues for them to form fundamental opinions to questions like:

1. Do I like this company.
2. Can I see myself buying something from this company.
3. Does this company look trustworthy.

Knowing this I have always seen our home page as our most important company asset, which may be justifieable as we are a internet company. How have you justified your home page? Is it an afterthough because all you really needed was the domain for email? or are you investing in your online reputation and brand?

We have found through clever, relatively inexpensive changes to the structure, colours and layout of our website that users experience has improved which ultimately results in more sales leads.

Think about your home page, and I would reckon a small investment in it will reap far more rewards than through most other marketing efforts.