Last week we spoke about target clients and Marketing tools. This week I will tell you about my experience with certain platforms.

Of course the choice of a marketing platform depends on the product, the target clients and on one’s budget. After some thinking I came up with four options:

LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn is a platform for professionals. The portal also offers advertisement.

This tool has several more advantages:

1. It forces you to find a short and crisp description for your offer. This is good because it really makes you think about the value you offer.
2. You can determine where (geographically) and to whom (demographic settings like position and industry) the ads shall be displayed. This display is called “impression”.
3. You set the budget per day. LinkedIn ads are charged per click. This means whenever someone clicks on your ad this person is being forwarded to your landing page.
   1. Once the daily budget is used up no more impressions will follow on this day.

However, there is also a considerable downside. One click costs easily between 4 to 7 US Dollars, depending on the keywords and competition.

The reason I did not choose this option is that my target customers are rather in the German speaking world. LinkedIn is almost too international for this.

Another Ad on a different platform.

Some years ago I sold my company within a very short time. I put an ad on a portal that targets people who sell and/or want to buy companies, brands etc.

These ads are rather inexpensive but the portal itself has never been updated (from what I can see) over the years. I wrote an e-mail since I needed an information.

• A week later there was still no answer.
• I sent another e-mail. Still no answer.
• So I called them.
  • The lady who took the phone was audibly disinterested and could not provide the information but promised to get someone to call me back.
• This was four weeks ago.
• Needless to say that I gave up on them.

Content Marketing

For a period of time I used to write guest post on a content marketing platform because the owner found me somewhere and liked what I did. Meanwhile the company has grown quite a bit and he owns several different and highly targeted portals. So there was a chance that he would reach my target clients.

I called him up to ask about banners on his pages etc. (Banners are those linked images you also see at your right while reading here. He suggested that I could write one article for each advantage I listed for Saleswin. Each article would be linked to my landing page and each article would cost me the price for a link. This offer would also include banners. All together it sounded faire and not unattractive. I promised him a definite answer by end of the week since I wanted to check one more option.

Performance Marketing

Performance Marketing is basically only possible in the digital world. Similar to the LinkedIn Ad one pays by click. During my research I noticed that the largest Media House in Switzerland who owns several newspapers (print and online editions) offers performance marketing. I called them. You will never guess what happened now.

It is all about attitude and service. Even in the digital world.

Well, I contacted the media house for whom I must be nobody.

Wrong, totally wrong.

They provided a VIP service from the first moment on. The lady I spoke to apparently liked me and offered me a voucher to advertise for free for a while. I decided to use this chance and see where it will take me.

I still owed Mr Content Marketing an answer. I wrote him that I will first test the media house and might come back to him in due time. His answer was somewhere between shocking and hilarious. It is understandable that I did not provide his favourite answer but he wrapped is frustration in a rather unprofessional e-mail. If I ever will get back to him? Maybe not.

While I also discovered two issues with the media house I called them. They apologized, already fixed one of the two issues, are working on the second one. To compensate me for the inconvenience they presented me with an even larger voucher.

Clearly, service goes over cheap.