Toolkit
Addition
ToolKit:
Advertising Tutorial 1
As the labor
market tightens, simply searching isn't going to be enough. The
tighter the market gets, the more likely it is that you will turn
to advertising. Although it isn't yet living up to its potential,
the long term strength of the web will be its ability to help you
reach out to very targeted audiences.
For the
next several weeks, we will be using the "Toolkit Addition" portion
of the ERNews to deliver a basic advertising tutorial in bite sized
nuggets. The first topic is the difference between hits and visitors.
First of
all, no matter what anyone tells you, it is extremely difficult
to actually measure the number of visitors to a website. To speed
transactions on the web, a technique called "cache-ing" is used
in many places around the web. A "cache" is a collection of web
pages and files stored somewhere other than the original website.
The simplest form of cache is right on your hard drive. This very
page is stored on your local machine.
"Cache-ing"
speeds overall web performance by making sure that frequently used
files are kept close at hand. While great for web speed, it wreaks
havoc with attempts to "count" the numbers of files that are shipped
by an individual website.
Many times,
web usage statistics are reported as "hits". A hit is one file
transmitted from a web server to a user's machine. Whether the
file is a graphic or a web page, it is counted as a hit. You can
see right away that counting hits is nearly impossible (because
of the cache problem). You can also see that a perfect count of
the number of hits is a useless piece of information.
If a web
page contains 10 graphics and one text file, it will register 11
hits every time it is viewed (unless some of those files are cached
on the various machines around the web). You simply can't tell anything
about a site from the number of hits.
A more useful
(and even harder to get right) statistic is the number of visitors.
Again, cache-ing complicates the process of keeping tabs on the
number of visitors. When you purchase advertising, what you care
most about is the number of people who see an ad. The number (and
kinds) of visitors seen by a website will determine the value of
that site to you as a place to purchase ads.
Since the
tracking of visitors is imprecise, it's best (at this point in the
web's development) to talk carefully with the advertising sales
manager of the site on which you want to place an ad. Listen carefully.
If they pretend to have perfect answers, steer clear of them.
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Search Tips
Search Tip:
SIC Search
Anyone who
has ever tried to find business information using Standard Industry
Classification (SIC) Codes will have horror stories to share with
you. Every industry has its special nuances. Things aren't necessarily
where you'd expect them to be.
That's life.
The web has a lot of potential, but it rarely changes longstanding
institutions like SIC Codes.
That said,
hard prospecting often has lots of room for searches that look across
an industry. The best place to start? A site organized by SIC Code.
Worldpages
is the "latest and greatest" online phone directory. Find businesses
in your target industry using their Listing
of SICs If you don't have it handy, the top level divisions
of the SIC Codes are:
| SIC |
Major
Industry Group |
|
| 01-14 |
Agriculture, Forestry & Mining |
| 15-17 |
Contractors & Construction |
| 20-39 |
Manufacturing |
| 40-49 |
Transportation, Communication & Utilities |
| 50-51 |
Wholesale Trade |
| 52-59 |
Retail Trade |
| 60-67 |
Finance, Insurance & Real Estate |
| 70-79 |
Business Services |
| 80 |
Health Services |
| 81 |
Legal Services |
| 82-83 |
Education & Social Services |
| 84,86 |
Art & Membership Organizations |
| 87 |
Engineering, Architecture & Accounting
|
| 89 |
Household & Miscellaneous Services |
| 91,95 |
Government & Public Administration |
| 99 |
Non-Classifiable Establishments |
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