Sunday, February 21, 2010

Advertise Online in Loudoun County, VA - Loudoun Online Advertising Roundup

Most quarters, we inspect the online inventory of Loudoun-centric websites that allow direct advertising - i.e. Loudoun County, VA general interest (i.e. non-niche) websites where we can buy online ads. Online ads can be blog mentions, text ads, banner ads, etc.

This answers the question for DC, Northern Virginia and Loudoun businesses seeking to advertise to online, Loudoun-centric customers - "where is my online ad placement money best spent, for attracting the broadest local consumer base"?

This helps us better understand, for ourselves and our clients, where money is best spent (i.e. the highest return on investment, or ROI) for purchased online advertising in Loudoun County. Note this does not include Social Media/Search Engine Marketing (SEM), i.e. buying keywords to display advertisements in search engines (for example using Google's adwords), parked domains or in targeted Social Media community demographics (i.e. Facebook). This also doesn't include paid "classifieds" or "reviews" posted in generic (though localized) directories like Craigslist.com.

There do exist quite a few other Loudoun-centric sites and social media personalities that aren't included in this list, though they do influence the marketing environment. These are sites/channels that don't accept direct paid advertising, or are un-maintained or untrusted (i.e. scam/spam), or promote only a proprietary group of businesses (like developer sites), or are local government sites, or are simply personal and otherwise can't be utilized for general paid advertising (yet).

The Loudoun List (as we call it) is constantly changing (and may not always be up to date) - especially with the exit of the Washington Post's "LoudounExtra.com" site, the closure or mis-steps of a few local media outlets, the relative change in "ROI" understanding as applied to online marketing in general, and the rapid increase of local, social media-targeted news, information and blog sites (many of these our own).

Here then, is an extract of the Winter 2010 Loudoun List (full details at this time are only available to our marketing clients). These are sorted first by Google Page Rank, and then by our own ROI assessments. Our ROI assessments are part analytics and part professional assessment, based on many years watching the Loudoun market (ROI can ONLY be most accurately assessed by the website owner - otherwise, it's an estimate). ROI is also heavily influenced by marketing execution - i.e. the quality of the advertisement, characteristics and technical elements of its placement, and the quality of the "convert" (for example, conversion statistics and quality of the landing page.) Actual pricing changes often, can be negotiated, and is dependent on many "deal" factors - but we're aware of the general price points and strategies.

Loudoun Advertising


Contact us for more information about online advertising and marketing in Loudoun County VA, and other DC metro, Northern Virginia, Suburban and Southern Maryland areas.

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