I have been trying to look for ways to increase my sales, but I was not sure where to go or what to do so I asked Lisa about what she does to help increase her sales. Her business always seems to be doing so well, and she did do a little better than me in some of our business courses in college, so I do look up to her. She smirked, slowly stirring her coffee. I knew she already had something in mind for me to do and she was about to tell me, but not before funning with me a bit before she told me her secret.

She started to add some more cream to her latte, giving me that mother like squint while asking me what I was doing while we were in our business advertising, marketing and promotion courses. Well, I did learn a lot from my business courses, but so much has changed in so little time. While I was in college I was planning to open up a brick and mortar coffee shop, not selling specialty coffees online!

Lisa asked me what I had learned about advertising in our courses at college. I told her I remembered how important advertising was, but at the time I was focusing on a brick and mortar shop – not an online business coffee store. She giggled a bit and put her hand out. She said that all I had to do was take what I learned from commercial advertising to Internet advertising. Both commercial advertising for a coffee shop and Internet advertising for my online shop had numerous similarities.

Lisa reminded me about making sure that my Internet advertisements reached my target customers – those interested in coffee or those who would buy them as a gift. Those are my main customers, I thought to myself. She told me in order to reach them I would need to make sure that my Internet ads would reach those people such as on other websites related to coffee, newsletters for coffee lovers, etc.

Lisa said she had found several advertising campaigns that worked extremely well for her but she did have to do some work to find the most successful ones. I gave her a look and snidely asked, “You had to do research to find successful advertising campaigns with all of the knowledge you have?” She returned a bad look and smiled reminding me that the Internet consumers seem to be changing on a regular basis. You need to research several different ad campaigns to find the most successful ones for your online business. “How do you find the ones that are best for you?” I asked. She reminded me about this advertising class we had where our professor had us do an assignment on recording the effects of advertising campaigns to get rid of those that had little or no effect and keep the ones that were working. Ah, I remembered then. It is important to keep track of certain aspects of each different ad campaign (hits, costs, revenue, and ROI) to make sure we didn’t waste money on those that didn’t work and kept the ones that brought in more sales.

She smiled, touching my hand, exclaiming that I finally got it! She raised a finger toward my face and in a mother-like tone reminded me to test different ad campaigns and I would find the best Internet advertising for my business. I smiled, took notes and we enjoyed the rest of our coffee break.

Yoshi Kundagawa is a freelance journalist. He writes about entrepreneurs and working from home. You can read his articles about Internet advertising at his blog.