The Small Business Guide To Native Advertising [Infographic]

When you think of all the creative ways companies can marketing their products online, the options are truly endless, or at least they are when I think about it. Of course there are the traditional small banner ads, and although some people like those, they don’t seem very creative when you have so many other options available. ‘Native advertising’ seems to be the buzz phrase so far in 2013 when it comes to online ads, and this guide can help you get started if you want to move in that direction.

Chances are, you’ve read some form of native advertising, and even shared it in social media, without even realizing what it was. That’s when you know it’s done well, and it resonates with Internet users. There have been many viral articles published this year that were ads (ie. Target, Cottonelle, Kmart). They were done so well, and integrated into the site’s existing content so brilliantly, that readers didn’t care if they were ads.

It just backs up what you’ll read almost everywhere, and that is that people want good content, and they don’t care if it’s an ad or not, if it’s good. By creating less intrusive ads through native advertising and creating quality content and information that readers actually want to check out, brands (regardless of their size) are able to once again capture the reader’s attention.

There has been a lot of controversy over native advertising because some people claim it’s an attempt to “trick readers.” The idea behind native advertising is not to trick readers. Instead, it’s to challenge brands to come up with the most compelling content possible, which is what readers crave.

It’s easy to be skeptical and cynical about it when we are so annoyed with the typical cheesy ads online, but this is in a whole different stratosphere. The first example of this that I can remember is the Old Spice advertising from a few years ago. I didn’t care if it was an ad, I wrote about it more than once because it was just plain good.

This infographic called Nobody Reads Advertising: People Read What They Want To Read, And Sometimes It’s An Ad by Column Five and Solve Media is a great small business guide to native advertising. It’s jam-packed with good information about it. If you want to read more on this topic, you can click over to Is Native Advertising Just Another Word For Good Advertising? on Mashable.