Online, on target

Web advertising reaches customers searching for you

By: Mike Bruce

Are you ready to advertise online?

Before you jump in head first and commit 20% (or more) of your ad budget to the Web, a moment of introspection is required. Take a good and hard look at your Web site. Does it meet your customers’ needs? Is it really something you want people to see? More importantly, is it worthy of spending money on?

Online advertising only makes sense when you can be sure that potential customers will have their needs met easily. A bad Web experience can cause you to lose customers, especially when you drove them to a site that could not meet their expectations.

It’s one thing to stumble across a Web site that isn’t very robust. It’s quite another not to be on top of your game when ad dollars were used. That’s just bad business — on both ends.    ■

In part three of our Internet marketing series in the November issue, I’ll cover the things tire customers have come to expect from a world-class Web site.

Mike Bruce, president of VTS solutions LLC (www.vtssolutions.net), enjoyed a long career with Discount Tire Co. going back to 1967. He was a store manager in the 1970s, and started and managed Discount Tire’s Dallas/Fort Worth region during the 1980s.

He was promoted to senior vice president in 1990 and moved to the Scottsdale, Ariz., corporate office to work in purchasing. Bruce started the Discount Tire Direct program in 1994, and created the www.tires.com Web site for the company in 1996.

He was responsible for e-commerce and online advertising for Discount Tire through 2007. He can be reached at (866) 798-3523.

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