Online auctions have become so popular that it's now possible to use them as a form of guerilla marketing to extend your other online and offline marketing initiatives. You can leverage online auctions to create a high level of visibility and web site traffic to reach your target market very efficiently. Online auctions for businesses, offer all kinds of new possibilities, from the sales and inventory management, to the marketing research and web site promotion medium they offer.

They have reached a level of popularity making them the most visited sites on the web, because people enjoy them, the variety of products and the buying and selling experience they offer, auctions get an estimated 70 million visitors per month. With all this traffic some promote their products in order to take advantage of this visibility to targeted groups of potential customers. Leveraging the auction's combined traffic to promote your products can give you more exposure than any single web site traffic can. Among the first to realize the potential of auction were the computer and hardware vendors who quickly realized how to move obsolete inventory using them, they also quickly realized the great online exposure they were also getting from them. From a marketing perspective some use auctions, not simply for selling products but also as a marketing testing ground. It's a great place for market testing of new products and ad copy.

It's an effective and inexpensive way to test new product prices, to see what people are willing to pay for a product, offering features like your new product. Some sell their products at three or four different online auctions, and then calculate the average selling price in order to determine the suggested retail price before the official launch of a new product. Similarly some test the copywriting to determine the best description and conversion potential of ads and brochures before getting them printed. You can get started by either listing your product or using an online auction store. The stores offer grater exposure and visibility for your corporate site and your product lines.

For 16$ per month and a bit of page editing an online auction like eBay site will allow you to advertise your store with links back to your main site and your products information pages, channeling traffic back to your main site. You'll be able to design ads offering product details with all the proper images, effective copy writing and of course the proper use of keywords. This will allow you to position this auction post in front of the proper audience, leveraging the power of the auctions own, search engine and driving more traffic to your site and generating more interest for your products. With the stores you get access to get access to inventory insertion format which has a longer duration and lower Insertion Fees.

Offering simplified management of all your listings stores can be set up to move inventory within an ongoing campaign not just one time item postings. Your can have your logo appears next to your Store name in listings. All listings include an additional "See All Items Listed in Your Store" link. Listings show up in eBay Stores gateway search and browse results. You can set up a customize e-newsletters and promotional emails or simply drive customers to your main site by liking to it from your store.

With analytics as part of the package you can monitor your stores traffic and your convergence, critical to maintaining effective merchandising strategies. Online auctions were never intended to complement offline marketing and promotion efforts, they were created to move products and create value by bringing buyers and sellers together. But over the years these sites have attracted so many buyers, they've become a great place to generate traffic for your products, giving your web site and your company more exposure and international visibility. They've become an excellent alternative to the traditional ways of moving inventory, gathering marketing information and generating visibility for your products, your site and your company.

Mr. Claude Bourgoin (MBA is a marketing consultant, an auction enthusiast and a contributing author on web marketing and online auction. He can be reached here for online auction marketing