Building A Profitable Online Advertising Campaign

Advertising is a critical part of your business. Without it nobody will be aware of your business presence and if nobody knows about you then you cannot succeed. There are many ways of advertising but today we will discuss the most common form, Direct Advertising.

What is direct advertising? It is when you advertise to your customers and go out of your way to find them. There are a number of ways to advertise online. These are the most common

Ezines and online publications
Websites
Discussion boards business networks
Announcement lists
Articles distribution

How to set up:

Planning:

Decide how much you can realistically afford for advertising each month. Do not starve your business but at the same time do not spend your entire budget one month and not have enough for next months advertising.
Plan to advertise every month, because advertising is a continuous process that must be done consistently. If you do not advertise continuously your customers will forget about you and move on to your competition.
Define your market:
o    Decide who your market is. The people who want and need your product/service
o    What interests them: what websites they go to, what forums are they at, what announcement lists are they interested in.
o    What they read: publications, ezines and newsletters
Look up ezines and related websites on the search engines for your industry, and check them out. Subscribe to the ezines of your choice and check them well before advertising. Check the quality and the type of ads. Be sure not too many ads are in the ezine and not too many are sent out. Make sure the ezine itself is of good quality. Do the same for any website you want to advertise on. Plus be sure it is a well-trafficked site or your ad will not get enough exposure.

Ready to advertise:

Start with cheaper ads and work up. Classifieds are good for websites and to begin with for ezines.
Do Split testing for ads in ezines. Place 2 with different wordings for the same product in the same ezine and see which one pulls the best.
Track and record all ads
Make a note of the most responsive ezines and websites on excel or flow chart.
Use your best ads to expand into Top Sponsor and Solo ads.
Build on successes and discontinue failures note all.

Designing ads: make sure that you have good quality ads for your products. Have several classifieds that you can test and expand. You can use these little ads on websites and expand for announcement lists.

Make sure you have a couple of little sig files for business networks and discussion boards and bios for articles

Basic ads have:

An attention-grabbing headline-your ad must stand out from the crowd and get your readers attention
Benefits-to evoke curiosity and interest
Positive call for action-go here etc

Discussion boards business networks: Although you cannot place ads here you can always leave your little sig file and URL after every post. Ask Questions and give good helpful answers and you can gain a good reputation here as the expert in your field.

Announcement lists: if you use these be careful to abide by the rules. These are moderated and there are certain rules for sending out announcements.

Article distribution: this is a powerful way to advertise. Again you need to be careful how you do this. Use different bios for different products ad services.

Write good informative articles with no links and your 5-6 lines Bio underneath.
These must not be ads and if you want to do a promotional article you should have this professionally done.
You can submit them to related ezines, websites and article directories. To get maximum exposure you can use an article submission service.

There are many ways to advertise, much of it at surprisingly low cost. Always remember to start with cheaper advertising test, track record and then build on your successes. Expand your advertising as your budget allows and do not stop. Continuous advertising is critical for your ongoing sales. As you grow your business you will expand your advertising and your reach throughout your industry.

July 4, 2006 – 5:32 pm by Constantin Chersin