Tag Archives: email

8 Ways To Make Your Ads More Effective

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I don’t know everything and if I have learned one thing about doing business on the Internet it is that the more you learn the more you don’t know. However, I have been doing business on the Internet since 2006 and I’ve managed to carve out a successful enterprise for myself with several profit streams. The largest percentage of my marketing and promotional efforts has been conducted through one simple method-Ezine Advertising.

These are the 8 important lessons I’ve learned regarding Ezine Advertising and Marketing Success: 

A common mistake many advertisers make is to attempt to do too much, or rather sell too much, in one ad. Sure you have lots of great products but you can’t sell them all in a few lines-at least not individually.  Instead focus on the benefit your customer can achieve from all your products and promote that! People are much more likely to click on a link that BENEFITS them than a link that promises to sell them something.

For example, “Help your child reach their maximum potential” instead of “Try our many reading, writing, math, shapes and colors programs”

More importantly, tell the customer “what your product or service is going to do for him.”

It is important that you identify your Unique Selling Proposition before you begin your advertising program. This will determine which Ezines (or markets) you target as well as what you should include in your ad copy. Who will be interested in your product and why? What benefits does your product offer them?

Don’t go for the sale in your ad! You are at a disadvantage because you can’t list all your products’ wonderful benefits in the space allowed. Also, there is only a small percentage of any Ezine audience that is ready to buy your product at the exact moment they view your ad. Yes, maybe they should be, but most people today live in the moment and if this isn’t the time they want to buy then they aren’t going to buy, end of story.

But it doesn’t have to be the end of the story.  If you go for the soft sell approach your target consumer is much more likely to click on your link and then you’ve got the chance to go for the hard sell-again and again!

Here’s an example. I’m selling a product called the Preschool Prep Power Pack. It’s an educational CD for preschoolers. Now I could go for the hard sell in my promotion and I would make some sales but a lot of people who really might be interested won’t even look at my site and product. However, I’ve chose to go the soft sell approach. Instead of selling my product in my ads, my ads offer two FREE items. I offer a free newsletter (Preschoolers Learn More) offering tips about preparing preschoolers for kindergarten. This is my target market for my product. The folks who subscribe also receive a free ABC-123 coloring book. Why wouldn’t the parent of a preschooler subscribe, right?

But what’s in it for me as a business person? A lot! Think about it. I now have the freely offered contact information for my target market. Now I can regularly email them information about my product. I’m confident they will buy eventually because my product provides a solution to something that concerns them-or they wouldn’t have subscribed in the first place!

Another common mistake is not giving your ad campaign enough time to work.

Studies show it takes prospects an average of seven exposures to your promotion before they take the bait. Even after they have clicked through to your site visitors may need to visit your site as many as three times before they buy from you. So make sure you keep that offer in front of them. That means it may well pay to take the long-term package versus a one-shot ad.

People run through their emails rapidly and delete things they wish they hadn’t. Make their wish come true! Give them a second, third, fourth chance. The formula is–when you’re sick and tired of it, the public is just beginning to hear it.

Just because you’ve bought ad space doesn’t mean you have to utilize every pixel or character-space. Short, punchy lines that do not use up every available space are more effective.  Think about the reader scanning down the page or screen. What will catch their eye and make them stop scanning and actually read?  White space is your friend so don’t squander it. Use it to set off your important message.

Make sure you apply the same principal to your urls and e-mail addresses as well. Nothing can make an ad look more cluttered than giant web addresses with a complicated string of numbers and letters. If you have to use an address like that (perhaps for your affiliate code, for example) then it might be wise to use a redirect. There are numerous free services out there (http://snipurl.com for example) although perhaps it might be a good idea to use a page from your own web site with a redirect programmed in

USE YOUR HEAD

Your headline is the most important part of your ad. This is usually the line that determines whether the skimming reader will stop or skip ahead.

Some of the proven headline formulas include:

1. Ask the reader a question: “Are you worried about filing your
tax return this year?”
2. Tell the reader how to do something: “How to buy a
car without getting a lemon.”
3. Provide a testimonial: “Big Al saved me $200 last month. Thanks, Cindy Lou from Paducah, Kentucky.”
4. Make a command. Turn your most important benefit into a commanding
headline. “Stop rushing through life.” “Make more money this month.” “Feel better about yourself.”
5. Important news makes a good headline. “Max Electronics just went international!”
6. Start the clock: “Buyers who act before midnight Tuesday will save an extra $50!”
7. Give the reader something free: “Free whatsit for the first 100 visitors!”

DON’T FORGET TO TELL THEM WHAT TO DO!

It sounds almost ridiculous, but simply giving clear, specific directions about what you want the reader to do can increase the response to your ads.

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SET YOUR BUDGET

One of the most difficult things to decide for any business person is how much money to spend on promotion. There really is one simple way to determine the answer. How much is a customer worth to you? That tells you a great deal about how much you can afford to spend on advertising.

The simple formula to calculate the net worth of a visitor is: Net Profit divided by Conversion Rate.

First, what is your net profit on an average sale?  Let’s say $10 to make it easy. (Hey, I’m an English professor, I need to keep it simple!)

Then consider what your conversion rate is for visitors to become customers.  Let’s say one visitor out of 50 becomes a customer. (This makes your conversion rate 50 as you need 50 customers to make a sale)

With this example, a visitor is worth $0.50 to you. ($10 divided by 50)

So if you spend $100 on an advertising campaign that draws in 1000 visitors then you made $400 on that campaign.

SET REALISTIC GOALS

This issue is really about control. Yes, if you could control things that you would have a high sell through but that isn’t always going to happen. In fact, for most advertisers that isn’t going to happen. However, if your goal is to capture customers then you are much more likely to match your goal or even exceed it. And in the end a customer is worth a lot more to you than a sale because a customer can represent many sales over years to come-sales that were fairly easy to achieve.

As frustrating as it may be, advertising is usually about long-term versus short-term benefits.  Your ad simply serves as a lure to draw people into your site or long-term promotion. Once you’ve pulled them in then you need to sell them. So it is not really fair to judge an ad campaign on simple sales.

The success of an ad campaign should be measured by one or two elements only-first, how many people followed up on your offer (click-through rate) and second, how many of those visitors were you able to convert into customers (conversion rate).

Over time you will be able to judge where the weak link in your chain of customer creation exists and work to fix it.

Low click-through rate? Then it is probably your offer. You are not giving readers enough incentive to follow through. What is in it for them to click on your offer? Remember you are selling benefits!

Low conversion rate? Then perhaps you are not attracting the right sort of visitor. Target your incentive (the free offer, for example) to match your target audience.

Why People Fail

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As most of you know, I joined The Leaders Role and wow what i am learning and the live Skype group is just so awesome.  One of the owners of this great group came in and added this

Kris Hanks: please list one thing that comes to mind that is a CAUSE of Failure in our INDUSTRY?

Well, talking about team work – in about 10 minutes – 28 reasons were given – this was so fun to do and to see all the reasons. Kris then gave the group an assignment – pick 3 out of the 28 and write a blog or article.

I have gone thru the list and have picked 3 that I myself can relate with  I first started online.

My first one was FEAR – Being a newbie to the net, you hear all kinds of stories and the bad experiences that people have had. I was so scared that I was going to hit the wrong button and wipe out everything on my computer – I think about this now and laugh to myself at all the times that I have hit the wrong button and have deleted what I just wrote – but you know what all those oops taught me – save, save, save.

The other fear I had was using my name and my picture. Well big mistake, think about it – wouldn’t you rather do business with someone you can see and learn to trust, someone you know that is a real person and not someone with a name like lollipoplillie that has a picture of a peacock for their pic. I don’t know about you but the first thing that came to my mind was –  wonder who this really is, is it a real person – well that is when the lightbulb finally went on and for the last 3 years – you will see my name – google nancy radlinger sometimes and you will see that I got over being shy. This is called BRANDING and this work people – let people see that you are a real person, don’t be shy.

The 2nd I picked is LACK OF SKILLS  – well if you are like me when I first started – this was all GREEK to me – google, yahoo, email, URL, .jpg file, HTML, keywords, meta tags,  and the list goes on and on. Well, like alot of people that I have met are in the same boat – what does a person do – well google has become one of my best friends – if I have a question, get stuck – just google it – you will be surprised how many others had the same issues and you can find your answers. As you start learning your way around the net and social sites – more and more opportuntities (seminars, webinars, ebooks)  will pop up if you just keep searching. I have been so blessed with all the people that I have met on here and have friends all over the world.  I have learned mostly alot by trial and error (and I mean alot lol) – but lessons came out of each one of them. If you are suffering from the lack of skills like I did then find a group that are willing to help you gain the skills you need, give you the support your need and be a friend when you need one. The Leaders Role (wink, wink)

My 3rd one that I picked was MIND SET/Staying Positive.
This one was very hard for me as I just came out of a 25 year marriage and a negative-attitude based family. I do believe  in the power of the Law of Attraction – negative attracts negative and positive attracts positive. So after my divorce, I had a decision to make either I was going to stop being negative – oh poor me, everything happens to me, you know the type. Well, I decided that I had been given a chance to turn things around and I chose to learn to stay positive, positive, positive.  I have been so blessed over the last years and now I know that I am going to have my dreams come true – it’s not the If this happens, my dreams will come true NOW it’s when this happens, my dreams will come true. Yes, I do have bad days but you know I can always find a positive – you just have to look.  Believe in yourself.

Success lies not in being the best, but in doing your best!

“There’s a difference between interest and commitment.
When you’re interested in doing something, you do it only when circumstance permit.
When you’re committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results.”
Art Turock

How would you like to organize you emails in your gmail account?

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I know most of you have asked me how in the world do I keep up with all that I do – well I’d like to share one of my secrets for staying organized with my gmail and ad exchanges.

To some of you that don’t know what an ad exchange is – it’s a site that you can join and you agree to receive solo ads in your email account and most sites demand a gmail account for this. All of you know by now that I do alot of advertising my traffic exchanges and also other sites that are making me money. Well, I don’t just use traffic exchanges, I also use these ad exchanges. I had previously wrote a blog on solo ads do work and also listed some of my favorite ones and even made it easy for you to check them out by clicking on the banners.

Now on these ad exchanges, most will only send out 4-10 a day and I am sure you are thinking well that is not bad. Well it isn’t if you are only on 2 or 3 – well I have found sooooooooooo many that I enjoy that I am not on over 150 of them – so you do the math and you can imagine what my gmail account looks like when I open it up lolololol

There is no way that I can read that many ads a day – so here is what I do to save me time and in the long run makes it easy to get my credits when I need to earn credits. On these ad exchanges, you read a solo ad and then are rewarded credits for doing so and then you can TRADE those credits to submit your solo ad or even add your banners to the site. So this is how I organized my gmail account and hope this helps you with yours.

Go to your gmail account and when you are on your main page that show all messages, click on one. You will then notice that there is a drop down menu (more actions) – click on that and scroll down to filter messages like these – then another screen will come up. Now do you notice that ALL the emails for that address is listed – isn’t that cool. Well, what I do is that I want all those in a folder with a label and this is how I do it. I click on next, wait for the next screen to come up. This is the page that you will create your filter with your label and then ALL the emails from that addy will go here and this will declutter your main page so that you want miss that important email anymore.

To do this I mark the box next to skip the inbox and then go down to apply the label and over to the drop down menu – scroll down to new label and a window will pop up and that is where you put the name you want on your label. I put the ad exchange name there and then hit ok and it takes you back to the previous screen and you will notice that the box has been automatically marked for you. Also, I go down and mark never send it to spam because I want to earn credit from those solo ads. Now DO NOT hit create filter yet. Next to create filter you will see another box to mark that says also apply filter to the x-number conversations below – mark that and you are asking why. What that does is move ALL those from your main page into your new folder you are creating. NOW you can click on create filter and then you will – then is will list your filters.

Go and click on inbox again and then you will see that all of those email are gone from your main list. You can see on the left side, the label you create is listed and you click on that label and that is where all the emails from that ad exchange is then. I did that with each ad exchange that I am on and then I don’t have 1000’s of emails in all messages.

One more thing now – when you are low on credits on an ad exchange now – you can click on that label, read your emails, earn your credits and then trade them for your ads or banner. Hope this helps you – I know it has helped me alot and keeps me more organized and it’s really nice to click on ad from the ONE ad exchange that I need the credits for.

Good luck everyone, if you need help or have more questions let me know.