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How and Where to Advertise Your Small Business Online
to marketing. I let my free ebooks, articles and newsletter
do most of my marketing work.
But I also realize that in order to succeed in business, you
must spend SOME money advertising. And I've been relearning
this lesson recently.
Today I'd like to share with you some of my own recent
results, so you'll know exactly how and where you should
get started advertising online.
For starters, keep your wallet securely in your pocket.
There are three things you must do BEFORE spending ad bucks
online. And here they are...
1. Get a handle on how well your site does its selling.
Figuring out how good a job your site does selling is
simple. Just look at your stats and do a little math. You
are after just one number... how much a website visitor is
worth to you. Or more simply, how much you should PAY for a
visitor.
To figure this out you need to first find out how many
visitors it takes you to get a sale. If you get 1000
visitors a week and 10 sales in that same week, then your
visitor to sales ratio is 100-1. If you average 20 sales
from those 1000 visitors, you are closing one sale for every
50 visitors. Once you know your own number, you will be able
to determine approximately how much a visitor is worth to you.
You simply take it one step further...
Let's say you close 1 sale in every 50 visitors and your
average sale is $50. Simple math tells you that you could
pay up to a dollar per visitor and break even. So a good
goal would be to pay LESS THAN a buck per visitor. Any ad
buy that averages out to less than a dollar per visitor
should be profitable, provided the traffic is targeted. If
you aim to spend fifty cents per visitor you can double your
investment every time you advertise.
Of course there are lots of variables. Things like opt-in
email members you may receive from an ad buy and the repeat
visitors that your list generates. But you get the idea.
Until you know the above numbers for your site, you cannot
spend money wisely on advertising.
Once you have a handle on how much a visitor is worth to
you, the next step you must take before your first ad buy
is...
2. Set up your email address capture strategy.
If your site is closing one sale for every 50 visitors, you
may be satisfied. But if you are not offering a way for the
other 49 visitors to "stay in the loop" you are making a
huge mistake.
And it is simple to keep them from getting away. Just offer
them something of value in exchange for their contact
information. An example of one way to do this is offering a
free gift at your site and getting their name and email
address when they request it. Your gift can be a free ebook,
an email course or anything else your visitors would want.
You can get as many as 20% of your visitors to leave their
contact info if you do it right. That's a lot of email
addresses when you start advertising and getting lots of
traffic.
But what do you do with the addresses?
You treat them like gold.
Regularly publish an email newsletter to your growing list
of addresses. Contact them and offer your expertise. Give
them more free, valuable information related to what they
requested originally. Make them feel special and grow a
community. This is how long-term profits are made online.
Once you have tackled the two items above, there is one last
step before you actually spend money on advertising...
3. Make sure you have a way to measure your results once
your advertising starts.
I do this simply by copying my main entry page and using the
new URL in the ad. When I check the stats my web host emails
me I can easily see how many visitors came through that URL.
This is just ONE way to track traffic. There are TONS more.
But you get the idea. You need some way to measure the results
of your advertising or you are wasting your money.
OK, once you have tackled the three items above, you're all
set up to do some ad buys.
I have tried many strategies online and here's the straight
scoop on what works and what doesn't. I've ranked nine
online advertising strategies as follows...
Poor: Don't waste your time.
Fair: Worth a try at least once or twice.
Good: A solid way to spend ad dollars.
Excellent: Should be a regular staple in any online marketing
budget.
OK, here they are...
1. FFA submissions (Free for all links pages)
You know, those interfaces that say "submit to 50,000
websites for a few bucks. Well, save your few bucks. FFA's
had their time in the sun. They worked great when they were
first introduced. Now they are not worth a dime. Heck, even
if you can do a free submission it's probably not worth your
time. The last three tests I ran submitted my URL to nearly
a half a million sites. I got four visitors. 'Nuf said.
Rating: Poor
2. Bulk email
Sure, you CAN get website traffic using bulk email. You can
do it yourself or hire a company to hide behind. But the
fact is, you risk your business reputation and you'll anger
a ton of folks. Your domain will end up blocked by many ISPs
and could even get sued. Unsolicited bulk email is not worth
the trouble.
Rating: Poor
3. Safe lists
This is a twist on opt-in email marketing where you pay for
the privilege of being able to send email to a list of other
marketers who have done the same. While I have not tried
this personally I can comment on it simply because lots of
my subscribers have tried it. And I have not heard one good
thing about it other than from people reselling it. The
folks that have used it have found that while safe list
"members" have agreed to be on the safe lists, most never
actually read messages or buy anything.
Rating: Poor
4. Banner Advertising
This is an "old school" advertising strategy that I have
been testing again now that prices are lower. And early
indications are that there is a solid reason for the
still-declining prices of banner advertising. My own
click-through rates been less that 1% so far, with a few
exceptions. But I do have some decent size banner ad runs
planned for the coming months at some busy, targeted sites.
Time will tell if I'll continue with this strategy. If you
DO want to try banner advertising, ask the site you plan to
advertise at what the average click-through rates are and
what banners perform best. That may get you up to two or
three percent. If that will take you into profit, give it a
whirl. But most small and home businesses may be better
served using one of the five advertising methods remaining.
Rating: Fair
5. Opt-in list rental
There are plenty of companies that will rent you email
addresses that have opted in to receive commercial email.
And if the recipients are not being paid to read the
messages, that is they are genuinely interested in the
offers they signed up to receive, this strategy can be
profitable. The problem is you'll pay from ten to twenty
cents per address and mailing to a list large enough to get
results from can be quite expensive. But if your budget can
handle it, you can generate some great trageted traffic.
Rating: Good
6. Paid Search Engines Submissions
While I highly suggest submitting to all the major search
engines that are still free (AltaVista, Lycos, Google,
HotBot, DMOZ and Direct Hit) this article is about "paying"
for advertising. And there are two paid search engine
services I have had very good luck with...
a. Inktomi's Search/Submit at $30 a year, which gets your
URL into AOL, iWon, MSN and the Looksmart directory within
48 hours.
b. Yahoo! Business Express and sponsored site listings. The
business express service
costs $199 for non-adult sites, and gets you Yahoo!
consideration. While $199 is a little pricey for some
small business owners, a good listing at Yahoo! brings quite
a bit of extra traffic. Once you are listed, consider taking
advantage of the "sponsored site" offering for an additional
monthly fee. I am sampling this currently and it paid for
itself within the first few weeks. My results may decline as
more sites are added into the sponsored sites area but I'll
keep an eye on things.
Rating: Good
7. Pay per click search engines
This advertising model offers a way for you to bid on search
terms and pay only when someone clicks through to your site.
I've been advertising with www.goto.com and findwhat.com
using this method and have had decent results. It's easy to
control costs and your visitors are targeted precisely.
If you are not in a super-competitive keyword arena you can
do well with pay per click engines. For example, if you sell
web hosting, good luck getting traffic for less than a few
bucks a click. But if you have a smaller niche, this
strategy represents a great opportunity and is worth trying.
And if you DO find that this model works well for you, more
than 75 additional "Pay per Click" search engines can be
found at Alan Gardyne's super-duper directory...
http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com
Rating: Good
8. Personalized Email Series
Here's one that many marketers don't talk about much. It's
actually a secret weapon among many of the big name
marketers. You offer a freebie at your site and when your
visitors claim it you are not only added to your opt-in list
they are added to a series of personalized follow-up
messages that you pre-program. If you write a powerful and
effective series this marketing strategy can be one of your
top sales producers.
Rating: Excellent
9. Ezine Advertising
Still the one. Some people think I recommend ezine
advertising because I have an ezine and I'm trying to sell
my own ad space. On the contrary, I've been trying NOT to
sell my ad space for the last few years. That's why my own
rates are so high! I can run my own offers or affiliate
offers and make much more than I can selling the ad space.
Many other ezine editors are finding the same thing. While
this has resulted in rising ezine ad costs over the last few
years, one fact remains... ezine advertising is still one of
the most effective ways to get targeted traffic -- cheap.
Just visit an ezine directory and search for ezines in your
niche market. Subscribe to a bunch and start reading them.
Look for larger circulation ezines that have a good
following. If you like the content then the thousands of
other readers probably do too. Place an ad and you'll make a
profit, nearly every time. Top sponsorships work best if you
can swing it.
Rating: Excellent
About the Author
Article by Jim Daniels of http://www.bizweb2000.com
If you're interested in starting or growing a business
on the Internet, Jim's sites will help you save time
and money. He's been making a living online since 1996
and knows the ropes. Visit Jim and get your free help!