When is an Ad not an Ad?
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When is an Ad NOT an Ad?
By Stuart Reid
One marketing technique used by advertisers old and new is to
conceal sales pages as something else.
The Infomercial, for example, extends the TV Advertisment into
something that prentends to be an informative program.
Likewise, newspaper and magazine advertisments often mimic the
style of news reports or editorials.
In Internet Marketing we can also make use of this technique, in
a number of ways.
The most common method is to write an article. The article
provides useful and interesting information yet also sells a
product.
I don't just mean the resource-box here. You can submit a
blatantly advertising article to an e-zine if you like, but you
can't expect them to publish it. If however you paid for it as
an ad, they would be likely to publish it for you. Unfortunately
you'll hit a snag.
This problem is similar to the newspaper ads mentioned above.
Often, in newspapers, the ad has a nice "This is an
Advertisment" line tagged to the top! Pretty much ruins it's
effectiveness, right?
The same thing happens in e-zine advertising. You'll either get
the article/ad stated as such in the subject line or at the top
of the e-mail body. Publishers have to do this to protect
themselves, but it instantly marks out your article as an ad.
There are alternatives. If you enter into an agreement with a
publisher, i.e. a Joint Venture, they may print your article as
you provide it without boxing it out as an ad. Again this
happens in the newspaper world - often without you realising OR
tagges as an "Advertising Feature".
Another way is to disguise your article. Don't blatantly sell in
the article, but pre-sell. Excite your reader to the
possibilities of whatever your article is selling without
actually mentioning it. Then the link in your resource box would
lead to a site that does the rest.
You of course get the added benefit of the fact that articles
are essentially free to publish :-)
The last method we can use is `fake` web-sites. These sites are
again focused on selling a product but disguised as a news
report, article, resource or similar. Often that would involve
selling behind the scenes via e-mail (with e-mail capture at the
site). Or the site could provide free information and a problem,
and a (paid) way to eleminate the problem.
You can see this in action at Virus Killer, Ad-Ware, Evidence
Eliminator sites and similar. The site looks like a "Warning!
Your Computer Is Infected!" page, or perhaps provides a report
on the latest viruses and offers a (sometimes free) way to fix
them.
These tehniques are very useful in selling anything online and
take advantage of humans basic emotions. You are more likely to
believe a voice of authority, or what appears to be!
(C)2004 Stuart Reid
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Stuart Reid publishes Netpreneur News and maintains Netpreneur
Now and it's Members Site. To join Netpreneur Now visit:
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