How and Where to Advertise Your Small Business Online
OK, I'll admit it, I'm a bit of a cheapskate when it comes 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