Your AD
Content:
writing riveting advertising content is an
art form and requires time, creativity imagination, empathy, experience and
emotional insight. I suggest you have a quality Dictionary and Thesaurus
at hand,
you will find them extremely useful if you want to avoid using repetitive,
uninspiring words and phrases. Scrutinize ads posted to you - do they
"grab" you? Yes? well don't copy them exactly but work around
the writer's theme and concept. Glean as much information from the people
who are successful, creative ad writers.
Start your ad
copy and content with an emotion-packed opening statement that will get
the attention of your reader. Your opening statement may be:
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a headline |
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an opening
sentence |
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a subject line
on an email |
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a header on a
web page |
What's important
is that you understand - your first words count for everything, because
you must captivate people's imagination in those words in order to keep
their attention. You must endeavor to paint a picture in your reader's
mind of how your offer will satisfy their needs and wants. ( remember -
"what's in it for me?")
Then, after your
emotion-packed opening statement, you just:
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make a promise
or guarantee - be secure in the fact your product/service can deliver the goods |
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Back it up with
convincing proof - testimonials and case studies are living
proof for example, guarantee your product or service! Promote your
success and credibility |
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Ask for action
-
always ask for action in the most positive way possible. Spell out
what you want the reader to do - mail me, join now, read this, etc. |
It is a well known
fact the ability to write successful ads is the ultimate wealth-producing
skill.
The following
suggestions overcome many issues that many would-be marketers see as
obstacles or negatives:
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no
selling! |
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no
sponsoring! |
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no
meetings! |
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no phone
calls! |
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no group
volumes or recruiting level required! |
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automated
sponsoring system! |
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down-line
built for you! |
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online
support! |
|
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no
presentations! |
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no face
to face selling! |
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no
inventory! |
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no sales
reports to submit! |
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no time
required! |
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no cost,
no obligation! |
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money-back
guarantee! |
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no
work no pay! (sorry!
just my sense of humor!) |
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At
times it can be useful to quote statistics such as: "230,000 new
affiliates have joined in the last 6 months" or "230,000 people
can't be wrong", however, it may also be a negative as some people
may feel that they may have "missed the boat" by not getting in at an early recruiting stage. To some it may act as
a deterrent. I don't believe this is so, your success is totally
dependant on your own individual efforts, if you have the capabilities to
stand out with your own unique marketing strategies you won't just be one
of a large group competing against one another with the same offer.
Others
may see large recruitment numbers as a substantial benefit as it reinforces
a successful image and adds to the credibility of the offer.
The same
resistance may apply if you use the following: "your downline built
for you!" the question arises that "if they can build downlines,
why do they need me? By the same token, many cyberspace marketing
beginners find it difficult initially to generate substantial downlines
and may perceive a positive aspect to a pre-built downline.
What
works for some people doesn't work for others, stick to the basic guide-lines,
trial and track your ads, analyze the results and refine them when and if
necessary.
Advertisement
Size:
There
are numerous schools of thought as to what the size of successful ads
should be, I have seen many varying recommendations and here are
some examples:
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" 10 lines is perfect!" - |
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" keep your
ads short!" - |
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"
don't use
more than 6 lines!" - |
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"
use as many lines as you like!" - |
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"
Ad size doesn't
matter - it's the product that counts!" - |
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"
Long content
works on the web." - |
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"
If you can't get your message across in a
few lines...." - |
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" Most people won't get past your first four lines,
but the ones that do want to know more about your
business." |
Holy
Mackerel!
Which is "Right"
and which is "Wrong"?
The above
examples
illustrate only some of the many varying opinions regarding the
size of ads. Bear in mind that ad
sizes will also differ greatly depending on where they are going to be placed.
The advertising mediums you are going to place them in will dictate to
some extent the ad size, so the above or any other recommendations
for ad size that you use still becomes a matter of refinement, trial and
error.
As an example, your first ad response on your responder should be up to 10 lines,
your second response message/ad would be longer with more detail, your
third autoresponse - even more detail and perhaps with more inducements or
limitations (bonus, freebies, time limitations etc.) The remainder?-
short, forceful reminders that you
haven't heard from the prospect yet (time is running out, bonus offer ends
soon.get in before the rest, and so on).
You will
encounter
restrictions on ad-placement sites which always set a size limit for ads
placed. Size limitations can be restricted to
one-liners, URL only, the number of characters, or in some instances - the number of lines
allowed- generally paid advertising.)
So, problem number one! you
have spent a lot of time creating a text-book killer ad only to find that
you can't fit it in to your ad submission box because of the ad
submission service's size limitations. It would be soooo easy to tailor
your ad to suit them all, if only they all stipulated the same size
limitation for ads. Some submission
services allow 50 characters - some 100, 150, 200 or 250 characters
and so on! - it's a real pain! So you see that you may have to modify
your ads numerous times if only just to suit your ad submitter's requirements.
My
suggestion is to utilize good old Notepad or a similar utility to create your ad text with. One
page for your headers, another page for one-liners, another for short ads,
and another for medium-size or long ads. Or select headers to match short,
medium and long ad
content and have them on the same page. Pre-count the
number of lines or characters for each and group
them on your page as to the number of lines or characters in each ad. When you're submitting an ad,
open Notepad and select an appropriately-sized ad to submit.
Notepad can also make it easier to mix and match different ads to
different headers to keep your advertising "fresh" and not
repetitive. (note and other text editors included in Software -)
If,
as suggested, you have several web sites, email and autoresponder
addresses you will need a substantial arsenal of prepared ad material
ready when submitting, It
definitely pays
to be organized to save yourself unnecessarily wasted time when ad-placing.
Multiple
gateway or portal pages are
one of the best ways to get mass traffic to your website.
Programs are available that allow you to create multiple gateway pages in
a few seconds. What this means is that you can constantly resubmit your
website to the search engines without being accused of spamming them as
they will all have different URLS. This in effect will enhance your search
engine ranking.
Be
very careful when using autoresponder addresses with your ads, your real
email address (or one of) will be required when you use a submission
service - you can only show your responder address within the body or at
the end
of your ad, otherwise you will create a loop, (autoresponders
responding to an autoresponder.) if this happens then it will be viewed
pretty harshly by your submission service as it can create a major problem
for them - tread carefully.
When
should you change your Ads or Headers?
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when
you have a low or zero response rate |
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when
you see identical headers on foreign ads |
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when
your response rate is good, but sign-ups are few (low conversion rate) |
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when
your response rates are good, but you want to increase them, - e.g.
add a bonus offer |
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when
you have designed a more creative and innovative ad and header |
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when
you feel your ads and headers have become "stale" |
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when
your product or service has changed or improved with add-on value
products etc. |
Ad
Tracking:
You should also
track your advertising efforts. Why? because ad tracking will assist you in
determining whether specific ads and submission services are
working for you.
Why waste your most valuable asset - your time, on
submitting ads that don't work or are not working in certain locations?
Some affiliate programs give you the flexibility for you to add coding at the end of your
URL - e.g.
you could use two digit numbers after the URL e.g. (from 01, to 99) If your URL ends with /352936 for example, you would add .01
to track the success of a specific ad, your URL then is /352936.01
Here's a little trick with a
question mark? http://www.gateway.esmartbiz.com/index.html?
whatever1 and http://www.gateway.esmartbiz.com/index.html?
whatever2, will both bring you to my site's homepage (try it!), but in my
logs they will show up as 2 separate entry pages. So if you give each ad a
unique link (like http://yourdomain.com/index.html?ad1), you will know exactly how many people clicked on that ad. A nice
and easy way to track a specific ad's performance!
You
can also add your own codes to your email address to track responses( e.g.
add "A" to the end of your email address for your
first ad, "B" for the second, and so on. Keep a record of your
advertising codes and ad placements (write them down or use a small spread
sheet,- no matter which method you use, just make sure
you record them) and refer to it, say at month-end, log the
number of hits, affiliates or members that have been attracted by each
code/ad. If an ad is not working for you, give it a couple of weeks and
then change your ad/advertiser, especially if using paid advertising.
Ad-tracking programs and software are also available, however there is
generally a cost attached. (there are some free ones listed on my site)
below
is a basic example of ad-tracking, you could expand this to show $cost per
sign-up or other fields you may think to be useful.
date
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time
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frequency
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program
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email/URL/code
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hits
|
signups
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conversion rate
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cost
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6/10/00
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9:00 AM
|
20 mins
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Linkscout.com
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"A"
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120
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10
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8%
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$25
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6/10/00
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10.00 AM
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24 hrs
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addme |
352936.01
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200
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14
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7%
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0
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6/10/00
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10.15 AM
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1 week
|
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352936.02
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240
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24
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10%
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0
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Another
method of recording activity at your site/s is to add a hit counter
or site meter/ tracker. (while hit counters, meters and trackers do record
activity at your site, they don't reflect true success rates i.e. new
customers, affiliates, members etc. You can get all the hits you want, but if it doesn't
translate into customers and sales, then you have hits and
that's it! Counters and trackers do, however, provide useful
statistics that can be applied to improve your Web presentation and strike
rate. Yes! they are
available free and some are included in this site. Site meters for both
Java and HTML versions are available, however, HTML will not track
URL's.
Tracking
indicators supply a web page statistics service that serves up all the
information about your visitors you could ask for. They allow you to see
how many people have visited your site; total and
unique visits; browser types; visiting domains; referral listings (how
visitors found your site); what time of day they visited; traffic patterns
and much more. They give you five (or more) full days' worth of stats, and
you can track as many pages as you wish. Setup is easy: just copy some
lines of HTML to your page and you're all set. The information supplied
varies slightly from one tracker to the other but they all provide the
basics.
Ideally
you would be looking for a site tracker that records where your visitor
came from, where they went from your site, how long they stayed, which
pages they browsed and for how long. This detailed information can give
you an idea of what your visitor is interested in or what they are looking
for. Which pages are working for you and which may need more content or
may be non-topical or boring?
Email versus
URL - the advantage of using your email address in your ad is that it
gives you the opportunity to send a powerful sales letter to the ad
respondent. This is where an autoresponder can really be effective -
your autoresponder can send numerous follow-up messages to reinforce
your offer (and also capture the respondents email address.)
Manually tracking ads is also much easier using an email address.
Keep your ads
short? whenever possible, even if it means not using all the characters allowed.
Short
ads are more likely to be read. Keep your sentences short also; they
pack much more punch. Use the word "you." Don't detail
your product but focus on telling the reader what your product can do
for them.
Short
ad - long ad! whatever, the basic principals still apply: use
strong emotive words with impact to "GRAB"
the reader's attention, stick to your point - tell your reader what to
do next, and tell them what's in
it for them!
"Nothing
remains static in Internet Marketing, new ideas and concepts are being
created every day!"
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