Which Mistakes
Are You Making with Ezine Ads? Jason Mann
Ezine advertising
has been glorified by experts the world over as the last refuge for
the little guy/gal to make a buck online. Well, I hate to deliver
bad news, and please don't shoot the messenger, but there are some
draw backs to ezine advertising.
Let's look
at the most common mistakes and their solutions.
Mistake #1:
Not Tracking Your Ads
Many business
owners have no idea how they can track every ad they place. Whether
for an affiliate program or their own product, they just don't know.
Not knowing what ad is working and producing the sale will cost you
and your business thousands of dollars. When you know what ad produces
and what ad doesn't you can cut the worst of the ads and only keep
the ad or ads that produce for your business.
Solution:
If you
own your own web site and domain name, you can track every ad by
creating a special redirect link that is only used in that ad. Or
you can add a question mark to the end of the URL and check that
on your stats page.
A simple domainname.com/pagename.html?trackingcodehere
will suffice in most cases. Check with your
web host to see if have access to your web site stats log. Or sign
up for one of the free/fee tracking services online.
Mistake
#2: Writing me-too ads
When
writing your ad you must take your ego, your desire to boast about
you and your company, out of the equation. An
example of a me-too ad:
"Acme Law Offices have been in business for 20 years. Our staff of
lawyers all graduated from Harvard Law School with honors. Call us
at 1-800-acme-law today!"
Solution:
Write benefit and results oriented ads. Example:
"Guaranteed
Settlements! Win your settlement guaranteed and save 43% on attorney
fees by calling ACME Law Offices at: (blah,blah, blah)"
This
ad focuses completely on the end result, the main benefit. Guaranteed
Settlements. Which ad do you think would pull more responses?
Mistake
#3: Running Classifieds
Since
they don't cost much, business owners tend to use classifieds to
save costs. Classifieds are cheap, $5-$20 per ad, and in most cases
run faster than solo or top sponsor ads because the ezine publisher
runs 10-20 per issue.
What's
not so commonly known is the fact classified sections are often times
scanned by the reader (I scan past them every time) and get very
little eye time.
Solution:
Run Solo or Top sponsor ads. These ads get more exposure. They are
exclusive (solo mailings) or only have 2-3 (sponsor ads) per issue
spaced out between the content.
Mistake
#4: Going for large subscriber bases
Large
subscriber stats are impressive. 30,000 subscribers is a ton of eye
balls and the potential to return a profit is greatly increased.
Well, this is completely untrue.
A
recent test we ran took our breath away. We spent $180 on a solo
ad to a subscriber base in a general marketing publication of 30,000
subscribers. We ran that same solo ad for $65 in an ezine about pop-up
marketing strategies with a subscriber base of 1200.
Ad
#1 to 30,000+ brought back $0!
Ad
#2 to 1200 specifically targeted subscribers brought back $900 in
pure profit!
Solution: While tons of subscribers may seem like the right
way to go, before you invest money, check out smaller, highly targeted
ezines and test your ads in those. You'll save money and odds are
your returns will be greater.
Mistake
#5: Running your ad once
When
I first started advertising ezines I would run one ad one time, if
it didn't produce results I would switch ezines and run the ad again.
This was how I tested the ad. Many business owners are doing the
same thing today.
By
running the ad only once, you're cutting your chances to profit in
half. By running it 2-3-4 times, even if the first run didn't make
a profit, gives your ad more exposure. Readers will "think" it's
producing because you ran it more than one time, therefore other
subscribers must have thought it was worth looking at, helping your
ad to produce.
Solution:
Run every ad at least twice. Then instead of switching ezines, switch
ads. Run that ad twice. Do this with all your ads. You'll be surprised
to find the ezine actually produces profits for one ad and not another.
So now you can run that ad 4-5-6 times and squeeze more profits from
the ezine.
Ezine
advertising is profitable. It takes testing, tracking, solo or top
sponsor placements, and more testing to pin point ezines with high
sales ratios. Don't give up on the ezine just because a successful
ad from another test didn't work.
Place
another ad, test it, test another, and so on. All you need is 5 to
10 profitable ezines and you'll increase sales and profits for your
business.
About
The Author: Jason
Mann is a profitability consultant who works with small and medium
web business to increase their overall profit using easy to deploy,
cost effective marketing strategies.
Visit
his web site at: http://www.innersanctumeletter.com
for more helpful information about web marketing.
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