Creating Content for Your Online Marketing

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By: John Reed
If there is one thing that has become evident to both professional marketers and amateurs alike, it is that getting your message truly heard and comprehended by potential customers is essential to selling your products.
In fact, the term “advertise” means nothing without that distinction. However, many have allowed this all important word to lose its meaning in their own minds.

To some, the term “advertise” has some how become synonymous with “place a banner ad online”. This is one of the biggest mistakes any small are large organization can make, as it tends to lead to poor sales results and frustration. Why not skip all of that?

Look. You have to understand why many advertising campaigns fail in order not to fall into the same money drain trap. You should aim to benefit from every dollar you spend… Seriously. Lets look at it.

First: The Problem

As any true marketer will tell you, increasingly, banners go days and sometimes months without ever being clicked as more and more web surfers succumb to ad blindness. That’s why in the advertising world many settle for click through rates of less than 2 percent. If you are running an impression based advertising campaign, that is a failure rate of 98 percent. That means 98 percent of the people that visited the site where your banner ad was displayed either didn’t notice it at all due to ad blindness, or flat out rejected your ad’s attempt to coerce them into giving you their time which would have allowed your website to explain why your product is so great. That’s entirely too high of a failure rate.

If you are one of those misinformed marketers that think click through rates of 2 percent are acceptable, consider this.
Lets analyze the quality of the visits by the 2 percent of people that saw your ad and thought it interesting enough to click on it. If you’ll check your website logs, you will see that over 50 percent of people that come to your website, stay less than 2 minutes. These are the people I affectionately call the “looky loos”. They basically are interested but have no intensions of giving you the time necessary to convince them to buy. They just like, for whatever reason, to keep abreast of what is going on in their particular area of interest.

Then you have those that stay on your website for less than 30 seconds. I affectionately call these individuals the “skimmers”. They simply scroll down the page looking to see if anything extraordinary stands out and stops them in their tracks. Most times it doesn’t and they are gone.
Then you have the small percentage that actually thinks your banner ad is perfect. They have a little time on their hands to read and comprehend what you are selling. They read your website and allow it to convince them to buy.

So what you end up with is 80 to 90 percent of the individuals that actually make it to your website via the banner ad that you paid for don’t provide you a legitimate opportunity to sell your product. That 2 percent doesn’t look so good now. Does it?

Lets get something straight. Explanations of products and services are sometimes lengthy and time consuming to read but the text of a website is often the convincer in the selling process. You can have the greatest sales pitch in the world on your website but if no one truly reads and comprehends it, your low sales figures will reflect it. Are you beginning to see the true source of your advertising frustration?

The Solution:

The solution to the problem of low click-through totals and poor sales totals is to change the way you advertise. Stop focusing so much on click-thoughs and start cherishing read-throughs.
Remember, it is your text that convinces visitors to buy. So, you need to give visitors incentive to read what you have written and ensure that what you have written is powerfully sharpened and takes advantage of the opportunity the visitor gives you.

About Pay Per Click Advertising

Posted on August 19th, 2008

Jared Lansky

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By: Obinna Heche
As you may or may not already know, one of the most important parts of online business is traffic. Arguably, it is the most important part of business if for no other reason than the fact that your income is going to be directly related to the amount of traffic you get. It is impossible to make a living through an online endeavour without a lot of traffic. While there are organic processes that people can use in order to build up their traffic
at low cost or no cost rates, some people tend to get quite impatient for traffic and are looking for a way to accelerate the process.

Well, the main way to accelerate the process nowadays is through the use of pay per click advertising or PPC advertising for short. Now, PPC advertising is a concept that was created by Google and a concept that pretty much revived online advertising in 2003 after the first dot com bubble had collapsed. Now that people were actually just paying for clicks through to their website rather than just ad impressions, there were a lot more people willing to take a shot at pay per click advertising.

The main advantage that PPC has over free and organic traffic generation is primarily an advantage due to speed. If you want to get traffic to your website quickly and instantaneously, then you are going to have to do it through techniques that cost money, the primary one being PPC. You can use PPC to get traffic to your website within hours, whereas free traffic generation methods are probably going to take at least a few weeks before you really start seeing some results from them.

There are exceptions to this rule of course but in general you will find that ad campaigns based entirely on PPC are going to mature a lot faster than ad campaigns based entirely on organic measures or free advertising from different sources. So, whether you decide to use PPC advertising for your online business is purely a matter of what you the business owner is looking to accomplish.

If you want to build your website up slowly, get a customer base of loyal people that visit your website frequently and ultimately make sure that people are really satisfied with your website and have had a chance to look over it, then you should probably stay away from PPC in the early stages so that you can spend that money instead on different parts of your website. However, if you are only interested in getting as much traffic as possible as early on as possible, then no other advertising method can even come close to matching what PPC can do for you.

Advertising Your Online Business

Posted on August 18th, 2008

Jared Lansky

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By: Obinna Heche
If you are looking to market your online business and need some tips on how to go about it this information should help you discover three of the best ways to go about your online advertising. The first option is pay per click. There are sites you can choose from that offer pay per click advertising. This means whenever someone does a search for items using keywords that are found on your site, your sites link will be showed in the ad space next to the persons search results.

You do not pay to list your advertisement and there are no other hidden costs to this type of advertising. Pay Per Click can also be included on other web sites giving you the most exposure possible with very little out bound cost. Pay per click offers a great way to utilize your money, get more traffic to your site which can help increase sales.

One of the best things about Pay Per Click is that you only pay each time someone clicks on the advertisement that takes them to your site. Be wary of search engines that offer clickers money or incentives to click through their results as you may end up paying for clicks that result nothing for you. Pay per click can also be known as pay per ranking, pay per position or pay per placement and all of these sites offer the same type of service.

Creating a web banner is yet another way to advertise online. A banner is generally a color animated or still advertisement for your site. The banner is clickable and will take people directly to your site. This means that your banner should be on other sites that people frequent in order to see your banner and click on it. There are companies that offer free banners and online advertising but this is not always the best way to go.

You will have to look at the site and determine if this is going to be the right way for you to go. While the advertising may not cost you anything to create your banner and advertise on a site they often require you to allow other banners on your site to advertise for others. You will also likely get half the displays that you generate. So if your site advertises 1000 banners for someone else you will get 500 banner advertising on other sites. This is the average and some may offer more or less then this.

Your third option is to pay for advertising through an online advertising company. This generally offers you more control over how much banner advertising you receive but costs you money up front. The choice is up to you and no matter which way you go you will generate more sales if you advertise online.

Ad BuySell Jared Lansky

Top Ten Tips for Getting Noticed Online

Posted on August 17th, 2008

Jared Lansky

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By: annalaura brown
Are you hoping to get more attention and to have more people notice you online?

Here are the top 10 tips I have to offer you based on my online experience.

1. Develop as many websites as you can. Do not rely only on one. Make sure that you have at least one personal website and then develop as many other theme based sites as you have the time and money to maintain. For example, you could have one for your business, one for your family, one for one of your hobbies, another for another hobby, and another for your religion etc.

2. Make sure you have and maintain an email list. In fact, you should ideally have more than one. One for your business and then at least another one, which offers a free ecourse on a topic in which you have a specialty. Include a newsletter and send it out on a regular basis at least once a month.

3. Visit and post regularly to forums. Find ones, which relate not only to your business but also to your hobbies. Show up often and offer useful comments and also write articles and post them where appropriate.

4. Write articles. Make them about any topic with which you are comfortable and about which you have knowledge. Distribute them massively throughout the web. Consider articlemarketer.com for help in doing this.

5. Make sure not to forget to create profiles on all of the main search engine and directory pages. Some basics to include are : Yahoo, Lycos, and MSN.

6. Write Blogs and update them regularly. Write one for your business and at least one for a hobby or another interest. Promote them by listing them in blog directories as well as in the search engines.

7. Submit your website to directories. The higher traffic they receive and the more specific to the topic they are they better. Avoid ones, which require a recriprical URL. All these do is distract your visitors from your site.

8. Join networking sites and then show up and participate actively share your knowledge and get to know other people. Establish relationships and then share what you have to offer.

9. Visit other peoples blogs and guest books and then post useful and interesting comments. Add in your URL.

10. Post free classified ads to websites offering listings in your local area. Some examples of these include: tribe.net, yahoo local classifieds, and pressmania.com.

Above all, have patience and be persistent. Getting noticed online takes time and it will not just happen over night.

Is Contextual Advertising The Best There Is To Offer?

Posted on July 22nd, 2008

Jared Lansky

contextual ads contextual advertising Jared Lansky

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As with every other entrepreneur on the internet, you have probably spent hours upon hours looking for the best way to reach your target market. After all, without traffic coming to your web site you have no business. The problem is, there has not been a perfect way to advertise for everyone. But with contextual advertising around, people are beginning to wonder whether this is the best there is to offer on the internet.

There is a plethora of ways to promote your web site on the internet. You can write articles, post in forums, purchase banners and pop-up ads. The problem is, not one of these methods is effective for every entrepreneur. And unfortunately, the same can be said for contextual advertising.

This is not to say contextual advertising is a joke and will not work for anyone. In fact, it is one of the top new ways you can promote your web site. This technologically based method has been proven to work. It allows advertisers to send real-time targeted messages to consumers.

This is certainly not a method where surfers have to click on a banner or text link. Instead, you track down the internet surfers based on their online habits and behaviors. You have the ability to find out what people are looking for and where they are looking for it. This results in only ads the people want to see are seen.

The only thing is, can you honestly predict what ads people want to see? Sure, you have an understanding of what they are looking for based on where they have searched in the past. But for all you know they are looking for one particular item that no web site has to offer. While contextual advertising is far more effective than most advertising methods online, it is still not perfect. “[contextual targeting] … as a standalone while useful has not garnered the same results as combining both behavioral and contextual targeting” stresses Jared Lansky from AdBuySell.

Every web site and business is different and has different results with different marketing methods. It will not hurt you to give contextual ads a try. For all you know, it could be the marketing method you have been looking for for years. But the point is, you cannot get all hyped over a advertising technique because you believe it is guaranteed to work. Worse comes to worse, it does not work for you and you can move on to the next method.

Just know that this new method has been proven to work and has been quite successful for a number of people. There is nothing better than placing an ad in front of the right person at the right time. And for many advertising methods, this is not an option you have.

The Trends Of Online Advertising

Posted on March 29th, 2008

Jared Lansky

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Author: James Copper
Unlike traditional methods of advertising, online tools can not only measure the behavior of your target audience, but can also provide an advertiser with detailed statistics about the number of people viewing the ad and how many click it. This technology has led to a huge amount of Internet growth, particularly for companies such as Google and Yahoo, and has left electronic media outlets, such as television and radio, looking for more ways to measure advertising responses like the Internet.

Newer and more accurate ways of tracking are always being studied so that advertisers get the most for their money. One method currently being tested involves an attempt to understand the kinds of advertisements consumer minds tend to register to easily. Researchers are showing different online advertisements to volunteers and scanning their brains as they watch them.

The reason so much work is being put in to determining just what kinds of online advertisements are effective is because it’s so much easier and less expensive to advertise online and advertising on the web promises much faster results than advertising with traditional medias. When businesses and advertising companies know more about online customer behavior, they’ll be able strategize ways to appeal more to potential customers and have a more successful business.

There are several different formats of online advertising currently being utilized by businesses and websites and being studied by researchers to develop more strategic advertising plans. One format, seen on almost every website on the Internet, is banner advertising. Banners ads are placed on websites based on certain key words and website demographics. Most do not realize that companies don’t just go on the Internet and search for websites to put each, individual banner ad on. Intelligence is used to automatically put an advertisement on a site specifically geared towards certain customers or what kinds of information they entered into a search engine.

Though banner ads are the most favored kind of online advertisements, other formats, like videos, emails and podcasts, are growing more popular each day. These forms are incorporating more information to captivate Internet users and potential customers by making them genuinely interested in a business and it’s products or services. Unlike banner ads, these techniques make a customer familiar with how a business can help them, not just the name of the company. These ads can also be placed throughout the Internet and help to raise a websites search engine rank, driving more traffic towards their site and, therefore, making more sales.

Another way advertisers have gotten web users interested in an otherwise ordinary ad, is to make advertisements more interactive and fun. Many online ads feature different games, riddles or questions to answer that make customers want to click on the ad and complete the task. After completing the task, the user is brought back to the product web page.

With new technology emerging each day, researchers are coming up with more ways to target a certain kind of consumer and entice their minds with dazzling advertisements, making online advertising a clear choice over traditional methods in other forms of media.

Jared Lansky

Advantages of Online Classified Ads

Posted on February 10th, 2008

Jared Lansky

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Author: Chris Chun
Classified can be defined as a special type of advertisement. Classifieds generally feature some personal information, business information by any company, or the information about any upcoming event. The
classified Ads were generally used to publish only in newspaper in past. After that the classified ads were stared to advertise through television or radio. Later the Internet became the medium of publishing classified advertisements.

Now the online aspect of classified advertising is highly praised around the entire globe. This is because of some important advantages like the global nature of Internet, availability of more space to write advertisements properly, better keyword based search option and the user friendliness of the classified websites.

In this article we will discuss some facts about the superiority of online classified advertisements over the printed media classified advertisement. First of all the printed media for classified ads includes likes of newspaper, magazines or the free-ad magazines. If you think rationally then you can find a severe drawback of the classified ads, which are generally published in the daily newspapers. Basically the common people don’t have the tendency to read the daily newspaper after its publication date. So if the classified ad is published in a daily newspaper, then there is every chance that the prospect of that classified advertisement gets rotten after the day of the newspaper publication. Secondly, a particular newspaper is not a global media. The stretch of the availability location of a newspaper is either state level or at most national level. The reader, who has different mother tongue in multilingual countries, does not read even the newspapers of other regional language. So there is every possibility that a large mass got unaware of the published classified ad. But the stretch of Internet is global. Internet users can view the ads of even different countries and the can do what they wish. For an example, an Indian guy can apply for the job in Hawaii after seeing the online classified ad. Certainly it will not be possible for him to find that particular job in Hawaii, despite being sat in India. Another superiority of online classifieds over the printed media classified ads is the low cost nature of the online classifieds. There are lots of free websites, which provide the facility of posting classified ads free of cost. You may post as many classified ads of you wish absolutely free. There also some paid classified websites with better moderation quality, which provide you the facility of posting your own classified ads in exchange of some money. But the cost of publishing classified ad in a print media seems to be greater. There you have to pay in cost per column basis. So the expanse rises. The online classified websites also providing more space to write the ad and the fonts are bigger and more readable in websites than the print media.

The downfall of the classified section of print media started after the introduction of television and radio. After the introduction of Internet it seems the classified websites are becoming the front-runner in the field of classified advertisements.

Jared Lansky

Designing a Viral Marketing System for your Business

Posted on December 15th, 2007

Jared Lansky

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Author:Brett Nordin
Viral Marketing campaigns refer to the self-perpetuating spread of a brand, product or Jared Lansky, Ad Buy Sell service. The awareness can be spread by word-of-mouth (slower) or accelerated by the network effects of the internet. A viral marketing campaign encourages people to voluntarily communicate the brand message to a plurality of others. Viral promotions are typically thought of as funny emails, videos, texts or images, however, at a more sustainable level, they are becoming items of high value such as free information products, samples or trial services.

The promise of the internet has always been a price of “free” and online users expect to start a new relationship without paying for it. As an online or offline business owner, you must find a way to initially give a user something of value for free. Studies have shown that satisfied customers tell an average of three other people about products or services they like, and eleven people about a product or service they didn’t like. By providing a valuable giveaway, there is a higher likelihood of customer satisfaction and no financial risk in telling others.

The giveaway becomes the cost of building an ongoing a relationship with a user and the opportunity to get a sale. If the initial viral message creates the right motivation, it may exponentially spread to other users who also start a relationship with your brand.

Although there is sometimes a cost to building the viral message components, they should support the consumption of your primary product or service and can be re-purposed in many ways to drive sales.

The design of a viral marketing campaign should cover the life-cycle of the relationship with the future client. This includes the initial viral message, an ethical bribe used to get permission to continue the relationship and converting the prospect into a paying client.

Viral marketing system components:

1. Viral Message: Create a selfish motivation that makes someone want to tell others. The selfish motivation comes from the emotion your viral message, product or service creates. This is the bait that lures someone into a conversation with your business. During this first phase of the relationship, the prospect doesn’t trust you and the most a business can hope for is future brand recognition.

2. Ethical Bribe: Provide the visitor a free gift in exchange for an email address. The free gift inspires the prospect to opt-in and give you permission to start a deeper relationship. The ethical bribe can be a free ebook, consumer guide, informative report, tip list, product sample, give a donation to a charity, a contest, newsletter subscription, etc.

3. Conversion: The content you give away as an ethical bribe or in the ongoing email communication should be related to your product or service and written to create trust, build a burning desire for what you are selling and lower the barrier to a sale (make an offer). This is where well written copy can make or break your conversion rate.

Once you acquire a new email address, the biggest mistake you can make is to spam your brand message to a potential client. Depending on the sales cycle of your product or service, more time may be required before the prospect has a problem that you can solve. If you immediately make offers for sale, give an uninterested subscriber the ability to unsubscribe from your list.

A more benign approach to keeping a high-touch relationship is to provide valuable information about your product or service. An example of this is a monthly newsletter. Newsletters can be written in an advertorial style which promotes your business and also provides a benefit to the reader. Outside the body of the newsletter, offers for sale can be made in dedicated ad space.

Build The Perfect Online Ad For Your Small Business

Posted on December 15th, 2007

Jared Lansky

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Author: Ryan Osilla

Jared Lansky, Ad Buy Sell Blog

With a little help and a little know-how, anyone can create a good online ad. But building the perfect ad takes time. You can track click-through rates and learn what works. You can change a headline, or text, or an offer until you find something that works for you. Here are a few tips on creating a really effective ad for your business.

1. Include a keyword in your headline. A keyword describes your advertisement, business, or offer, and is used by search engines to deliver relevant results to customers searching for related topics. For example, if you run a bakery that specializes in pies, related keywords could be apple pies, pies, coconut pies, and yummy pies. MarketingSherpa, a market research organization that runs extensive studies on maximizing online marketing says, �Including one of your keywords in the headline of your ad has the single greatest impact on generating returns.”

2. Highlight your core differentiator. What makes you special or unique? You need to let the world know! For example, if you’re the low priced leader, include that information in the body of your ad. If you offer a unique service like in-home delivery and pick-up, include that in the ad.

3. Test creative copy. Test different phrases in the body of your ad or headline. One recent example came from an ad campaign for stock management software. The company ran multiple online ads with different headlines, varying between sensational and informational. They found that the headline “Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight” resulted in a 15% increase in the click-through rate over any other ad.

4. Include common misspellings in keywords. This may sound wrong at first, but you want the search engines to know what customers might type in to find you. Customers want to find relevant results and it’s a rare person who runs their Google searches through a spell check first. So, use as many relevant keywords you can think of for your ad campaigns, exclude keywords not directly pertaining to your offer, and think about how customers might misspell one of your keywords.

5.Test different options and adjust when you see what works. Try building multiple ads with different headlines and offers. You can track the results of individual ads by the number of views and clicks to monitor which ads perform best. Once you know what works with your customers make sure to include the winning strategies in your next online ad.