Today, in online marketing part 2, you will learn:
• Pay per click search engine
• Classified ads
• Paid ads
• Give away freebies
• Newsgroup, forum, mailing list participant
Pay Per Click Search Engine
Pay per click, also known as PPC, search engines are search engines that allow advertisers to bid on listing positions for chosen keywords. The advertisers pay the amount they bid only when someone clicks the link and visits their sites.
This is great for many of us. Anyone, either a fortune 500 company or a one-man operation, can have the top positions if they choose to.Pay per click search engines are an incredible way to get instant, targeted traffic to any site you need to advertise. Some of them allow you to bid as low as $0.01 and get you up to 10,000 targeted visitors for as little as $100!
Most of the marketing techniques you learn here, or anywhere else, will take time to build up. PPC search engines, on the other hand, can bring in traffic 5 minutes after you sign up.
At traditional search engines, the title and description of a given page seen by visitors in the search result is retrieved from the html file itself. You have no control of it once the page has been indexed. PPC search engines allow you to tweak the title and description for each keyword you bid until it grabs visitors' attention.
(BUT, it doesn't make any sense to bid on "sex" for your Internet marketing information web site! If you did that, you would end up with lots of clicks, a big credit card bill from PPC search engines, and zero sales. What would you do if you click on "Working At Home Business" and discover it's a site all about "video editing"? Click away in no time, I believe.)
Another key advantage is that, listings at PPC search engines often show up in some of the most heavily trafficked traditional search engines and directories such as Yahoo, AOL search, Altavista, MSN, metacrawler, just to name a few.
Obviously, the only drawback is that it's not free. It could easily become unnecessarily expensive if you don't apply the right strategy.
The key to a successful PPC campaign is knowing exactly how much each visitor is worth to you so that you will figure out the maximum amount you can bid to ensure you always make a profit.
Let's say 1 visitor out of 100 to your site actually make a purchase, you have a 1% conversion rate which is good enough. If you make $20 per sale and are willing to spend $10 in advertising, then your maximum bid amount is $0.1 - $10 will bring you at least 100 visitors among them one will make a purchase.
If you are more aggressive in getting customers considering the lifetime value of customers, you can bid for as high as $0.2. Anything more than that, you are taking the risk of losing money - if you don't have backend sales.
Many people are doing just that - losing money to get customers - for a good reason. If you have a solid backend sales plan, you can afford losing money to get first-time customers and still make good profit in the long run. I will talk about backend in next lesson.
You may be wondering, what about those advertisers who pay $3 or more for the top positions? At 1% conversion rate, that equals to $300 cost per customer! Well, there are four possible reasons:
• They have an extremely high conversion rate, say 5%
• They have a really high ticket item to sell, $300 plus
• They have very powerful backends
• They don't know what they are doing
In fact, it's not always a good idea to bid for #1 position. How many times did you make a quick decision to buy at the very first site you stopped by? Not many times I guess. Average people typically click around first, read, compare, and then make a decision if at all.
So being listed at #1 position is not necessarily better than at #5. The major advantage of being #1 is having more chances to show up at other search engines and directories. At Overture, for example, the top 3 listings will also show up in AOL search, MSN, Altavista and other places.
The price of top positions is another reason not to be involved in a bidding war. The cost of top listing for competitive keywords could be as high as 3 or 4 dollars!The best strategy for small business is to get a large quantity of keywords at low price other than bidding $3 for a few words. While top positions for popular keywords get more search and higher click through rate, a large number of less popular, slightly lower positioned keywords will bring you the same, if not more, amount of traffic - at much lower cost!
If you can't find enough keywords, try WordTracker. It helps you come out with hundreds of keywords relating to your topic. Personally I feel the free online trial version is all you need. You can pay a monthly fee for the more complete version if you need.
Although you don't have to bid for the top position in most cases, but make sure your site is listed at least in top 20. Otherwise, very few people will find you.
Here are the most popular PPC search engines:
Overture (formerly known as GoTo)
FindWhat
You can learn more detailed PPC search engine techniques here.
------------------------ Classified Ads
Mail order businesses have a long history of using classified ads to promote unique products. You write a brief ad, test and analyze responses and sales, then rewrite it and repeat the cycle. Eventually you may get a classified ad that draws well, month after month, and you place it as often as you can.
Are you submitting classified ads online? Why not give it a try? Although a lot of the smaller sites just aren't worth the time of visiting and submitting every single day, sites such as Yahoo have classified ad sections that have a large number of real visitors.
You won’t get as much traffic submitting classified ads as you will with search engines, but that shouldn’t stop you for one minute since there are many free classified ad sites out there. Prepare a good selection of classified ads and keep it in a text file. Then, you can copy and paste your classified ad at Yahoo or at any free classified sites that you run into.
The key to successful classified ads is to continually keep posting ads. Once you figure out which ones work for you, keep using them regularly.Forget about any notion of selling anything from a classified. Some of the "experts" will tell you that a classified ad can bring cash orders, but this is the exception rather than a general rule. So don't post another sales copy in your classified ads.
Your purpose here is getting as much contacts as possible. Concentrate on offering free information or even gift to attract as many interested prospects as possible for what you have to offer.
Ask them to send a blank email to an autoresponder to receive a gift eBook. Ask them to visit your page and sign up for your free newsletter. Either way, you would have acquired their permission to send them follow-up emails time and time again.
No deception. What you really want are quality names of prospective buyers, not a large quantity of names of those who will never buy from you. It would be easy to promise the moon in your ad, but if you don't deliver in your follow-up emails, you will have alienated your prospect by deception and they will not be receptive to anything you say in the future.
Create a killer headline for your ad so it stands out above the hundreds of other ads. In the body offer something of value for free and tell them the benefits if they take action now.
Not many classified sites will generate significant traffic. Here are some of them that will:Classifieds2000: Bills itself as the "most highly trafficked classified site on the web" and manages ads on Netscape's and 120 other sites.
AOL Classified : AOL currently has over 44 million members. If only one classified ad could be placed for any web site or product, it would probably be here. AOL is now offering free ads in most categories and you will have exposure to your listing on AOL, CompuServe, Digital City, and Netscape. At AOL, you can have your ad placed in view of people on a service where the ads are actually read.
Yahoo Classified : There are very few free classified ad sites that actually work. Yahoo is one of the shining lights that stands out above the crowd of mediocre free ad sites. Yahoo has more traffic than any other site and it definitely shows when you place your ads here.
On Yahoo, you are allowed to place 10 ads at a time using one Yahoo ID, so do so. An effective tip here is to delete your ads every few days and replace them - even if the message is exactly the same. By doing this, you will be able to keep your ads towards the top of the list and receive more free exposures.
If you want to place more than 10 ads on Yahoo, just sign up more Yahoo email addresses.You can place thousands of classified ads at other major portal sites and smaller sites. If you can attract a few visitors from each, that would be a huge traffic source if you post at thousands of sites!
------------------------ Paid AdsPaid advertising may sound scary to small Internet business owners, but some form of paid ads is important sometimes if you wish to grow your business since paid ads motivate others to spread your marketing message to their own networks of visitors and customers.
There are different types of paid ads. The quickest, lowest cost, and most effective type of paid online ads is placing sponsorships or solo ads in ezines or email newsletters.Nothing else will even come close to the results you can produce through this method. You can purchase sponsorships or solo ads for $100 to $500 and often get results of three to five times it costs if you have an effective ad sales copy for the target audience. There isn’t anywhere else that you can get this kind of return for your buck when it comes to spending money on marketing.
Another good idea is ezine classifieds. You can advertise in ezines with 10,000 to 300,000 opt-in subscribers for less than $50.00. You can reach thousands of potential customers in your targeted market. Click through rates are likely to be in the range of 1% to 3%.
With thousands of different ezines available, you can expand into hundreds of them once you find a classified ad and follow-up system that works for your product or service. Check out the ezine directories I listed in the last lesson to look for ezines that accept ads.
Don’t forget to track all of your ads. Any ad, including free ones, you place without tracking is wasted time and money! Without proper tracking, you won't know how your marketing methods are doing, which ones are making money for you and you should keep doing, how much you can afford on advertising, whether you should improve your sales copy or ad...
Without these information, how can you expect your marketing effort to be successful? Especially when it's a paid ad?Another form of paid ads is banner ad. Banner ads have been around the longest. It was once very popular long time ago, I mean 3 years ago. At that time, everybody was talking about building a web site, attract traffic, and then - sell advertising space! I would say, huge banner ads spending was one of the reasons many dot-coms failed.
Today, banner ads have lost its popularity and effectiveness, for both advertisers and publishers.Typically these are 468x60 pixel animated and linked graphic ads that appear at the top of a web page. They are usually sold on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis. Targeted sites may get CPM rates of $35-50 or more, but banner ads to reach general audiences are priced $1 to $10 CPM. Banners that pop up on search sites triggered by a keyword can cost $20 to $30 CPM.
Can you justify the cost? Be very careful and always do the math first. If you're paying $10 CPM and the click-through rate is an industry average of 0.5%, then it costs you $10 to get 5 people to your site, or $2 each! If 5% of the visitors to your site make a purchase, which is pretty high conversion rate, then the cost per customer is $40. Luckily, price is always negotiable nowadays. Realize that there is a lot more banner ad space available right now than is actually being sold, though this may not be true for the niche sites you may be interested in. It is a buyer's market, so it pays to negotiate.
The more impressions you are ready to buy, the stronger your negotiating strength. Contact the Webmaster and ask for a Rate Card. It is just a place to begin the negotiations.
If you ask me, I would suggest that the maximum price of banner ads for small business is $10 CPM.However, you may want to spend more on banner ads some day for some reason. For example, your business have grown to such a stage that brand name, not the direct sales, is very critical for you. That's why the big guys still put banner ads at popular commercial sites and search engines.
Then there are banner ad networks that can help manage large-scale banner ads campaigns. They also offer very sophisticated tracking tools that give you lots of valuable information about who is visiting your site, and what actions they are taking.
Some of the popular banner ads networks include:DoubleClick
Microsoft bCentral's LinkExchange Banner Network
------------------------ Give Away Freebies
In order to make money online, there is one thing you absolutely must do: you must motivate people to read what you have to say. Whether it is your email message or your web pages, if they don't read it, you don't make money.
Among all the methods to make them read, one stands out and shoulders above the rest- giving something of value away for free.
Here's a perfect example of this in action: this free e-course itself!
When you saw the invitation to this e-course, at my site, in classified ads, in email signature, from newsgroup... were you curious as to what's in the e-course? Or wanted to get the gift eBooks?
Hey, you've read it this far haven't you? It must have been somewhat effective.How many times have you tried a free magazine subscription? How about a free month of Internet connection? Ever receive a free shampoo sample in the mail? You see, these big companies know the power of "free". Do you think they would go around giving their stuff away for free if it didn't pay off in the long run?
Even if you never subscribe to that magazine, sign on with that ISP, or buy that brand of shampoo, these companies have accomplished an objective. You have tried their product and heard their name. Perhaps you even were impressed by the fact that they gave you something for free.
The bottom line is that "free" works in marketing, especially on the Internet.Whether it is a free subscription to your email newsletter, a free software download, or something else of value, if you give it away for free with no strings, people will get it and remember you.
What can you give away that is valuable to your prospects, but is low or no cost to you? On the Internet, you can always create no cost freebies to give away. You can always find an angle.
Provide free articles to other web sites. Free eBook downloads. Give away free CGI programs. Provide hundreds of links to needed tools. Provide links to downloadable software. Free newsletter of value. Free e-greeting cards. Free clip arts. Free banner design service. Free e-course like this one:).
Don't limit your thinking to just what I have listed. Open your mind and begin thinking outside the box. Go to any search engine and search for "free", millions of pages will come out providing all sorts of freebies. Learn from others what you can give away.
For example, I bought the reprint right of Corey Rudl's new eBook "How To Create A Fortune On The Internet In Just Four Simple Steps" and sell it at my site.It's a fantastic online money-making guide. To make the package more attractive, I bundle five bonus eBooks with it - more than $100 value! I believe there are others promoting this book, but nobody is offering such useful eBooks as bonus for free!
Don't give away rubbish. You want people to come to you looking for valuable information which gives you the opportunity to direct them to your product or service so that they end up buying from you.
Your objective is to get lots of traffic and develop credibility. If people feel your freebie is useless, whether free or not, they won't come back to you for more.Giving away something for free can make the difference between a winning site and a losing one. So make sure you have something of value for your visitors!
------------------------
Newsgroup And Forum Participant
One of my favorite online marketing vehicles is to participate in targeted newsgroups and forums on my subject.
Once you have a good web site with high quality content in place, you start visiting the newsgroups and forums regularly and then after you know your way around it, you should start answering questions and becoming an all around helpful individual.
You post answers to people's questions and actively take part in the conversations. By doing this, you can post your signature file with information about your site and product.
Do NOT post direct ads in newsgroups or forums or you will be flamed. You should only use a short signature about some benefit you offer.
Get involved in the conversations, post honest and useful opinions, be consistent, and become a trusted information source, or at least an online friend to other members. Interestingly enough, people are so curious that they want to know who you are as long as you give something helpful.
In addition, you can learn more about your subject. There are many experts in all sorts of industries hanging out there. If you have a question, post it in an appropriate newsgroup, you will get the answer within hours!
Newsgroup and forum are technically different. But you can use them the same way in practice.A forum is a web site, or a section of a site, where you can go read and post messages via your web browser. It doesn't require any other software. There are thousands of forums out there. A good place where you can find a listing of forums available is Forum Directory.
Newsgroups are slightly more difficult. Normally you need to use newsgroup reading software to participate. Here's one, Free Agent, you can download for free.Pick out the newsgroups your ISP's newsgroup server supports and that are discussing your subjects and use Free Agent to subscribe to them.
Or you can go to Google Groups to read and post messages via your web browser. You have to register as a Google user first. It's free.
And then participate!
----------------------- You are almost done!
See you in next lesson.
Zac Hewlett
Webmaster
Working At Home Business
http://www.working-at-home-business.com