Optimizing You Advertising
Posted Thursday, October 16, 2003
What's The Best Bang For The Buck?
There are three popular ways people advertise web sites
1) Print Advertising in a newspaper, magazine, trade journal, etc.
2) Banner Advertising - such as at the top of a web site
3) Adverting in an E-Mail Newsletter - such as in a humor list, investment report, tip of the day, industry-specific mailing list, or similar.
There is one other popular method of promotion which is a form of advertising
4) Link Exchange, or Web Ring - where people of similar type sites link together in a ring to drive traffic to each other sites. Link Exchanges and web rings are normally free.
OUR OPINION
PRINT All these methods can work to some degree. However, we've found that the best way to get traffic to your web site is to advertise on the internet itself, not a newspaper. So unless you are building "brand recognition", skip the print advertising. (note it's okay to list your web address in a space ad, just don't expect tons of traffic as a result.)
BANNERS Banner advertising is very popular, yet has mixed reviews. Banner ads are usually purchased in thousands, such as $20 per thousand impressions, hits, page views, or click-throughs. Be careful about how you purchase banner advertising. (A click through is far better than an impression or page view). The more advanced search engines can present banners based on search terms. You do a search on camping, and voila, the L.L. Bean banner comes up! Neat trick. Banner advertising is good, and should be considered. But it is not our favorite form of online advertising.
LINK EXCHANGES / WEB RINGS If you are on a tight budget, (or have no advertising budget), consider a banner link exchange or web ring. It works like this put a banner-sized link (normally at the bottom of your web site) to the link exchange, which automatically rotates links to other web sites like yours in the link or ring.
For example, someone lands upon a UFO web page, and they see the Banner Exchange link to your Crop Circle web page. They click on it and come to your site. That's good! But at the bottom of your site they see a link exchange for a really cool X-Files web site, and they click on that and are gone. That's bad! But at least you got a visitor that you may not have received otherwise.
Reports show that link exchanges and web rings can definitely boost traffic to your site, and many times they can be better than nothing. But for a more serious business-oriented site, they are not usually considered.
E-MAIL NEWSLETTERS
In our opinion the BEST BANG FOR THE BUCK in internet advertising comes from advertising in an E-MAIL NEWSLETTER. We've seen good results and have personally witnessed successes as a result of people advertising their web sites in an e-mail newsletter.
We're not necessarily talking about writing your own e-mail newsletter (although that works too), but taking out a text-based "space ad" on an existing e-mail newsletter. These ads are usually 6-8 lines long, and allow you to include your offer, your web site address, and an e-mail address.
Here are a few reasons these e-mail newsletter ads can work so well.
1) the audience is usually interested in the subject, and thus gets the newsletter in the first place
2) the audience usually reads the newsletter
3) the advertisement is usually at the top of the newsletter, and there is usually just one advertisement (yours)
4) it uses a push method of delivery it goes right to the reader (subscriber)
5) you can use a handy hyperlink to get people to go right to your web page with a click of the mouse
6) it is normally text-based in black and white, and doesn't SHOUT at you with color, flashing images, and other trashy, cheap-looking tricks.
7) Advertisers who use this method of advertising tend to be more quality advertisers, and a little more serious about what they are offering and how it can benefit you.
8) The e-mail method is more targeted to your audience, and avoids the shotgun big-numbers based approach. If you have a good offer, definitely consider advertising in an e-mail newsletter. There are thousands of good e-mail newsletters out there. Here are just a few
InfoBeat has several excellent targeted newsletters (sports, investing, technology, etc.). Start here if you are serious. http//www.infobeat.com
Tip World sends millions of e-mail messages every day. Yours could be on them. (www.tipworld.com)
Wired Magazine has an online edition which accepts ads. (www.wired.com)
There's a lot more, but here's a few for further research C-Net's Shareware Dispatch, Dummies Daily, Humor Lists, WebScout, LockerGnome, and many more.
Conclusion If you have a really good offer at your web site, (free report, free trial, sample report, money-saving advice, etc.) then this kind of advertising can work very well. Our suggestion start on a limited basis, to get it started. We suspect you'll be pleasantly surprised with the kind of response you can get. Also, make sure everything is ready when your ad goes out, so you can respond quickly to your inquiries.
