by: Michele Pariza Wacek

I decided to try something a little different and illustrate the marketing challenges of a small business. I’m using one of my clients, PrescottWeddings.com.

PWC is an online resource guide for couples planning their weddings. Along with a ton of information for brides and grooms, the site includes a resource guide where local businesses can advertise their products and services.

We launched PWC in November 2001. Like many start-up businesses, PWC didn’t have much money for marketing. Yet we had two major challenges (three counting the limited budget):

1. PWC had to attract two kinds of target markets to the site — advertisers and couples — essentially at the same time. And if that wasn’t bad enough, we had to appeal to each group even though one was dependent on the other — advertisers wanted brides and grooms logging onto the site, and brides and grooms wanted a complete resource center.

2. Several bridal print publications had come and gone in Prescott — and had burned their advertisers while racing out of town. Businesses were understandably hesitant about sinking their money into another bridal venture.

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by: Diane Hughes

Everyone knows that advertising is essential to growing a business. One problem that small business owners have always faced is the high cost of marketing. Most, however don’t realize that there is an effective way to reduce the cost of your advertising while - at the same time - increasing its reach.

Advertising co-ops are nothing new. Usually they are a “perk” offered by major manufacturers to encourage retailers to promote their products. Because the retailer has direct access to customers that would want to buy certain products, it only makes sense that they should do joint advertising. You’ve seen it - McDonalds mentioning Coke in their commercials, Dell stating that you get a free Epson printer with purchase and so on.

The retailer doesn’t make the product the manufacturer is providing, but it IS a great match with what they DO offer. Nobody would want to eat a Big Mac without something to drink, and a computer wouldn’t do a lot of good without a printer.

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by: Bob McElwain

hen you first open your new site, hits will be slow in
coming (unless you are an expert at generating them). And sales
will be correspondingly scarce. Even so, you need to be checking
your stats and sales with care. The number that matters most to
you is …

The Value Of A Hit

By this, I mean, what is a hit worth to you? (By hit, I
mean one unique visitor or user session.) Compute this number
by dividing total sales amounts (gross profits) by the number
of hits. That is, find the total earned for say a month. This
includes your part of sales of products produced by others,
commissions on sales, and so forth. Your stats will provide
the number of unique hits.

For example, if you have a gross of $200 for the month, and
1000 hits, the value of a hit is 200/1000. Which is 0.20 or 20
cents. If gross was only $50, then this number is only 0.05 or
5 cents.

Moving Averages

With a mature site routinely generating hits, this number is
not likely to vary markedly from month to month. Even so, a good
plan is to include in your results a 3 (or 4) month moving
average. For example, given Jan: $0.30, Feb: $0.20, and Mar:
$0.10, add these three numbers and divide by 3. (30 + 20 + 10)/3
= 60/3 = 20.

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by: Jeremy Gislason

As you begin marketing and promoting your online business you are going to run into some unbelievable advertising opportunities. Generally speaking if the ad offering sounds too good to be true–It is.There are companies that will tell you they will get you listed in the top 10 search engines or place your link on millions of sites or they will get you listed in the top 10 returns of search engines. This last one sounds similar to the first, but there is a big difference.

Google searches over 3 billion pages during their searches. The companies that tell you they will get you listed in the top 10 of the major search engines would have to defy all the principles of math to do this. They could not work with more than a few companies in order to achieve this and honestly, there is no way they can get you listed in the top 10 of the search engines placements at all unless they make up their own search terms and people search on that specific term.

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by: Stephen Bucaro

If you are going to be placing ads on your website, you’ll want to put some thought into how you’ll integrate them. Poor integration of ads into your website will cause visitors to click away fast. Successful integration of ads into your site can be highly profitable. Before I show you where to position ads, I want to mention a few important points about ads.

1. Ratio of ads to content

How many ads should you place on your website? There is an optimum ratio of ads to content. If your website has too high a proportion of advertising relative to content, the traffic on your website will suffer and you will lose money. If your website has too low a portion of advertising relative to content, the sales on your website will suffer and you will lose money.

What is the optimum ratio of ads to content? I can’t point to any studies, but I feel the optimum ratio is somewhere around 20 to 25 percent ads relative to content. Go much above that ratio and, despite more ads, the revenue from your site goes down. But, there are ways to exceed that ratio and still make more money.

Ads as a service

Advertisements can provide useful information, as well as content. In that case, the ads become content. Here’s an example. Rather than post ads that pay you the highest commission, post ads that provide the best value to the visitors to your website. These are ads where the value is so good you might respond to the ad yourself. This type of ad is more of a service than an advertisement.

Another example is ads for gifts around the holidays. People expect and are not turned off by an increase in ads around the holidays. Finding gifts for everyone on your list is difficult work, and people appreciate gift ideas. Again, this type of ad is more of a service than an advertisement.

You can safely exceed the normal ratio of ads to content if you hide the ads in the content. An example of this is product “reviews”. For example, computer magazines are almost 100 percent advertising posing as product reviews.

2. Repetition of ads and ad management

I have seen websites that display the exact same banner on every page. If I didn’t respond to the banner on the first page, what makes them think I will repond to it on the second, third … hundredth page?

Displaying the same banner on every page of your website is annoying to your website’s visitors, and a money losing propostion for you. Keep your ads fresh. Ads are boring enough without repeating the same ad over and over. Display a variety of ads, and use an ad management system. An example of an ad management system is a banner rotator.

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by: Loren Baker

The number of sites on the Web today is almost infinite, with new ones popping up every day. There are multiple types of sites: portals, “brochureware,” content sites, directories, search engines, and ecommerce sites, to name a few. Those that do not sell product or services directly or indirectly on their site often rely on advertising revenue to support operations.

So how does one get started getting companies to advertise on a site? Here’s a quick primer to getting out of the gate.

Google AdSense

Probably one of the most simplistic ways to place advertising on your site is to sign up with Google as one of its AdSense
Publishers. The Adsense program displays text ads rather than images on your site. Google then serves ads based on the content on on the page containing their ad code. For example, if we post a tip on our site about email marketing, Google ads will likely deal with email marketing services or products (see our archived tip, How Email Formats May Affect Response Rates, as an example).

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by: Jim Edwards

(c) Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved http://www.thenetreporter.com ===================================== As the Internet continues to populate with websites trying to turn a buck, two drastically different schools of thought have developed on how to advertise online - “Push” and “Pull.”

“Push” advertising involves the use of “in-your-face” advertising tactics such as pop-up windows and direct email. “Pull” advertising entails using search engines and posting articles that literally “pull” interested consumers to a website on their own terms.

As web surfers revolt against pushy advertising, site owners who understand how to pull consumers to their sites will come out the long-term winners.

“Push” advertising tactics worked in the past because they had not reached a saturation point. Since not everyone used pop-up windows, a site owner could use them without fear of backlash. Now it seems pop-up windows hit consumers from every angle and even multiple times from the same sites.

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by: Diane Hughes

Copyright 2005 Diane Hughes

If you’re like most ezine advertisers you wish to generate FAST Sales by sending your message in front of thousands ezine subscribers.

Some spend hundreds in ezine advertising hoping to generate a BIG profit…  but it ends up costing them more than they earn.

Yes, ezine advertising works, but if you really want to WIN the ezine advertising GAME you must take in consideration the strategies below:

1. What do you plan to advertise?

e.g. an affiliate product, your own product, a course by e-mail, an ebook, etc.

You must know exactly what you want to promote in other ezines before advertising in them; ask yourself these questions:

Is the product related to your target audience?
Is the product valuable?
Does the seller offer a money-back guarantee?
Does the Web Site make you want to purchase the product yourself?
Does the Web Sales Letter convert into Sales?

2. Who is your target audience?

The product you plan to promote in other ezines must be related to a certain niche (target audience) so don’t make the mistake to think that everyone needs or wants what you promote.

e.g. if your product is related to dog lovers, don’t advertise in ezines related to cat lovers because you won’t make any sales.

3. Where to find the ‘BEST’ ezine to advertise in?

The ‘BEST’ ezine to promote a product in is the one targeted to your audience.

The more specific your target audience and the ezine TOPIC, the more sales you could receive.

Also, the ‘BEST’ ezine to advertise in is the one where the publisher has already built TRUST with his/her subscribers and they purchase regularly from their recommendations.

Ezine Advertising List
http://www.probiztrack.com/go/p.cgi/ezines

4. What’s your BUDGET?

If you only afford $300 to spend on ezine advertising, you don’t want to spend it all on one ezine. Try to invest your money wisely, step-by-step.

Have you seen a publisher claiming their ezine has 90,000+ subscribers and they sell advertising for $25 - $50 or so?

If these offers sound too good to be true, maybe it is!

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by: Dave Collins

One of the more frightening realities of business is that in order to make money, you often have to spend it first. For independent software developers, the costs of doing business are usually very low. There are often no expensive offices to purchase or lease, a limited amount of hardware to buy and maintain, and for most, no stock to tie-up precious capital.

For many developers, the first and most obvious option for productive spending is advertising. And for the online business, there is no shortage of options to choose from.

Most websites offer some form of graphic or text advertising, and there is a bewildering variety of mailing lists, newsletters, and regular mailings. And that’s before you even begin to consider the printed media.

However, before you even start to think about where you want to advertise, you need to consider why you’re advertising in the first place.

For many companies, the aim of an advert will simply be to increase sales and make more money. Other legitimate reasons for wanting to advertise can include raising the profile of your company or product, increasing brand awareness, and testing new pricing strategies or new markets.

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by: John Colanzi

Free ezine advertising has been with us for some time now.
As the ezine explosion continues, publishers are scrambling
to keep pace in the battle for new subscribers.

Freebies have become the order of the day.

Free Ebooks

Free Software

Free Training Courses

Free Advertising

This has created an extremely favorable environment for
subscribers. They can pick and choose from the freebies of
their choice.

Many have hopped on the Free Ezine Advertising Bandwagon.
But as the Free ads became more common place, Free Ezine
advertising began to lose it’s pulling power.

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