Introduction:
This is a series of articles about marketing and advertising. There are different ways you can reach an audience of millions of individuals all around the world. I show you on this series how to implement profitable strategies in your marketing career.
It has been said that “what matters is not what you sell but how you promote it.” So, the secret to success lays within your marketing techniques. That’s why it is very important for business owners to develop skills which allow them to increase the sales of their products.
One of the most important skills you must have is the ability to reach a lot of people quickly. To do this you need to realize how powerful media is an how it can drastically increase your revenues.
– Classified ads –
Free classified ads are another way you can advertise online at no cost to you. They represent on the Internet what a newspaper ad represents on the streets. You can post ads to thousands of web sites and reach millions of internet users.
The drawback of this strategy is that it is time consuming, but once you get used to it you will realize which are the easier ad sections to post to and the most effective ones. It may take some time though before you discover those that fit you well.
You can post your ads to the following websites:
http://classifieds.excite.com/
http://finditclassifieds.com
http://washingtonpost.com
Among others.
– E-zine promotion –
You can post an add to a vast amount of individuals by submitting it to many different e-zines at once. This is simple and free. Just go to http://www.subscribeme.net/ read the information they provide for you there and complete their form.
Your ad will be displayed in hundreds of e-zines all over the Internet. There is a combined amount of more than 1,000,000 subscribers at those web sites, so you will gain a lot of exposure from them.
I think it is better if you use an alternate e-mail address for this purpose. You can get a free email address from Yahoo. When I joined the list I received many messages every day.
This technique could bring you additional traffic. The only problem I see is that most other individuals also join the list to advertise to other people as you do. So, the goal of most subscribers is to sell products, not to buy them.
I think though it is a good way to diversify your trading strategies. You could give it a try and see if it works for you. Remember to use an alternate email address and read their terms and conditions first.
– Safe lists –
Safe lists are lists of e-mail addresses from people who have requested to receive messages and information about a specific topic. As you probably already know to deliver comments or advertisement via e-mail to others without their consent or authorization is called spamming and is illegal.
Also if you spam others do not expect to receive a reasonable response rate from them. What do I mean? I mean that you can send a message to millions of individuals, but if they are not interested in what you are selling and they didn’t requested that information from you, then you will probably make very few sales, plus you will receive a lot of complaints from hundreds of them.
Then what is the smart way to advertise using e-mail addresses? The answer is safe lists. Think about it. This people are looking for information related to the products or services you are selling. Many of them are even getting paid to read your messages. This technique is also called advertising to targeted opt-in mailing lists. You can create your own list of subscribers.
You can join Yahoo groups http://groups.yahoo.com/ or Google groups http://groups.google.com/ and start your own newsletter. The way you get subscribers is by posting valuable information there that your visitors would like to read. You can also join any of the companies bellow:
Bravenet
http://www.bravenet.com/
Topica
http://www.topica.com/
Zinester
http://www.zinester.com/
Your mailing list provider
http://www.yourmailinglistprovider.com/
Coollist
http://www.coollist.com/
Now, keep in mind that building your own list of subscribers takes time. Some people prefer to pay others for the privilege of advertising on their lists. For example, www.e-mailpaysu.com offer you the opportunity to advertise to their subscribers for a fee. This is just an example. There are many other companies like these on the Internet today and their prices vary.
As you can see, this techniques can increase your exposure and help you get more clients. You can read about other effective marketing techniques from my other articles on this series.
EasyWebRiches © 2006
Advertise to millions -#2- Classified ads, e-zine promotion, safe lists.
10 Tips for Successful Ezine Advertising
Article Body:
When it comes to advertising, I've tried just about everything. I tried free classified ad sites, I tried FFA sites, I tried banner exchange programs.
The results? Not much.
I was tired of hearing that the Internet is the largest market in human history. Maybe so, but how could I reach those millions of people?
The answer, I discovered, is ezine advertising.
Ezines are sometimes called 'opt-in' lists because everyone who receives an ezine has chosen to do so.
And that's why ezine advertising gets results. People read ezines and they'll read your ad. And if you've matched the ezine to the product you're selling, you've reached your target audience.
There are currently around 90,000 ezines being published every month. So whatever you're selling, there's more than likely an ezine that will take your ad straight to the audience you want to reach.
Ezine advertising is not only effective, it's cheap as well. A 5 line ad in an ezine that goes to 3000 people will cost you between $5 and $20 per issue.
As a general rule, you'll always get back at least the cost of the ad, and usually much more. So there's very little risk.
But there are some tips for successful ezine advertising. Here they are:
1. The first and most important rule is: "Track your Ads!" Say you place an ad in 5 different ezines and get a hundred responses. If you don't track your ads, you won't know which ezines were pulling responses and which weren't.
But how do you track your ads?
Then, when you get a reply with 'ezineA' in the subject field, you'll know which ezine it came from.
For a URL, it's the same principle:
However, if you're going to code your URLs, you'll need a good webstats program to track the coded URLs. Here's another way to code your URLs: for every ezine ad, create a duplicate of your homepage and name the page after the ezine that your ad will appear in. So, if the ad is appearing in EzineA
2. Target your audience. It may seem obvious but some advertisers overlook this. If you're selling a web-marketing course, don't advertise in an ezine that deals with stock options; they probably won't be interested.
Use the 'subject categories' in any ezine directory to find ezines that relate to the product you're selling. You can find a list of 56 ezine directories in 'The Free Directory of Ezines' at:
3. Once you've chosen a number of ezines that target your audience, subscribe to them and examine the ads closely. If you see an ad that keeps repeating issue after issue, you can be pretty sure that it's getting results. You've found a good ezine to advertise in.
4. Check to see how many ads are in the ezine. You probably won't get much response from an ad in an ezine that has 15 or 20 ads per issue. Readers of those ezines have become hardened to the ads and have learnt to skip them.
5. Check to see if the ezine publisher has a policy of never running ads for two similar products in the same issue - your ad will be much more effective if it's the only one of its kind in that particular issue.
6. Small ezines Vs. Big ezines: bigger is not always better. The big ezines with 1000's of subscribers tend to have more ads than the small ezines. Also, small ezines with only a few hundred subscribers often have a much more targeted audience than the big ezines.
7. Repeat your ads. Research shows that off the Web, an ad has to be seen about 21 times before someone acts on it; on the Internet it's about 9 times. If your budget allows, try and have your ad repeated at least three times in a particular ezine. Most ezines offer discount packages for bulk advertising.
8. Email address Vs. URL. The advantage of giving an email address is that it gives you the opportunity to send a powerful sales letter to the person who responded to your ad. It's also much easier to track your ads with an email address than a URL.
9. Offer something free in your ad copy. It'll often tip the balance between a response and no response.
10. Keep your ads short, even if you're not using the number of words you're allowed. Short ads are more likely to be read. Keep your sentences short too; they pack much more power. Use the word 'You'. Don't describe your product but tell the reader what your product can do for them.
11 Reasons to Submit This Article to an Ezine
What's an article anyway, and why would I want to submit one to an ezine? That was a two-fold question and will require two answers.
An ezine article is usually composed of approximately 500 words on a single subject that would be of interest to your target market. At the end of the article, you should include a "resource box." This box should provide such things as your name, the name of your company, your web site address, email address, and a small blurb about your product/service.
Writing an article is not hard work. All it requires is some research and note taking. Use any of multiple sources to find information about the topic that you choose to write about. Then write your article in your own words using the notes that you took during your research. It's not difficult and it's something that you learned to do early in school (grade school probably). Write in a conversational tone. Write like you are talking to your best friend.
Now, I'll answer the second question. The reasons to submit this article to an ezine are varied, but not difficult to understand. They all boost your bottom line.
1. The submission of the article will help identify your business (web site) in the Internet marketplace. This is normally called "branding."
2. Article submission provides publicity, virtually free.
3. Someone may like your writing style and hire you to write articles or ebooks for them.
4. The published article will drive traffic to your web site.
5. If the publisher of the ezine that you submit your article to maintains an archive, your article may be read many months later. Traffic may still be driven to your site this way.
6. People will come to know you as an expert on your subject.
7. You might get your article published in free ebooks that are distributed all over the web. This will drive more traffic to your web site.
8. This will help you become a trusted vendor of information.
9. If you allow anyone to publish your article or email it to a friend, you will gain further exposure for free.
10. Webmasters may read your article and display it on their web site. You get additional free exposure.
11. If you send out an ezine, you could offer to swap articles with other ezine publishers for free. This provides more publicity without expense.
So, there are quite a few benefits that you could receive from publishing small articles like this one. If that isn't enough reasons for publishing your own articles, I don't know what else you'd need. Don't forget to provide enough valuable information. The more knowledge you supply, the more valuable you become. Provide real value and you will always have people clamoring for more.
Using an Autoresponder to Publish an Ezine
There are many uses for an autoresponder. One
such use is the publishing and distribution of an
ezine or newsletter. Since autoresponder services
usually are set up to send automatic responses to
the people on the list at certain intervals after they
sign up, setting up an autoresponder to send out an
ezine can be a little confusing.
Depending on the service or autoresponder that you
are using, you will need a ‘broadcast’ feature. The
broadcast feature works essentially the same as the
autoresponse feature, with one big difference. The
messages are not sent out at intervals. The
messages can, however, be scheduled to go out on
a certain day, which has no bearing on when the
subscriber was actually added to the mailing list.
Broadcast messages are ‘one time’ messages that
are only sent to your current mailing list. People
who sign up for your list after the broadcast has
been sent do not receive it, unless the specifically
request it with an autoresponder address, which
you must set up.
Using the broadcast feature of most autoresponder
services, you can simply go and either type your
newsletter, or copy and paste it into the editor, then
choose to send the broadcast to your entire mailing
list. More advanced autoresponder services will
usually have broadcasting features.
Using an autoresponder to maintain a mailing list
and to distribute a newsletter is a wonderful idea.
Your subscribers can easily opt-in, or opt-out, and
all of the distribution is handled for you, based on
the schedule that you set. List maintenance can
become very difficult without the automation that
autoresponders provide. You can write each issue
of your ezine or newsletter well in advance, and
have it delivered to your mailing list, no matter
where you are or what you are doing. That is the
beauty of automation!
Since all past broadcast and autoresponse
messages are saved, you can easily refer back to
old issues, or allow people to request past issues.
You can also use the tracking feature throughout
each issue of the newsletter to determine how
many clicks you are getting for the various products
or websites that you promote in your ezine.
If you have not yet purchased an autoresponder or
signed up with any autoresponder service, make
sure that you inquire about the broadcast feature
first. Not all autoresponders or autoresponder
services have this feature, and as your marketing
progresses, you will find that this is one of the most
useful features of the service or program.