Direct Market Ads: Five Ways On How To Create Income From Your Ads
You just spent hundreds, or in some cases, thousands of dollars placing a direct marketing ad. The day it comes out you are anxiously awaiting the response from potential clients. You have done everything right.
The ad meets all the criteria of a good response rating, the magazine you chose is your target market, and you have placed the ad in an opportune location. Now you are ready for the calls to start flowing in.
There is a five finger rule that you can follow that could dramatically increase your income from advertising. It is simple, effective and profitable.
Finger Rule #1: Tell the person who you are. Introduce yourself by name. This immediately puts the persons guard down and makes you more personable. Remember, the most effective means of selling is building a relationship. If you can begin to build trust in the first few seconds, the following steps will be much easier.
Finger Rule #2: Ask them for their name. If you have done the first step correctly, they will give their name to you more freely. Use their name when it is appropriate during your conversation. Everyone likes to be recognized.
This follows the skill of building a relationship. At some point you are going to need to get pertinent information such as, address, phone number, e-mail address, etc. This will only be given if you have been able to build their trust.
Finger Rule #3: Ask them what they liked about the ad. By asking them to tell you what interested them, you will be able to determine where you need to go with the conversation. It will also tell you if they are serious or not. If they are not serious, send them to your web site and let them know they are free to contact you later with questions.
Finger Rule #4: Ask for the sale and assume to sale. After asking, be quiet! No matter how uncomfortable it gets, be quiet! The first who speaks louses. Remember, if you do not ask for the sale, you probably won’t get it!
Finger Rule #5: If the answer is no, move on. Give them your web site, etc., so they can look into your product or services more fully. Keep the door open. They may contact you later. If the answer is yes, close the sale.
Get all the important information and put that information into your system. Name, address, phone number, e-mail address, credit or debit card information, etc. Keep your conversation simple. Practice beforehand what you will say so that it will feel natural. Do not go into lengthy details. Answer questions directly and honestly. It’s that easy!
As you begin to practice and use these techniques, you will find that you will be spending less time with people who are not genuinely interested. This will give you more productive time with those that are serious about what you are offering. Your skills will sharpen each time you put them into practice.
Use this opportunity to entice them, without giving all the information at once. If they continue to ask questions answer them, however, do not put yourself in a position where you over sell. This is a common mistake. You want to build a relationship. This will give you a long term loyal customer or client, not just a quick sell.
Text-Link Advertising: Making The Most Of Your Budget
Reading through a text-link advertising forum recently, I noticed a number of negative posts. One post in particular stuck in my mind and I want to answer it here.
The poster had been frustrated with his results from a text-link ad campaign. He mentioned that he was new to text-link advertising and he wasn’t getting any results.
My short answer to him would be, “Your text-link ads can get results, but you have to use the right text links and the right ads.”
My long answer follows, in the form of five key tips for any text-link advertising campaign:
1-First, make sure you have a product that’s good. In this case, your product is your website. Make sure it’s designed well, easy to navigate, with content people are interested in. Nothing is worse for a bad website than a good text-link ad campaign–you drive people to it once and then they never come back.
While you’re at it, be sure your website is designed to encourage visitors to do what you want them to do (i.e. click on CPC ads, buy your or your affiliate program’s products, etc.), ETHICALLY, of course.
2-Second, what’s your ad campaign objective? Before you spend a penny on text-link advertising, you need to decide what you want your ads to do for you. Do you just want more traffic to your site? Or do you want people to take some action once they get to your site (i.e., buy a product, sign up for a newsletter, etc.). Make sure you’re clear on what you want for your text-link ad dollars first.
3-Related to step 2, take advantage of any special features offered by the website you’ve placed your text-link ads on–especially if they offer conversion tracking. Conversion, for the uninitiated, means CONVERTING a visitor into either a customer (they buy a product), a subscriber (they sign up for your newsletter) or whatever other action you want to “CONVERT” your visitors into taking. Conversion tracking will help you figure out which of your text-link ads are getting you the kind of visitors you want.
4-Test, test, test. The beauty of most text-link advertising is that it’s not prohibitively expensive to advertise or test your ads (as long as you watch your spending limits). If you can, run a few different text-link ad variations.
Something to consider when creating your text-link ad: put yourself in your visitors’ shoes as much as possible. When you’re just surfing the web casually or looking for information in a broad sense, your searches tend to be broad, don’t they? But when you’re ready to buy, or take some other action, your searches are more narrow and your search terms are more specific to what you want.
For example, if you’re casually interested in bicycles, you might search just using that as your keyword, “bicycle.” But once you’ve decided to buy a bike, you’ll probably have something more specific in mind: “red ten-speed bikes” or “Mike’s Bike Shop.”
If you want your visitors to do something specific at your website, then your text-link ad should be as specific as possible.
Once you set up your text-link ad campaign, give it some time to see what ads work, at least a week or preferably a couple of weeks. Be aware of the season, or if a holiday weekend falls during your testing, as those factors will affect your text-link ads’ results.
5-And last but not least, don’t be afraid to make changes to your text-link ad campaign. Just make sure they’re incremental, and give each change some time to see if it works.
For example, pick the text-link ad that gives you the best conversion rate and tweak it, while you drop the others. Change the times and days of the week it appears (if you can) to find out when to schedule them. Or try another text-link ad variation.
Just make sure you make these changes to your text-link ads one at a time and keep track of them (enter your text-link ad changes into a diary or journal, for example) so you can easily measure their effect. A tweak as minor as changing a word or two in your text-link ad could increase your conversion rate significantly. Or it might not. So keep track of what works (and what doesn’t so you don’t repeat it).
Don’t make the mistake that poster made, throwing money at his text-link advertising and then cutting it off in frustration when it didn’t work. Make sure to set up your text-link ads properly and then tinker with them until you get the results you want.
Five Steps To Profit From Google Adwords
Although I was marketing online since 1997 and was making money on the Internet, as soon as I discovered the famous GoogleCash ebook I was instantly hooked. It seemed so easy to profit from Google Adwords: just join an affiliate program, promote it on Google Adwords pay per click (ppc) search engine starting from only five dollars, and watch your profits soar…
However, soon I realized that it was not that simple. You must know how to select profitable affiliate programs, how to research keywords and group them in ad groups, how to bid and manage your campaigns, how to track your keywords and ads, etc.
The subject was very interesting for me and I just kept reading a great deal of information related to making income with Google Adwords: ebooks, guides, tutorials and e-mail courses.
After trying to implement the knowledge gained in practice, after long trial and error months, I was finally making profit and not losing my money.
Here are five little-known steps that you should take in order to profit from Goolge Adwords:
1. Target profitable two-tier or residual income niche markets.
2. Use effective tools and software for your Google Adwords keyword research.
3. Get a domain name, a hosting account, and create a simple landing page with an opt-in form.
4. Promote your landing page with Google Adwords and capture your visitors’ e-mail addresses.
5. Follow up with your subscribers and profit by pre-selling your niche products or services.
Let’s quickly analyze each of the steps outlined above and see why you should stick to the plan if you want to maximize your income from Google Adwords.
Promote Profitable Niche Two Tier Or Residual Income Products And Services
First, the products or services that you will promote with Google Adwords should target a niche where people have lots of money and are willing to spend it.
Second, you can make much more money if you advertise two-tier or residual income products or services.
Usually, majority of Google Adwords books teach you to choose an affiliate program from publisher networks like ClickBank, Commission Junction, LinkShare, etc. But these are the programs that everybody use. So, try to do a research on two-tier or residual income programs in your target niche, and you may be surprized with the results…
Two-tier programs reward you for signing up affiliates. This way you earn commissions not only on your sales, you earn commissions on their sales too.
A good example of residual income programs are web hosting affiliate programs where you can profit from your sales lifelong!
Use Effective Tools for Your Google Adwords Keyword Research
First, did you know that you can spy on your competitors keywords by using an amazing tool called GoogSpy: (http://www.googspy.com)
Simply, enter a domain name of your direct competitors and see what keywords they are bidding on. This little-known secret could make your online profits soar instantly.
Second, as you probably know, the competition among advertisers in ppc marketing is fierce. That’s why you should avoid using only free keyword research tools like Overture’s Keyword Selector: (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion)
You will miss lots of profitable keywords if you do so. To succeed with ppc the only tool that works is WordTracker: (http://www.adwords-revealed.com/wordtracker)
You should take at least a one day’s subscription when you are ready for your keyword research.
Get a Domain name, a Hosting Account, and Create a Simple Landing Page
If you don’t have your own web site for your niche product or service that you advertise with ppc search engines, you are leaving money on the table. Here’s why…
Capture Your Google Adwords Visitors’ E-mail Addresses
Yes, you can promote affiliate links directly with Google Adwords. However, this way you will lose lots of prospects that could be contacted later.
Picture this…
When you promote an affiliate link you drive traffic directly to your affiliate web site. If a visitor doesn’t purchase the product or service immediately, the chances are he or she will never purchase from your affiliate link again.
Of course, top affiliate programs place cookies on their web site visitors’ browsers. This way you get paid even if your referral returns to your affiliate web site later. That’s why it is important to select the best affiliate programs from the begining.
If you can achieve 1% visitor to sales conversion ratio (it means 1 sale from 100 visitors) with Google Adwords - you have a winner!
Imagine… What if you could set up a simple opt-in form on your landing page and write a great copy encouraging your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter or an e-mail course? You would enjoy not 1% but 20 - 30% visitor to subscriber conversion ratio when driving targeted traffic to your web site with Google Adwords!
You see, when you capture email addresses, you build a list. And, as they say - money is in the list!
Follow Up With Your Subscribers and Pre-Sell Your Products and Services
This step is where you make real profit. Simply, create quality targeted content in your newsletter or ecourse and follow up with your prospects using autoresponders.
It is said that online products and services are sold after 7 - 9 follow up messages. Besides, you can contact your subscribers anytime later as new quality products hit your targeted niche market.
This simple surefire action plan should help you boost your homebased Google Adwords business profit instantly. As you can see, without a web site you cannot profit as much as you could by simply creating a one-page website.
Internet Advertising Options
Your online business will likely require more advertising than a contemporary business downtown because of the fierce competition on-line–thousands of blogs and websites are created everyday.
Yet, some people, new to the world of online business, do not spend the time nor the money necessary to advertise their business appropriately and are, in turn, losing money. Here are some of the options you have when advertising on-line.
Advertising In e-Zines: E-zines are the magazines of the Internet, written on a particular subject and read by people interested in that subject. These readers are already potential customers and advertising your site almost guarantees to help drive traffic to your site and increase sales for your product.
You should be sure when advertising in ezines that you are not advertising along side competitors. Ask the ezine producer if there is a policy concerning posting competing ads.
It is also a good idea to subscribe to the ezine before making a decision about whether or not to advertise in it. An ezine that runs fewer ads is a better choice than one that runs many ads.
To find a relevant e-zine search for an online Directory of Ezines to find publications that have a large readership and offer advert space.
Pay-Per-Click: With pay-per-click, you can advertise your site and only pay for people who click the link and go to your site. Once your ad is placed, it may be seen by many thousands of people, but you only pay for the people who actually use the link.
Another popular pay-per program is the pay-per-lead program, or affiliate marketing, that allows you to only pay for leads. Usually this means that you pay for only those who download a trial, fill out a form or enter a sweepstakes; whatever you choose.
Lastly you can display pay-per-click banner ads in which your company would be allowed to place a banner on someone else’s site and you would be charged for every click that your banner receives.
Opt-In-Email: Opt-in-Email marketing may be the most expensive if not executed correctly. It can be misused very easily, thus tarnishing your reputation. Using opt-in emails, you would submit your sales copy to a company that will in turn email it to those on their mailing list.
You should be very careful since some of the companies that advertise their mailing list as an opt-in email service are really just sending out SPAM (unsolicited mail). It’s essential that you have a perfect and effective sales letter when using opt-in mailing lists. Without effective sales copy your money and time have been wasted.
Text Link Ads: This is a bit more controversial, but still an effective option. These links do two things, a) drive traffic from people clicking the link and visiting you site, b) more importantly these links may boost your organic search engine results.
Your organic listings are the listings within search engines that you didn’t pay for directly. This is a tremendous traffic booster.
However, as great as text link ads are, Google doesn’t like them and will penalise those whom use text link ads. So, if you decide you want to take the risk, make sure nothing gets published publicly about the location of your paid links, any information about the site you bought from sells text links, or your text link campaign.
