Buying Advertising and
Keeping Customers!
In my experience, search engines and directories are the
easiest and probably the most effective methods to bring users to a
site. But it’s never a good idea to use one tactic exclusively. In
this chapter we’re going to look at three other methods: banners,
text links and classified ads.
When the Web first started, banners were all the rage. Today,
they’re pretty much passé. They’re no longer a novelty and unless
they’re super-clever, users pretty much ignore them. Conversion
rates have dropped through the floor and many advertisers have found
other ways to push their products.
And yet, every website still contains a whopping great banner
ad splashed along the top or running up the side. In part, that’s
because they’ve become more sophisticated with better targeting and
improved graphics. But in practice, banner ads tend to be used for
one of two reasons: as a method of gaining/ giving users through an
affiliate program; or as a way of generating revenue—or
traffic—through paid advertising.
Both these methods work to some extent, but the key is always
to make sure the economics make sense. We’ll look closely at the
math in this chapter, but before we go on to talk about the math of
banner ads—and how to tell whether your banner campaign is
worthwhile—let’s just take a look at the terms involved. You’re
going to see these words whenever you join an affiliate program or
take part in any other kind of online marketing scheme. You should
definitely be familiar with them.
·
Banner Ad — A graphic ad linked to an
advertiser’s website. These usually run across the top of the page
but can also run up the page (“skyscrapers”). Banners are usually
limited by size.
·
Banner Views —The number of times a banner is
seen by users. This is usually the same as "page views," but counts
the number of times the banner is actually downloaded rather than
the number of times the page is downloaded. Some users click
away before the banner finishes loading.
·
Clicks/ Click Throughs — Banners are operated
by clicking the cursor over them. Not too surprisingly these
responses are called “clicks” or “click throughs.”
·
Click Through Rate (CTR) — The percentage of
users who see the banner and click on it.
·
Conversion Rate —The percentage of people who
visit your site and actually give you money. The higher the better!
·
Cookies — Small files placed on a user’s
computer. They’re used for all sorts of reasons and by all sorts of
sites. Banner ads use them to make sure the user hasn’t seen the
banner recently, which banner brought them to the advertiser’s site,
and even which adverts they’ve seen recently.
·
CPM — "Cost Per Mille." The amount you pay for
every thousand times a banner is shown—the usual way of charging for
banners.
·
Hits — The number of times a server receives a
request for a Web page or an image. Not a great way to measure
interest. One page can have lots of images and get lots of hits,
even if it’s only seen once. Often, people will say "hits" when they
really mean "page views" or "impressions."
·
Page Impressions or Page Views —The number of
times a Web page has been requested by the server. Much more
accurate than hits: each view is a potential customer looking at a
page of your site. But not necessarily a different customer...
·
Unique Users — The people who download a Web
page, counted by IP address. You want to bring lots of users to your
site so that you can create a broad customer base. The same user
clicking on a banner a dozen times could cost you money without
increasing your sales. Most reputable sites will check the IP
address of the person clicking on a link and only count it once in a
24-hour period. If a site doesn’t do this, don’t advertise with
them.
Business online, like business offline, always boils down to
math: the difference between cost and revenue. If your banner
campaign is costing more than it’s earning, you won’t be in business
for very long. To figure out how your campaign is doing, you’re
going to need to know your Cost Per Mille, your Click Through Rate
and your Conversion Rate. These are your basic tools. If you don’t
know them, find out!
Let’s say your CPM is $20, your CTR is 1%, and your Conversion
Rate is 4%. (So you’re paying $20 every 1,000 times your banner is
shown, it brings you 10 new users, and you make one sale for every
25 users the ad brings). The question you need to ask yourself is
how much are you wasting on the 24 users who don’t buy.
Cost per visitor = $20 /
10 = $2 So each visitor costs you $2, but you need 25
visitors to make one sale, so...
Cost per sale = $2 * 25
= $50 ...if your product is worth less than $50,
you’re making a loss.
That’s pretty simple, and as you can see, there’s not a lot of
room to maneuver here. Margins are tight on banner advertising and
that applies to both the site selling the advertising space and the
webmaster buying it.
Of course, hard cash isn’t the only way to measure the success
of a banner ad, and one reason they’re still popular is that they’re
a pretty effective branding tool. After all, advertisers spend
millions on billboards without expecting motorists to drive straight
through them and make a purchase! On the Web, those advertisers can
even be reasonably sure that the people who see their ads will be
interested in them. But branding costs money—lots of it—with no
guarantee of results. It’s usually best left to the big boys.
The banner ads on my sites usually send users to my affiliate
partners, and the banner ads I place on other people’s sites usually
come from my affiliate programs. They don’t cost me anything
and as long I’m making the sales to pay my affiliate partners,
everybody’s happy.
If you do decide to purchase banner advertisements though, and
if you have a very specific market in mind, make sure they
are strategically placed—on sites where the traffic will most
definitely be interested in your product or service. Find a site
that suits exactly your specific product and you’re going to be
appealing directly to your target market.
Text links are much simpler than banner ads. They’re also less
eye-catching and less sexy. There’s no funky animation, no neat
Flash, just a few well chosen words often stuck at the side of a Web
page. But that doesn’t mean they’re not effective.
In fact, to some extent, text links are the unsung heroes of
online marketing. They don’t get half the attention they deserve,
but they can do a pretty neat job of bringing users to a site. And
you can’t ask for more than that.
The first point to bear in mind about text links is that
they’re tough to write. You might have all of 50 characters to make
your sales pitch. That’s about the length of that sentence, so
you’re going to have to be pretty creative in what you say. That’s
the downer. On the plus side though, text links are amongst the most
popular form of promotion amongst users. They don’t get in the way
like pop-ups, and they’re often mistaken for content—so unlike
banners, they’re actually read. And because they’re written into the
site’s HTML, you know that each page view means a real exposure.
They’re also cheap. You might have to pay a flat-fee or a
cost-per-click, but there’s much less risk there than with banner
ads. If you know how much traffic the site’s getting, you can figure
out in advance if it’s worth your while.
Best of all though, you can sometimes arrange for free links
with partners in return for a similar placement on your own site.
That doesn’t just give you free advertising—it also helps your
search engine placements.
I use a lot of text links to promote my sites, but I wouldn’t
just use them. They aren’t prominent enough to really keep traffic
moving in droves, but in terms of effectiveness and cost, they’re
way up there.
Offline, classified ads are cheap little adverts that appear
at the back of newspapers or magazines. They work well if you’re
trying to sell your old Ford Escort or you’re looking for a new home
for your tatty sofa, but they’re not too profitable for businesses
aiming to keep repeat sales coming in.
That’s offline. Online, things are a little different. But not
hugely different.
I post adverts on classified columns, but I don’t expect to
make a lot of money from them. What I do expect though is an
opportunity to test my headlines and ad copy before I start spending
hard cash on AdWords, text links and sales letters.
That’s why I don’t bother with the dollar ads. If I’m going to
spend marketing money, I’d rather give it to a search engine than a
classified ads column. The return on sales just doesn’t justify it.
But there are places where you can place free ads, and you can
actually do this on some of the really big sites like AOL and Yahoo.
Even if I don’t make many sales, the fact that I’m getting my
product in front of so many people certainly won’t do me any harm.
Occasionally, I’ll post an ad on one of these and monitor how
many replies I get.
Text links, banners and search engines are all ways to attract
clients and build a customer base. It’s our buyers that’s we’re
really talking about here. But the Web isn’t the only place to look
for customers even for Web-based businesses. Some of the old
traditional methods like word-of-mouth referrals still work just as
well, and still bring me a fair bit of cash each month. Here are
some tips to help you grab as many customers as you can while you’re
setting up your business and getting your online marketing programs
in place.
Know Your Market
Whatever your line of business, you’ve got to know your
market. You have to know who your clients are, what they want
and what makes them buy. Do the market research, check out your
competitors, create a formal marketing plan—but take the effort to
put yourself in the shoes of your buyers. Otherwise you won’t get
any!
Bring Out Your Benefits
You might think you know what your product’s sales points
are—you might even be dead proud of them—but the fact is, your
buyers don’t give a toss about all the wonderful gizmos you’ve
packed into your product. They just want you to answer one question:
what’s it going to do for me?
That’s what all your marketing has to be about: explaining to
your buyers how you’re going to improve their life.
Make Your Site Sing
It can take a fair bit of effort and not a small amount of
time to create a website that works. But you can’t stop there.
You’re going to have to keep updating it, checking it and making
sure all the links and addresses work. It’s the first place to look
when you notice your sales starting to drop, and it’s crucial to
keep them coming in.
Be Alert for New Marketing Opportunities
You must always be alert for opportunities to make new
business contacts and not allow yourself to be caught off guard when
opportunities arise. It doesn’t matter if you’re out shopping or at
a Chamber of Commerce meeting, make sure that you have professional
business cards, brochures, etc. on hand—and don’t be afraid to use
them.
Don’t Keep Your Business a Secret
Tell everyone about your business and your product. You might
even consider sending out a mass mailing to everyone you know,
telling them what you’re doing. Chances are, someone knows someone
who wants what you’ve got, and friendly referrals usually bring the
best business!
Find Repeat Customers
When it comes to building customers, there are clients who buy
once—and clients who buy lots of times. It’s the latter that you
want to pack into your customer list; they’re worth their weight in
gold. Big companies are good places to prospect for repeat business
(they have big demands and budgets) but always treat your
repeat customers well. That might mean the odd discount or the
occasional freebie, but the extra business should make up for it.
Online advertising on the Internet leaves a lot to be desired.
We have ads that emulate Windows-warning boxes. We have pop-ups and
pop-unders. All of these are developed with the intent to make
people notice them. However, most of them only end up irritating
them. Advertisers, especially those with small budgets, can't afford
to waste money on ineffective buys. In order to optimize your
advertising buys, you need to concentrate on improving your
creative.
Here are some tips that might help:
Step 1: Define clear goals of your advertising campaign
The most important aspect of any advertising campaign is to
have a clear objective in mind. You may be targeting a specific
group of people, your initial aim may be to target at least 1000
internet surfers and so on and so forth. Have a well defined, clear
purpose.
Step 2: Identify the most effective sites for achieving
your goals
Sites that are most relevant to your product or service will,
more than likely, be your best bet; but also consider larger sites
or networks that can target the audience you're trying to reach.
They can be very cost-effective. If you have multiple products or
services that appeal to various target markets, you'll have to
consider sites that reach all those various segments.
Step 3: Craft your message to fit the needs of the audience
you're targeting
This comes down to understanding the audience of the sites
you're advertising on. The message you use on a technology site to
appeal to technologically savvy customers won't have the same appeal
for visitors on a small-business site. Focus your campaign.
Step 4: Content of your Ad
Pay particular attention to the content of the Ad. The content
should be such that it clearly distinguishes your product or service
from your competitors’. Have a catchy headline. The headline is
probably the most important part of the Ad – It is the customer
puller.
Step 5: Formulate the specific promotional messages that
correspond to your goals\
The promotional messages should concentrate on the major
selling points of your product or service and have a strong
call-to-action.
Step 6: Make the desired action clearly visible
This certainly doesn't mean the desired action should
necessarily blink, bounce or do flips, but it should be visible
within an accepted format for the media you're using. In the case of
the Internet, underlined text links, "click here" text entry boxes,
and pull-down menus are all ways you can make the desired action
clearly visible.
Step 7: Design the ad so it looks like it belongs on the
sites where you're advertising
For instance, you may want to use the site's font faces in
your text, color schemes in your background, font color choices
overall, and emulate images where appropriate. Try to conform to the
environment so potential customers visiting the site don't gasp in
shock when they see your ad.
Step 8: Produce multiple versions of each ad
Create three or four versions of each ad, changing the
promotional message, call-to-action, font faces and color schemes.
This is especially important if you're doing price testing or
gauging reaction to specific promotions. By splitting your
advertising buy among the various versions of your creative, you can
then start to optimize your buy based on the message that works
best.
The need for an Ad Tracking program
There are two main factors that make an Ad effective – Content
of the Ad and the sites where it is advertised. Most experts would
agree that constant testing and experimenting is the only way to
ensure that you get the right combination. However, the question
arises – How do you test your Ads? An integral part of any
advertising campaign is knowing which ads bring you the most
visitors. After all, you may have banner ads, newsgroups ads, ads in
newsletters and articles, ads in autoresponders, or a simple
classified ad on a website.
Every marketer can only benefit by knowing:
-
which of the ads received the best response
-
whether free classified sites are worth the effort
-
which newsletters are the most profitable
-
how a sponsored newsletter ad compares to the standard one
-
whether animated banners are better than static ones
-
how effective are your email ads
-
does the ad at the start of an newsletter or article outperform
the one at the end
Ad Tracking programs would answer all of these questions. They
can help you analyze the effectiveness of every single ad and hence
they should be an integral part of every marketing campaign. At the
basic level an ad tracking program records when your URL has been
clicked. It can detect where your visitor came from (the referring
URL), the browser and operating system and the exact time. It can
record total hits and unique hits (i.e. where one visitor may click
several times). This data is kept in the system so you can then pull
off reports on any ad campaign over any period e.g. by month, day or
even by hour.
Types of Ad Tracking tools
There are two types of Ad Tracking programs. However, the
operation of both these types is the same.
CGI Script
You purchase these programs outright and it is installed on
your site. If you have some technical knowledge you should be able
to install it yourself otherwise the supplier will charge an
installation fee. There are certain minimum software requirements
for programs which run on your site, including access to the cgi-bin.
Hence, most free sites would not be able to install CGI scripts.
However, with CGI scripts your tracking URLs carry your own domain
name.
Online Services
These programs operate completely independently from your site
- no software installation or use of your system resources (such as
disk space) is required. However, such programs run at the supplier
site. You pay a rental (monthly or yearly) for the program. Thus,
you are dependent on the supplier’s website for your ad tracking.
Besides, your tracking URLs carry the supplier domain name.
The main difference between these types of ad tracking tools
is the installation. For some businesses, running CGI scripts may be
more advantageous, whereas for some online services would be more
useful.
There are many Ad Tracking tools available at reasonable
rates. Some of the most popular tools are discussed here.
Adminder (http://www.adminder.com)
This is an online service tool. AdMinder provides an ad
tracking service that can be used with multiple websites. It
provides the capability to track clicks, actions and sales. AdMinder
provides reporting as well as the ability to export your data in CSV
format, which you can use in MS Excel for additional analysis.
Some of its key features are:
-
Browser based service, so no installation required
-
Works with all major web browsers
-
Provides key financial stats
-
Allow for Grouped Reports
-
Unlimited Campaigns
ProAnalyzer (http://www.proanalyzer.com)
ProAnalyzer Ad Tracking System is a CGI program that installs
on your website's cgi-bin directory and tracks your ad click-throughs
and sales without paying a monthly fee. When a visitor enters your
website from an ad URL, a cookie is placed on his web browser and a
click-through is recorded. If the visitor purchases a product, that
cookie is read on the Thank You page with the purchase total, and
the sale is recorded for the ad that generated it.
You can track sales or results either by the campaign name,
the revenue generated by a sale, or the action accomplished (lead
generated, etc.). The Administration Area allows you to monitor each
of your campaigns showing hits, sales, and the conversion rate for
each. You can configure how the program calculates the conversion
rate (by raw hits or unique hits) and how results are sorted.
There are lots of different ways to bring customers to your
site. So far we’ve talked about search engines, banners, text links
and even reminded you of some of the old-fashioned, offline methods
you can use.
As you learn these methods and begin to put them in practice,
it’s important to remember that no one method has all the answers.
The best marketing campaigns are a combination of them all.
In the next chapter, we’re going to look at another
exclusively online method of building a customer base—and making
money: affiliate programs.
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