In This Chapter

Advertising is tricky. When the stars align, and you have the right advertisement in the right place at the right time, you can drive a lot of traffic to your website cost-effectively. However, if your ad isn’t written well or designed effectively, or if it’s placed in a publication that few potential customers read, then you’re going to have an expensive dud on your hands. And you can’t afford too many of those!

This chapter gives you the basics of creating and placing winning advertisements that drive lots of potential customers to your website.

Your website is up and running. It looks fantastic. You’re ready to take orders and ship products. You couldn’t be more excited. Now all you have to do is advertise your business and a flood of potential customers will be banging down your virtual front door. Right?

I suspect you know it’s not that simple.

Advertising can be very effective in driving targeted traffic to your web-based business. However, it can also be a costly waste of time and money.

I have worked with small business owners who have used advertising very successfully. And I have known just as many others who have lamented at the hundreds and even thousands of dollars spent on ads that generated barely a trickle of website traffic.

Advertising doesn’t work for all web-based businesses. How do you determine whether or not it will work for you?

Think for a moment how advertising works. A potential customer notices your ad in a publication she’s reading. She becomes interested in what your website has to offer. Then she decides to visit your site.

Notice the three important things that are happening in that scenario:

Let’s take a look at the first criteria. Is there a publication that your target customers regularly read?

Say your website sells beer recipes, books, and supplies for home brewers. Many of these enthusiasts might be faithful readers of The Home Brewers Blog every week. (Of course, many might read The Wall Street Journal, too, but that publication doesn’t target your market specifically and will cost you a fortune to advertise in.)

Now the second criteria. Does The Home Brewers Blog accept advertising? Some blogs do, others don’t. That’s easily determined by simply visiting the blog and seeing if there are any ads displayed, or by contacting the blogger directly.

Finally, the third criteria. You need to determine if the cost of the ad is worth it. If it costs $500 per month to place your ad on the blog and it only generates a couple of dozen visitors to your site, then—as Internet marketers say—that’s very expensive traffic! Remember, you can expect only a small percentage of those visitors to eventually become customers. Will those precious few purchase enough from your site to pay for the ad? Probably not.

On the other hand, if a $500 ad generates hundreds of new visitors to your site—potential customers who sign up for your newsletter in droves and place orders—then that may be the best 500 bucks you’ve ever spent!

How do you determine, in advance, if the cost of placing an ad is worth it? You can’t. However, you can make a pretty good guess based on the number of people who read the publication. If, for example, The Home Brewers Blog gets 1,000 visitors per day, then if just 1 percent clicks your ad, you’ll generate 300 visitors per month. Not bad. On the other hand, if the blog only gets 50 hits a month, you’ll be lucky if your ad gets even a single click.

So take a close look at those three criteria before you decide to try advertising. Then, start small. Place one ad at a time. Watch what’s working and what isn’t. Then build on your successes.

Imagine two advertisements for a website that lists reputable plumbing contractors in your area. The first ad simply states:

The second ad, by contrast, says:

Which advertisement do you suspect would generate the most visits to the website?

If your gut is saying the second one, you’re right. In fact, the second type of ad will often get at least twice the response than the first one. And sometimes a lot more.

This illustrates the two types of advertising that businesses do:

An awareness advertisement is one that is designed to simply make people aware of your website. It’s saying, “Here I am. If you need what I sell, drop by for a visit.” The hope is that the reader will remember your website and, the next time they need what you offer, visit it. (Keep your fingers crossed!)

Unfortunately, awareness ads suffer from a serious Achilles’ heel. You must advertise often enough for customers to become aware of you. If they don’t, they’ll only visit your site when they see your ad at exactly the same moment they need what you sell!

“But what about Coca-Cola and Apple computers?” you might be thinking. “Virtually all of their ads are awareness.” True. But they are already well-known brands and invest millions in advertising campaigns. You, as a small business owner, don’t have that budget. So your advertisement needs to do more than just build awareness—it also needs to get the reader to act now.

That’s where the second type of advertising, direct response, comes in.

A direct response ad is simply one that makes an offer of some kind … an offer compelling enough to get the reader to visit your website right away, rather than waiting until they have a need for your product or service.

An awareness ad is like a person waving his hand and saying, “I’m here if you need me.” A direct-response ad is like that same person adding, “… and I have something special to give you right now.” That something special is your compelling offer.

So make sure every ad you place is a direct-response ad, in that it contains a compelling offer of some kind. You can find out more about creating a compelling offer in Chapter 16.

The biggest mistake I see web-based business owners making is placing ads in publications that are too general.

One particular entrepreneur I worked with a few years ago had a website that sold knitting supplies. She complained that her advertisements in a local community newspaper weren’t working. No wonder! Even though the newspaper had thousands of readers, how many actual knitting enthusiasts would see the ad? Probably very few. I advised her to instead place ads in knitting-oriented magazines and websites. She took my advice and began to get a lot more traffic.

Don’t place your ad in general publications that contain only a small percentage of your potential customers in their readership. Put your ads in highly targeted publications that are read specifically by your prospects. If your website promotes business seminars for electrical contractors, advertise in an electrical contractor magazine. If your site features information on parenting, place a banner ad on a popular parenting blog.

You have many choices when it comes to advertising venues. Here are the ones that, in my opinion, represent the best opportunity for small web-based business owners.

How do you find these advertising venues? Ask your customers. If you have an e-mail newsletter already, do a survey and ask subscribers which websites, blogs, magazines, and newsletters they read, as well as which radio shows they listen to.

If your website isn’t up yet, do some research online.

Once you’ve decided on a publication to place your advertisement in, how do you make that arrangement?

Visit the publication’s website and look for a link called “Advertising” or something close to it. This section will typically provide you with all the information you need to schedule an ad placement, including artwork requirements, pricing, and other details you need to know.

Feel free to contact the publisher for any additional questions you might have. And don’t be afraid to ask beginner questions. Most publications are used to dealing with small business owners who are advertising for the first time and are more than willing to guide you through the process. After all, they want to sell the ad space!

If you’re new to advertising your business, I strongly suggest you start with online advertising. It’s simpler, less expensive, easier to track, and often much more effective than its print counterpart.

A print advertisement requires a reader to jump over an additional hurdle to get to your site. He has to note your website address and then remember to go there the next time he’s at his computer. Let’s face it: that might not happen!

Online advertisements, by contrast, don’t have that hurdle. When a potential customer sees an online ad, he simply clicks it and—voilà—he is taken immediately to your site. This characteristic alone gives online ads a huge advantage over their printed counterparts. But it gets even better.

Because online ads are clickable, they can easily be tracked. So you’ll be able to determine precisely how many website visitors it’s generating for you. With a print advertisement, tracking is more difficult—sometimes impossible.

And, of course, online advertisements are less expensive to create because they don’t require printing.

There are three types of online ads used most often by small web-based businesses: search engine ads, banners, and text-based e-zine ads. Search engine marketing is covered in detail in Chapter 17. Let’s take a look at how to create successful campaigns using the other two types.

In many ways, a banner advertisement is the online equivalent of a billboard. However, many major online advertisers are using banners with special effects, animations, and even online video. In fact, as online video becomes easier to play on computers with slow Internet connections, some banners are looking more like television commercials than billboards.

For the small web-based business owner, however, the billboard analogy is the best place to start. You want to create a simple yet effective banner that drives traffic to your website. After you have developed one that works well for you, you can always experiment with more expensive special effects later on.

Because of the relatively small size, a banner typically contains only a few words of copy. So you have to make every word count!

Writing a banner requires you to craft a compelling headline and, if there is still room available, one or two lines of copy.

Once you have your banner written, you’ll need to work with a web designer to create the artwork. Make sure the design and layout help to clearly communicate the message. For example, a banner ad for a travel website might show a family throwing a Frisbee on the beach. Also, make sure that the text stands out and is easy to see. Don’t expect people to squint to read your banner. They won’t.

I’m a big fan of text-based e-zine advertisements (advertisements placed within an e-mail newsletter) because they’re relatively easy to create and inexpensive to place. In addition, e-zines are often very well-targeted publications.

If you subscribe to any e-mail newsletters, you probably have noticed this type of advertising. Perhaps you’ve even clicked and responded to some of the offers made.

Although banners can be placed in e-zines, the most common format is the text-based ad. By that I mean the ad is primarily text with little or no artwork of any kind. Typically, it is comprised of a headline, a paragraph or two of text, and a link to the advertiser’s (that’s you) website.

In my web-based business, I find that I often get much better results from e-zine ads than I do from banners. But that’s just my experience. Yours may be different. That’s why testing different advertising approaches to find out which one works best for your business is so important.

Here is an example of a text-based e-zine advertisement:

As with banners, effective copywriting is key. Remember, the person seeing the ad is primarily interested in the content of the newsletter. So your offer, and how well you present it, will need to be compelling enough to get them to click away from their reading and to your website.

As I said in the previous section, if you’re new to advertising I strongly advise you to start with online ads. Print advertisements—in newspapers, magazines, newsletters and other publications—are more expensive and difficult to track.

But if there is a print publication that focuses specifically on your target audience, and you can place an ad in it cost-effectively, then by all means give it a try. It may be a real traffic-booster for you.

As with online ads, get it written first—before you hire a graphic designer. The copy is the most important ingredient of a successful advertisement.

When creating your print ad, there are two things that you want to have jump off the page:

If the reader doesn’t notice and remember both of those, your print ad will fail.

When you have a mock-up of your ad cre ated, be your own worst critic. Imagine the advertisement is on a page cluttered with articles and other ads all competing for the reader’s attention. Then ask yourself: “Would I notice, read, and respond to this ad?” If your answer is no, go back to the drawing board.

Major web-based businesses—the big guys—like eHarmony.com, Travelocity.com, and FreeCreditReport.com have generated hundreds of thousands of visitors to their websites through television commercials. However, this advertising medium is out of reach for most web-based business owners.

However, you can still take advantage of broadcast advertising in another way that is much more cost-effective. Radio.

Compared to other broadcast media, radio commercials are inexpensive to create, so the cost of radio spots is within the budget of most small web-based businesses.

Even Google is getting into the act. They recently launched a new service called AudioAds, which is part of their larger Google Adwords program. They’ll assist you in getting the ad created and then broadcast it to their participating network of over 1,600 radio stations across the United States. For more information, visit www.google. com/adwords/audioads.

Radio spots are sold in time units, usually 10-, 15-, 20-, or 30-second and sometimes 1-minute spots. When you buy advertising time on a radio station, you get a number of spots to be placed at specific times in their schedule. For example, you might buy 25 10-second spots to be run on weekend afternoons.

Like any advertising you do, the more targeted the better. Try to get your advertising spots scheduled for those radio shows that are popular with your target market. For example, if your website sells Broadway show tunes sheet music, then it makes sense to get your radio commercial on a show that caters to show tunes fanatics (like me!). The audience will be smaller—much smaller than prime time spots like weekday mornings—but you’ll reach more of your potential customers who will (hopefully) visit your website.

How do you get started with radio ads? The best way to begin is with a simple commercial that consists only of a single narrator. This is the most inexpensive type of ad to script and produce.

Most radio stations have a roster of radio commercial narrators—called voiceover talent—available. In addition, check out these online resources.

When it comes to writing your radio commercial, try to find a freelance copywriter with experience in radio advertising. The radio station can also set you up with their in-house writer. If you decide to go it alone and craft your own commercial, following are some tips that will help.

Once you have your radio commercial written, read it out loud to someone who hasn’t heard it yet. Ask them to be brutally honest with you. Did they understand what you were saying? Were they motivated to visit your site? Did they clearly understand the web address?

Then, when you’re confident you’ve got a winner, put that baby on the air!

The Least You Need to Know