Ezine Advertising Strategy Exposed-15 Tips to Boost Your Profits
In my opinion, Electronic Magazine (Ezine) advertising is the greatest, untapped source of online advertising available today.
The reason: Ezine Advertising (EA) matches your product or idea to people with similar interests.
Example: who better to sell your health product to than a large group of people subscribed to a health newsletter? Or, you could
pitch a business opportunity to a group already subscribed to another ezine about MLM and Biz Ops!
The idea of EA is fairly simple – but to make yours a success, you have to first determine which ezines or newsletters produce
results, and which ones to avoid.
After a year and a half of EA, I’ve created a formula that produces increasing profit because I’ve learned how to avoid poor
performing ezines and rip offs, while revealing the gems.
Strategy for Profit
I used to get ripped off about once for every 2 or 3 ezines I advertised in. They either took my money without running my ad
(and ignored my subsequent emails), or my proven ads did too poorly for the money I paid.
The reasons ranged from abandoned ezines with working payment links, unethical newsletter owners, to a lot of ignorance and
impatience on my part.
If you follow my proven strategy, you’ll discover the best sources of ezines to advertise in – no matter who your target
group is. And, you should see positive results every time.
This article outlines the steps to making your EA a successful return on investment (ROI).
Writing Your Ad
I won’t go into details about ad writing, but if your ad is poorly written or untested, you should start with the cheapest
ezines first. If you’re really unsure of your writing abilities, I further suggest hiring a professional to write your ad for you.
Because you can run your ad as many times as you want, your investment in a professional will more than pay for itself in the
end.
Target your advertising
If you leap into EA without first researching your target group, you’ll end up wasting a lot of time and money. Plus, you probably
miss some of the best ezines available.
To determine who your prospect is, take the time to list the possible keywords that directly relate to your product and do
keyword searches for ezines, newsletters, and ezine directories.
For example, if you sell herbs, a good keyword search would include: herbs, health, nutrition, supplements, etc.
Avoid Co-ops
While doing your ezine research, you will probably stumble upon the offer to use Co-op (bulk) advertising as the means for your
EA.
To be blunt, you should never pay to use Co-ops for your EA because they are too difficult to track and usually contain
untargeted ezines. Worse still, you’d find that most never run your ad.
Subscribe
Now that you’ve found your ezine target group, you’ll want to know whether the ezines you found are a good option (i.e.
profitable) for your EA.
I’ve found the best strategy for making this determination is to subscribe to the targeted ezines.
To keep the subscriptions readily available for further research, I recommend creating a separate folder to store your subscription
data.
And because you’ll need to subscribe to quite a few ezines, I also suggest creating separate email accounts dedicated to your
ezine subscriptions.
Double Opt-In Subscriptions
In the process of subscribing, you’ll quickly determine possible ezines to avoid. When you subscribe and get a notice that you
must confirm your subscription, the ezine is referred to as “double opt-in”.
Double opt-in ezines indicates a better quality of subscribers with a lower risk of bulk email addresses. For you and me, this
means better ad responses (yeah!).
Solo Ads
Within the first week of your new ezine subscription, you should see solo ads from other advertisers. If not, the ezine may be too
new, or worse, no one is advertising because of poor results. Worse yet, the ezine took the advertiser’s money and failed to
run the ad.
On the other hand, if you see two or more solo ads a day, their list is probably burned out due to over advertising. You’re looking
for no more than one ad a day, or a minimum of one ad a week. Keep watching!
Subject Line
Does the ezine put the advertiser’s subject line in the subject of the email or do they just say something like “Solo ad from xyz
ezine”?
Your subject line is the most important part of your ad and definitely should be in the subject of the email. No subject line
equals no response.
Advertiser Response
Repeat (or regular) advertisers in an ezine is a very good sign that the subscribers are responsive. To further test
responsiveness, I recommend looking through the ezine’s online archives (if available).
Archives are previous email publications that the publisher has posted to their website for visitors to view. The archive search is
not only quick and easy, but archives can also provide an extra trickle of visitors when your ad gets archived.
Testimonial Page
After passing the above steps, see if your prospective ezine has a testimonial page. If the ezine has gotten this far, chances are
it will.
Waiting Period
The best indicator of responsive subscribers is the waiting period to run an ad in the chosen ezine. If the waiting period is a
month or more, this indicates a very popular ezine with responsive readers. You’ve uncovered a real gem!
Web Forms
I’ve found that the better ezines have web forms that get your ad to the publisher’s inbox and usually send auto confirmation of
receipt. If there is no web form, try emailing the publisher a question first, like when the next ad run date is.
No response may indicate a poor choice in the ezine, or your email was filtered or blocked as spam. Wait at least 2 days and
try emailing again using a different email account.
If your emails still don’t get through, neither will your ad. (Ironically, your payment always go through). Trust me, if
they fail to communicate, save your money and time and move on.
Free Classifieds
If the ezine offers free classifieds, this is another good place to run your ad. Since classifieds usually don’t produce
responses, any activity from your ad here would further indicate an active readership.
Ad Tracking
Never advertise without using an ad tracker. You can purchase one or better, use one of the many available online for free. Ad
trackers give you a url that you use in place of your website address.
The new url gives you important information like how many visitors you had, where they came from, and some list the number of sales
per visitor.
This tracking information is crucial to the direction of your ad campaign because you’ll learn of the need to change your ad
and/or the sales page. More importantly, you’ll know for certain whether the ezine produced enough visitors for the advertising
price you paid.
Run Your Ad Twice
If your ad produced a great response, wait a week or two and run the ad again in the same ezine. I’ve found you’ll probably get as
good if not better results the second time around.
I would advise against running the ad a third time in a row because most of your prospects will be found in the first two runs.
Rotating Ads
Once your ad has been tested and you have a base of 5-10 solid, performing ezines, start rotating your ad between your ezines.
For optimal results, make sure 2-3 months have passed before running your ad in the same publication. Keep building your base
and watch your profits grow!
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Writing Tips – Tracking Your Articles by Clicks
Another way of tracking the propagation of your articles is to use clicks. This method is geared towards tracking the effectiveness of your article or article submission process when you are submitting for the purpose of generating immediate article directory clicks instead of looking for mass submission of back links.
You could use ad-tracking software to do this, or you could create an opt-in page or a separate web page for each of the different article directories that you intend to use. So when you are submitting your articles, you should include the software tracking link in your article. This will allow you to determine exactly how many times your article is clicked and will show you which article directories are the most effective.
Yet another method is to create a new web page for each of the article sources that you will use. So that’s one for article directories, another web page for pay per click and yet another web page for ads placed in ezines. You need to be able to check the results in your website traffic tracking software in order for this to work. If your traffic cannot be sorted this way, you could use an auto-responder. For me using an auto-responders is an efficient way of monitoring my stats. You would need to use the auto-responder opt-in code in order for this to work for you.
What this will reveal to you is which source of traffic is generating the most clicks to your website. If one source far outweighs another then you should focus more of your attention on the better source
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Ad Tracking Increases Your Profits
How do you know whether your advertising is effective or
not? The answer is to track advertising response for each
ad you run.
Whether you operate a retail store, a service business,
a mail order operation, or an Internet marketing business,
you can measure the effectiveness of your advertising.
1. Which Publications Produce Profits?
When new customers phone or visit you, ask how they found
out about you. They might say they found you through
your yellow pages ad or your newspaper ad.
Record the responses and resulting sales from each ad.
Then, analyze whether each particular advertisement is
producing the desired results.
If an advertisement consistently produces profits for you,
keep running it. On the other hand, if an ad consistently
performs poorly or produces a loss, discontinue it.
In mail order, you can key each ad so that you can measure
the resulting sales from each publication.
For example, you could add “Dept. A” to your name or
address in the ad to indicate the July issue of a
particular magazine. Key it as “Dept. B” for the August
issue of the same magazine. “Dept. C” could indicate the
July issue of a different magazine you advertise in.
Thus, as orders come in, you can track the response and
sales made from each advertisement. From that information,
you can easily determine the profitability of your ad in
each publication.
2. Which Ads Produce Profits?
Not only can ad tracking show you which publications
are profiitable to advertise in, but it will also help
you measure the effectiveness of the ads themselves.
If you change your ad, and the results for the new ad
are consistently better or worse, you can take the
appropriate action; either continue or discontinue the
advertisement.
Change only one element in an ad at a time.
For example, if you decide to change the price, don’t
change the headline. Otherwise, you won’t know if the
difference in results was due to the changed price or
the changed headline. For greater certainty, change
only one thing at a time when testing your ads.
On the Internet, you can use tracking software and
services that will aid you to determine the source of
your sales and the effectiveness of your advertising,
article writing, and other activities.
So, whether you operate a retail store, a service
business, a mail order operation, or an Internet
marketing business, use ad tracking for increased
profits.
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Email Advertising – How Ad Tracking Helped Create a Killer Ad
I recently undertook an email advertising promotion,
using a number of advertising media. The exercise
involved a program of mine called the Magical Marketing
system.
As an email advertising Internet marketing exercise, I
decided that I wanted to approach the members of some
of the affiliate programs that are featured in Magical
Marketing, and offer their members the chance to join
this system, and reap the benefit of the multiple promotion
methods that it employs.
And. as an email advertising marketing exercise, this has
worked very well, and whilst an interesting exercise in
Joint Venture Marketing in itself, it has produced a result
so remarkable in my eyes, that I felt it worthy of a report.
With one particular featured program, I did a multiple
ad test, to see what the comparison between three ads.
It was the results of this that struck me, and prompted
me to put this article together.
The three ads, which were very similar. This is good of
course, because it means that any variance in the results
can be explained in relatively few ways. So there are two
points that need to be made about these ads, which may
affect your thinking about how you write your own ads.
1. Use Of Variables in Headlines
I don’t know about you, but I am always hearing that
using someone’s name in an advert can make a significant
difference to the effect of that advert. Not all programs
have this kind of facility though. It just happens the
program that I ran the adverts with does, so I made use of
it in the headlines for 2 of the 3 adverts, but not for
one of them. I have used the variable in the body of all
three ads, so some personalisation took place in all cases.
2. Bulleted Benefits
Again, all the books and articles that I have ever read
tell you to spell out the benefits, and a lot of them tell
you to bullet them to add emphasis. So, I have done this
with all three adverts, but with a difference between ads 1,
and 2 and 3. In the first advert, I just made single word
references to the benefits, in the other two, I elaborated
in order to explain the benefit better.
3. Conclusions
The results are so striking, that they are worthy of comment.
The ads were placed from 12th December 2004 to 18h January
2005. So, the time span is about a month, but, I use the
program in question to send other ads out too. About every
3rd day, I will send one of these three ads, in rotation.
So, each of the ads would have been sent about every 6 days
or so.
Advert 1 pulled in 70 unique hits, with 19 action hits. The
latter is where prospects followed through to the sign up
page.
Advert 2 pulled 5 unique hits and 1 action hit.
Advert 3 pulled 4 unique hits and no action hits.
Headlines
I have always advocated trying to keep headlines short,
especially where email adverts are concerned. You only have
the width of the email pane to enter your message, so
you must tell your story within a few words.
I don’t consider any of the Headlines that I have used to
be excessively long. However, the first advert is very short,
and perhaps that accounts in part for the huge number of
additional clicks for the first advert?
In part, I believe that this is true.
However, I am now thinking that perhaps email prospects have
become wary of seeing their name in emails from people that
they don’t really know. Think about how you react when you
see such an email?
Do you open it immediately, or do you become suspicious?
Trust your gut feeling.
I have used the personalised approach in the body of the email,
and maybe the psychology here is that once someone has opened
an email, they have ‘let you in’ and are more amenable to your
being personal.
Headline conclusion
I am more convinced than ever that email headlines should be
short – as short as possible. I also recommend that if you
personalise the Headline, you stop, and test your ads without
it.
Bulleted Benefits
You can see that advert 1 has produced a massive amount of
additional click thru’s over the other two ads. Bearing in
mind that each ad went out, probably every six days, the first
two ads are not far removed from the norm with the program that
I used. This makes the results achieved by Advert 1 even more
staggering.
The change in headline may go some way to explain this, but
the huge number of clicks tells me that something much more
significant has occurred.
Thankfully, the body of the three ads are very similar in all
aspects, except one; the bulleted benefits. In the first ad,
I have given one word answers. In the other two, I have
elaborated.
Bulleted benefits conclusion
One cannot escape the fact that keeping the benefits so short
has had an impact. And not only in click thru’s either. If you
look at the graphic under ‘Actions’ column, you will see that
I have tracked the prospect through to the signup page. You
might expect that the 20% conversion rate be the same, but it
isn’t, it has increased to around 28%. So the shorter bullet
points have also pre-sold more effectively, so the prospects
likelihood of signing up has increased as well.
As a final note, please remember that all of this is courtesy
of tracking my ads. If you don’t do it, then you will struggle
to make an impact in the marketing world.
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Why Testing and Tracking is Important to Moms Who Work at Home
If work at home moms want to get the most out of their home-based business it is important that they test and track all marketing efforts, no matter what business they are involved in. This testing and tracking can involve landing pages, ad copies, marketing tools and more.
Testing and Tracking Your Marketing Tools
This is important for determining where your time is best spent and what marketing tools are actually bringing results for your home-based business. It is important to get a good ad tracking tool that allows you to see where your conversions and clicks are coming from so that you can see who is sending visitors to your website, how many they send and how many of these actually convert.
Testing and Tracking Ad Copy for your Home-based Business
Another important element that you will want to test and track is the ad copy that you use for marketing your home-based business. Split test different copies to see which copy brings in the most visitors and the most conversions. This way you will gradually be able to adjust your ad copy to get the best results.
Testing and Tracking Landing Pages
This involves having two pages that are similar but that differ in certain aspects that you are testing for. You will then send visitors equally to each of these different pages and see which page gets the most conversions. You will then be able to adjust the pages until you find the perfect combination that brings in the best results. Once again, it is best to use a good ad tracking tool to get the best results.
Testing and tracking is important for the work at home mom because it provides her with a way to see where her marketing efforts are best spent and how to get the best results from her ad copy and landing pages. In order to do this it is best to get a good ad tracking tool which allows you to split test and track hits and conversions.
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