REPORT 3 : PROFESSIONAL ADVERTISING TIPS!
INCLUDING HOW TO GET 300+ QUALITY PROSPECTS
TO EMAIL YOU WEEKLY!
The first and foremost thing to consider in advertising
is selecting the proper location for your ads. You must
concentrate your efforts on your target audience. Once
you have decided who you are trying to reach, find out
what types of publications they are most likely to read.
Instead of focusing solely on large sources with their
very high advertising rates, look into smaller
publications like specialized online newsletters and
magazines. There are many very specialized publications
available pertaining to just about every business,
occupation, sport and hobby. The advertising rates are
substantially lower and even though the circulations are
not as large, the readers of the smaller publications
consist almost exclusively of your target audience.
Here's an example...
I ran the same exact ad for a business opportunity in two
online newsletters, or e-zines. The ad ran for one issue
in each publication. The first one had a subscription
base of over 250,000. The other had roughly 8,000. The
results are below.
Newsletter one: 151 inquiries. 2 sales.
Newsletter two: 49 inquiries. 7 sales.
Why were the results so different? Easy. The first
newsletter went to a large number of people. Obviously,
not many were interested in business opportunities. Of
the 151 that were, many were just curious and not
serious enough to spend money. The second newsletter,
however, had a subscription base made up solely of
people interested in business opportunities. Therefore,
a good percentage of inquiries turned into actual sales.
This is an extremely important example of why you need
to reach your target audience.
With the number of quality e-zines on the internet growing
at a rapid pace, finding five or six related to what you
are selling should be no problem. Multiply just 35
prospects (well below the average) by six e-zines and
you have yourself 210 quality prospects per week! Add in
another 100 from other sources (free and low cost
internet classified advertising, newsgroups, and direct
email) and you have over 300 quality prospects per week!
Close 10% of those deals and your making an excellent
profit!
But before you can close those deals, you'll need to know
how to write good ad copy. So now let's focus on
developing good classified ad writing skills.
First of all, you should develop a wide variety of
classified ads. Since an important part of successful
advertising is trial and error, you need to run
different ads to find the ones that work best. Although
this trial and error is necessary, there are some good
guidelines to follow when writing classifieds. Here are
some of them...
*Attract your reader with a catchy word or phrase right
up front.
*Study other classifieds. If you see them repeatedly
it's because they work.
*Keep your classifieds brief and to the point, using
phrases, not complete sentences.
*Use simple words, not long ones. Don't confuse the
reader.
*Tell the reader exactly what they are getting.
*Don't try to sell the product in a classified. Simply
try to get interested people to respond.
*Use energetic punctuation, such as exclamation points
instead of periods.
One more important factor in classified advertising is the
"key". Keying an ad is a simple yet powerful way to
determine which ads and publications are working best
for you. An easy way to do this with email, is to ask
people to enter something in the subject box. When you
receive a response to an ad, you will know exactly where
the prospective customer saw it. This information will
be invaluable to you. This is the type of information
that you must focus on to hone your marketing skills.
There you have it. The three most important factors in
advertising. Reaching your target audience, good ad copy
and ad key evaluation. Once you master these three
skills you'll be on your way to bigger profits!