BIG PROFITS FROM LOW COST DISPLAY ADS
The Display ad is the sexy side of the written word, and is
the area most businesses look to rapidly increase sales. When
developed with care and used with caution, a display ad can be
highly effective. However, running expensive display ads is
extremely risky and more often than not, they do not recover their
costs.
Of course most people who sell these ads won't tell you this.
Instead they'll tell you about their large readership, and how if
just a small percentage of their readers respond to you ad, you'll
get rich. It just makes sense. Run a big ad, make a lot of sales,
and get rich.
Except it doesn't usually work that way. What happens is you
pay big bucks for a big ad, and when it runs, nothing happens. No
orders, no calls. And you're out the entire amount you paid for
you ad with nothing to show for it.
Most people who haven't run a large display ad simply don't
believe this can happen. They can't conceive that they won't get a
response from a large ad. But I can tell you from personal
experience it happens. A lot more often than anyone selling these
ads wants you to know.
For this reason I strongly recommend that anyone thinking
about buying an expensive display ad should consider the risk. If
you can't afford to lose everything you invest in the ad, don't do
it. In most cases, a simple press release will be more effective
(and quite a bit less expensive) than a large display ad.
It's true that we have had considerable success with some of
our full page display ads, but after several early failures we set
up some guidelines to follow when running these ads. These
guidelines are:
1. We always test ads in low cost publications. (Rarely do we
ever pay more than $300 for a full page ad--even in national
publications.)
2. Our full page ads are always run in highly targeted, limited
circulation publications. We only run ads in places that we
know our customers will see.
3. We always run a break-even analysis before we place an ad so we
know for sure exactly how many sales we'll need just to pay for
the ad. If the numbers indicate we'll need more than five
sales, we don't run the ad.
4. We always create the ads ourselves. That way we have absolute
control over the content, the structure of the offer, and exact
wording. It does make a difference.
5. We always request specific ad placement in the magazine or
newsletter. We usually request a right hand page in the back
two thirds of the magazine. Never let a magazine decide where
they'll place your ad.
6. We always negotiate the price of the ad. Usually we pay about
45% of the printed rate card rate (and sometimes we pay much
less than that).
By following these guidelines we are able to reduce our
exposure to financial loss on display ads in magazines. If the ad
fails to work, we still lose money and momentum, but not near as
much it we had blindly run expensive ads.
Keep these guidelines in mind when running your own display ads,
and you'll have a good chance of striking it rich also. (One of Bill
Myers' first display ads cost a few hundred dollars to run and
brought in over $40,0000 in 90 days! This ad is in "The Unfair
Advantage Letter Book."