Key to success is avoiding hype

For small business owner, advertising is a critical expense that helps to drive customers through doors or to a website on Internet in hopes that they will spend their money. With tight ad budgets, small businesses need their advertising to payoff every time. Ads that result in no sales are simply wasted money.

There are countless online articles that tell you to use words “free”, “guaranteed”, and “limited time offer” in your advertising to boost sales. They work, however ongoing overuse of these words has reduced their effectiveness somewhat. When you’re writing your next ad, keep following advice in mind when if you plan to use these key advertising terms.

“Free” – Getting something for nothing has universal appeal and is a strong attention getter. Where most businesses fail is that they give away something that is essentially useless, leading customers to believe that your business falls into same category (i.e. “useless”). For example, many websites give away free “e-books”, in order to entice potential customers to visit their site. The e-book itself is usually loaded with advertising and links to website, and contains very little real, valuable information.

This means that less than 1 person in 100 will actually click on banner displayed on web page he's looking at!

If you're an Associate selling a product via banners on your web site, this is simply not good news.

Because you will never close 100% of your prospects. And if your traffic count is only 100 a day, it would mean you only have 30 actual prospects a month (one a day). And assuming your Principal's Killer Sales Letter sells one prospect out of every 10 (which is a great conversion rate, by way), you'll be making only 3 sales for month.

But what if you could get all or almost all of those 100 visitors to click on your banner? You'll have close to 3000 prospects, and 300 sales for month based on same conversion rate!

You've just increased your sales by 100 times! But are we dreaming here?

Here's good news:

You CAN get almost ALL, if not all, your visitors to click on banners while they're at your site!

All you need to do is to understand a little psychology. Because when you know reasons why very few prospects ever click on a banner when they see it, you'll be able to devise a strategy and right tactics to override their reasons and achieve whatever you wanted them to do all along.

Get ready now. This is proven, exciting stuff! ;-)

============================================== THE REAL REASONS FOR LOW BANNER CLICK-THROUGHS ====================================================

They are so simple that I'm still surprised why nobody even thought of them, as I simply don't see anything radical being done to solve this problem. Here they are:

1. Most Banners Look Like An Ad ================================ Your visitors are not at your web site to look at banners. If they are, you don't have to provide any content on your site. Just slap up a web site containing banners, submit it to search engines and sit back and watch millions come rolling in.

Yeah, right.

2. Most Banners Are Placed In The Same Positions ================================================== It's usually at top of web page, before content of page is seen, or at bottom, after content of page. Now when you know that these 2 positions are usually where banner ads are found, would your visitors even look at them when they're waiting for your web page to load?

Of course not. They'll immediately scroll down or look elsewhere to first available text that make up your content! And what's worst, your visitors are doing this subconsciously due to habit. They quite simply and literally don't see your banners!

That's it! With this knowledge, we can create miracles.

And I have. ;-)

========================= THE AMAZING, SIMPLE CURE ================================================

Now for simple, magic "cure" that makes low banner click-throughs a thing of history. It'll require some work, but it's nothing you cannot do.

1. Re-Design Your Web Site =========================== That's right. Keep your content, but:

i. dump design where you have your banners at top or bottom of your web pages; AND

ii. dump usual navigational buttons or links on top, left, right or bottom of your web pages

Do BOTH of above. Then:

2. Make Your Content The Main Focus Of Your Site ================================================= You can have a series of great original articles, with each article having its own heading and web page. "Content" can take many forms, however. Articles are only one form. A tutorial is another. Whatever it is, your content takes center stage simply because your visitors are there for your content, not your banners. And you should give it to them first prior to leading them on to clicking on your banners eventually.

3. Create A Table That Is Of The Same Width As Your Banner ======================================================== This table should have at least 3, 5 or 7 rows.