Two New Advertising OptionsWritten by Dan Grossman
Paid-placement search engine listings, like those at Goto.com, are great for effective, targeted and low-cost traffic for your website. That's why so many people are using them, driving up prices of even obscure terms in bidding. Google's Self-Service Advertising System, called "Google AdWords," and "Jeeves Text Sponsorship Network" are two similar services you should add to your list of places to advertise.They can each be effective ways to advertise your site or product at a low cost, with added benefit of being CPM-based, meaning you pay according to number of impressions of your ad shown rather than number of clicks. Relatively new, Google has decided to offer an easy way to get your site in their search result pages without spending days or weeks setting up a banner advertising campaign with them. Unlike a paid submission, you are not paying to have your site listed in Google search results, but to have your ad appear alongside search results in a special "Sponsored Links" section. Here, to right of search results, your link and a short description can appear along with up to 8 others for only a few dollars per thousand impressions. Because you will be paying $8 to $15 per thousand impressions, or views of your ad, at Google, you'll need a high click-through ratio in order to justify spending money and to get traffic to your website. Choosing keywords to purchase advertising on shouldn't be too hard. Assuming you track it, start with phrases people are already using to find your website in search engines. Add to that any other words you want to buy a listing in that are related to your site, more specific better. You can expect a click-through ratio 3 or 4 times higher for very specific terms, like "free business cards," as opposed to very general terms, such as "business". Once you've chosen keywords to purchase advertising on, write ads for each one. You may only need several ads for different sets of keywords (such as one ad to use for both "free business cards" and "color business cards" and "business cards"), but you will probably get better results if you don't use same ad on all terms you are purchasing listings for. While your ad headline and content are limited to very few words, you should remember basic rules for writing ads. Use search engine term in headline of ad so that surfer knows your ad is relevant to their search. Make sure reason to visit your site is clearly visible. When your ad is read, surfer should know what you have to offer them.
| | Improve Your Ad. Here's How.Written by Ron Sathoff and Kevin Nunley
Wanna improve profits? Need to make more money? The first step is to find more people who are interested in what you sell.You could go door to door. You might call all your past customers for tips on who to call next. But more than likely, you will simply place an ad. Print, broadcast, and online advertising are fast way to get word out to thousands, even millions, of interested prospects. Here are five simple way to improve your ad to get great response fast. 1. The most important way to improve an ad really has nothing to do with ad itself. Ads work ten times better when they are tightly targeted. Targeting means putting your ad in a place where most of people who see it are same folks who are most likely to buy from you. For most businesses, a good example is your morning newspaper. No doubt it reaches hundreds of thousands of readers, but they come from all walks of life and professions. While you are paying to get your ad in front of those massive minions, you have to know that few are intensely interested in what you sell. You often do far better to place ad in a trade paper or magazine that covers your industry. Their readership may be just a few thousand, but almost every one of those readers is working in your industry and knows and needs what you sell. You ad will get far better response. 2. Make your ad an attention-getter. All of us are bombarded by thousands of advertising messages each day, from radio spots, to TV audio that plays in background while we're making dinner, to newspaper ad you see blowing past you as you get out of your car. We humans deal with it by simply tuning out all but a few ads. The ads we pay attention to are ones that pertain directly to our most pressing concerns. The ads we notice are ones that promote a product, service, or idea that can solve our problem, make us feel better, make us richer, or make us feel sexy and loved.
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