Which of These Mistakes Are You Making?
By Jason Mann ©Copyright 2002-2003
Ezine advertising has been glorified by experts the world over as the last refuge for
the little guy/gal to make a buck online. Well, I hate to deliver bad news, and please
don't shoot the messenger, but there are some draw backs to ezine advertising and many
of the Inner Sanctum E-Letter subscribers are making them daily. Let's look at the
most common mistakes and their solutions.
Mistake number 1: Not Tracking Your ads.
Many business owners have no idea how they can track every ad they place. Whether for
an affiliate program or their own product, they just don't know. Not knowing what ad
is working and producing the sale will cost you and your business thousands of dollars.
When you know what ad produces and what ad doesn't you can cut the worst of the ads
and only keep the ad/s which is producing for your business.
Solution: If you own your own website and domain name, you can track every ad
by creating a special redirect link that is only used in that ad. Or you can add a
question mark to the end of the URL and check that on your stats page.
A simple, http://www.yourdomainname.com/ pagename.html?trackingcodehere will suffice
in most cases. Check with your web host to see if have access to your web site stats
log. Or sign up for one of the free/fee tracking services online.
Mistake number 2: Writing me-too ads.
When writing your ad you must take your ego, your desire to boast about you and your
company, out of the equation. An example of a me-too ad:
"Acme Law Offices have been in business for 20 years. Our staff of lawyers all
graduated from Harvard Law School with honors. Call us at 1-800-acme-law today!"
Solution: Write benefit and results oriented ads. Example:
"Guaranteed Settlements! Win your settlement guaranteed and save 43% on attorney fees
by calling ACME Law Offices at: (blah,blah, blah)"
This ad focuses completely on the end result, the main benefit. Guaranteed Settlements.
Which ad do you think would pull more responses?
Mistake number 3: Running Classifieds.
Since they don't cost much, business owners tend to use classifieds to save costs.
Classifieds are cheap, $5-$20 per ad, and in most cases run faster than solo or top
sponosor ads because the ezine publisher runs 10-20 per issue.
What's not so commonly known is the fact classified sections are often times scanned
by the reader (I scan past them every time) and get very little eye time.
Solution: Run Solo or Top sponsor ads. These ads get more exposure. They are exclusive
(solo mailings) or only have 2-3 (sponsor ads) per issue spaced out between the content.
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