Advertising for the perplexed - part II

previous article examined some of the basic ideas involvedin advertising. We looked at why a company may want to advertise, the factorsinvolved in choosing a suitable venue and the costs and time involved. We alsoexplored some of the practicalities to consider and how to research your potentialvenue. Once you've chosen where you're going to advertise, the next critical factor will behow well you know the target audience. The more information that you have to hand,the better you can tailor your content around their needs and expectations. You need to make sure that you speak in their language, try to give them whatthey're already used to, or grab their attention with something new. But be warned,these are pushy and innovative times. Whatever gimmick or spin you use to stand outmay well has been tried many times before, so don't over-rely on it. Like a good informative web page, the ad needs to first of all catch theirattention, and compel them to click on it. There should be more focus on the benefits of the software than the features, andthe ad should really push the download or sale. It should also be as compelling andstriking as possible - not easy when you're limited by a number of characters, filesize or space to work with! Bear in mind that like any strategy, your advertising will only be as strong as itsweakest link. Don't spend thousands of dollars on good placement, only to use someawful home-created banner that you knocked together with Paint Shop Pro 4 threeyears ago. If graphic design is not your strong point, then get a firm to design some decentgraphics for you. The same goes with writing the ad copy. Most people can write, butfew are writers. Try to make sure that someone with more than a thesaurus-dictionarygift set writes your copy for you. Aside from the wording, the basic market principles apply. Grab their attention,tempt them, and compel them to act. "50% discount" is eye catching, as is some formof "only valid today" type of offer. But when the potential customer clicks on your ad, you're only half way there. Younow need to make sure that the page they land on carries on the good work.Realistically, many will click on the ad out of idle curiosity, and very few (ifany) will have made up their minds to purchase already. You should therefore use a separate landing page, as opposed to your regular mainwebsite page. It should contain the same information and use the same language, toneand focus of the ad, but now you're not restricted as to what you can do, or howmuch space you have to work with. Here, you have all the space you need to goall-out with the sales drive. On a technical level, make sure that your landing page is not linked from anywherein your website, so as to ensure that everyone coming to this page has been driventhere by the ad. If you're sharing a landing page, then at least make sure that you use a uniquereferral string. To be able to evaluate the success of the ad, it's critical thatyou can distinguish these visitors from the regular site visitors. This brings us neatly onto the subject of tracking, without which you areeffectively deaf, dumb and blind to the effects of the ad. A unique landing page onyour website is ideal, and if possible, makes this point to a separate payment pageas well. You can also use cookies or referral strings in order to sharpen theaccuracy of the tracking. Usage of decent web log analysis software should let you see how many people came tothe landing page, how long they spent there, which links they then clicked on, whodownloaded from there, who purchased, and perhaps even who came back to the websitelater. The analysis and follow-up of the campaign is surprisingly often completelyoverlooked. This is a great loss, as in some respects this is one of the mostimportant stages of the whole process. When it comes to gauging the level of generated sales and registrations, you need totake into account the final date of the ad, plus the full length of the trialversion and then add a little extra time. Some may view the ad, click, download thesoftware, but may not install it for a few days or even longer. As an example, a company may choose to run a series of ads in a newsletter that issent out from Monday to Friday of a given week. Some people may not respond to the ad until the following weekend (or later), andonly then download your thirty day trial. So we're already looking at 35 days afterthe ad was first run, and that's assuming that they install the software as soon asthey download it. Some people may even register after the trial has elapsed. Sodon't go writing it off as a failure on day two of your advertising campaign. To accurately evaluate the success of the campaign, you need to go back to youroriginal goals. If your primary goal was to achieve a higher level of sales, then it should bereasonably easy to see how many were generated by the ad. As with everything relatedto advertising, your data won't be 100% accurate, but it should give you a goodidea. If the primary goal was increased exposure, then you should be looking at how manypeople were exposed to the ad, how many viewed the landing page content and website,and perhaps even downloaded and purchased the software. At this point, there are four possible scenarios. (1) The ad appears to be successful. Your goals have been achieved as a direct result of the ad, and more advertisingwith this vendor may be considered for the future. Even with this success, don'trule out the fact that your figures can be further improved, but don't forget thatthey can worsen too. You should also be careful not to immediately engage in a long-term contract withthis vendor. Not only because there are other advertising options out there, butalso because any ad has a certain lifespan until has it reached its saturationpoint. At the very least consider trying different products, wording (or graphics)or even a different type of offer or discount. (2) The ad doesn't appear to be successful. There have been little generated in terms of exposure or sales, and you can't helpbut feel that the venture has been a failure. The first thing you have to do is to try to determine the reason for this. It may be the product itself, the ad copy, the ad, or perhaps the targeting was off.It may even be as a result of the ad placement, or the offer or discount not beinggenerous enough. If the ad failed, it is very important to ascertain exactly why. Don't just dismissit as a failure, or a "bad" place to advertise, and don't be afraid to go back tothe vendor for feedback. If you explain that you're interested in making this work,as opposed to complaining that they didn't deliver the results you expected, you'llusually get a positive response. See what they can do to help, after all, it's intheir interests that you walk away satisfied by your experience. (3) The ad appears to break-even, but little more than this. Go back and read number (2). Not being a success counts as a failure. (4) You're not sure whether the ad was worthwhile or not. There has been some response, but it's difficult to see whether it was a worthwhileexperience or not. It's very important that you get to the bottom of this. Go through your statisticsagain, and filter through your logs to see exactly what the visitors did, where theyclicked, and why they behaved as they did. It is extremely important that at the end of the process, you know whether it wasworthwhile or not. Failure to do so will result either in wastage of money orwastage of opportunities. It's all too easy to throw money away on bad advertising. It's just as easy to bescared-off by risks, or for that matter throw potential opportunities away. Like anyform of marketing, there are no guarantees that you'll achieve the results you hopefor. But by failing to try, you're absolutely guaranteed never to reach them. Thebest you can do is to prepare the ground and cover all options as thoroughly aspossible, take a deep breath and then take the plunge. Be seen, be sold.

Source: Express-Press-Release.com

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