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10 Tips for Successful Ezine AdvertisingHome > Promote > Advertising > Ezines When it comes to advertising, I've tried just about
everything. I tried free classified ad sites, I tried FFA sites,
I tried banner exchange programs.
The results? Not much.
I was tired of hearing that the Internet is the
largest market in human history. Maybe so, but how could I reach
those millions of people?
The answer, I discovered, is ezine advertising.
Ezines are sometimes called 'opt-in' lists because
everyone who receives an ezine has chosen to do so.
And that's why ezine advertising gets results. People
read ezines and they'll read your ad. And if you've matched the
ezine to the product you're selling, you've reached your target
audience.
There are currently around 90,000 ezines being published
every month. So whatever you're selling, there's more than likely
an ezine that will take your ad straight to the audience you want
to reach.
Ezine advertising is not only effective, it's cheap
as well. A 5 line ad in an ezine that goes to 3000 people will cost
you between $5 and $20 per issue.
As a general rule, you'll always get back at least
the cost of the ad, and usually much more. So there's very little
risk.
But there are some tips for successful ezine advertising.
Here they are:
1. The first and most important rule is: "Track
your Ads!" Say you place an ad in 5 different ezines and get a hundred
responses. If you don't track your ads, you won't know which ezines
were pulling responses and which weren't.
But how do you track your ads?
The simplest method is to place a key or a code
at the end of your email address:
yourname@yourdomain.com?subject=ezineA
Then, when you get a reply with 'ezineA' in the
subject field, you'll know which ezine it came from.
For a URL, it's the same principle:
http://www.yourdomain.com?ezineA
However, if you're going to code your URLs, you'll
need a good webstats program to track the coded URLs. These two
programs are excellent and they're both free:
Here's another way to code your URLs: for every
ezine ad, create a duplicate of your homepage and name the page
after the ezine that your ad will appear in. So, if the ad is appearing
in DEMC ezine, this is the URL you'd place in that ad:
http://www.yourdomain.com/DEMC
2. Target your audience. It may seem obvious but
some advertisers overlook this. If you're selling a web-marketing
course, don't advertise in an ezine that deals with stock options;
they probably won't be interested.
Use the 'subject categories' in any ezine directory
to find ezines that relate to the product you're selling. You can
find a list of 56 ezine directories in 'The Free Directory of Ezines'
at:
3. Once you've chosen a number of ezines that target
your audience, subscribe to them and examine the ads closely. If
you see an ad that keeps repeating issue after issue, you can be
pretty sure that it's getting results. You've found a good ezine
to advertise in.
4. Check to see how many ads are in the ezine. You
probably won't get much response from an ad in an ezine that has
15 or 20 ads per issue. Readers of those ezines have become hardened
to the ads and have learnt to skip them.
5. Check to see if the ezine publisher has a policy
of never running ads for two similar products in the same issue
- your ad will be much more effective if it's the only one of it's
kind in that particular issue.
6. Small ezines vs. Big ezines: bigger is not always
better. The big ezines with 1000's of subscribers tend to have more
ads than the small ezines. Also, small ezines with only a few hundred
subscribers often have a much more targeted audience than the big
ezines.
7. Repeat your ads. Research shows that off the
Web, an ad has to be seen about 21 times before someone acts on
it; on the Internet it's about 9 times. If your budget allows, try
and have your ad repeated at least three times in a particular ezine.
Most ezines offer discount packages for bulk advertising.
8. Email address vs. URL. The advantage of giving
an email address is that it gives you the opportunity to send a
powerful sales letter to the person who responded to your ad. It's
also much easier to track your ads with an email address than a
URL.
9. Offer something free in your ad copy. It'll often
tip the balance between a response and no response.
10. Keep your ads short, even if you're not using
the number of words you're allowed. Short ads are more likely to
be read. Keep your sentences short too; they pack much more power.
Use the word 'You'. Don't describe your product but tell the reader
what your product can do for them.
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