Classified & Display Advertising, What You Should Know.

Advertising isn't all that difficult to do. You should write or prepare an advertisement/classified ad to sell your product or generate interest so people ask you to send them more information, usually in exchange for their contact information. Most people make the mistake of either sending their content to be published in the wrong place or not properly developing their ability to write effective ad copy.

Here are some pointers to follow:

Pricing:

• Anything selling for $5 or less, you can advertise using a small display or classified ad. If you are marketing something selling for more than $5, it will require a more significant size of advertising real estate. The bottom line is that using a small classified ad for bigger ticket items simply doesn't give you enough space to adequately explain to the prospect everything they need to know to entice them to order.

• The "Two-Step" method of advertising can be far more effective in such situations. Have the prospect send you $2 or 4 first-class postage stamps and a self-addressed envelope for more information. When they respond, you send them a brochure, flyer, order form with a cover letter so they can place an order for the real product.

• For online prospects, you can have them submit their name and email address in exchange for a free product that is related to or “leads into” the real product (a FREE REPORT, EBOOK, or CHECKLIST, etc). This will allow you to market to these prospects over and over again. Which could lead to even greater profits because you can offer other products/services to them later regardless if they bought your first offer or not?

Writing Effective Copy:

• Now that we've set our pricing guidelines, let's discuss writing the ad copy. It may seem a bit over-simplified but in my opinion, the best way to learn how to write effective advertising copy is to read the ads other people have written. Focus both on what you read that is working and what isn't working, that way you can possibly avoid making some mistakes while developing your advertising copywriting skills.

• You don't want to copy other advertisers messages word-for-word, instead, use them as a guide or template to write your own ads. Before you know it, once you get some experience, you'll be writing effective ad copy just like the pros.

Advertising in the Right Publication:

• Even though you might think this is only common sense, there are still people who will often overlook this factor when choosing where to advertise.

• The factor most people look at first is cost, They will look for the lowest price for the amount of circulation their ad could receive. Unfortunately, this turns out to be a major mistake because, for example, if you are advertising baby clothes in a men's magazine, regardless of the cost, your ad is probably not going to generate any interest or, more importantly, any sales.

• You need to pre-qualify any publication(s) you wish to advertise in before you make your decision on where to spend your advertising dollars. Even though it's generally a good idea to look for good deals that make it easy on your bank balance, you will just be throwing your money away if you don't pre-qualify the publication(s) you consider.

• A great way of pre-qualifying a publication is to send for a sample copy. Most publishers will gladly send them to you free of charge for the asking.

• Study the publication(s) to see what kind of products/services other people are advertising and how they are advertising them. Particularly, you will want to pay attention to their ad copy, headline, graphics (if any), format/structure, slant, etc.

• Contact some of the people who sell items similar to your own and offer to network with them. You might be surprised at just how much free publicity you can get simply from the corresponding, calling, and networking with others.

• Once you have decided on a publication you want to advertise in, give it a try and run your ad(s) for 3 months. If your response rate is low (only a few orders) or non-existent, try another publication. There are literally millions of them out there and eventually, you will hit upon the right target market that will be interested in what you have to sell.

• Don't Stop With One Publication. The more eyes you can put on your ads, the greater your chances of making a sale. Just because you locate the target market of people who are interested in purchasing your product in one publication, that is certainly no reason you shouldn't advertise in other publications. In fact, you would be remiss if you don't, and besides your ad will most likely become stale by being limited to a single reader base. If the same people continue to see your ad every month they will probably grow tired of looking at it. Chances are if they wanted the product they would have ordered it by now anyway, so don't tire them out! Make sure you alternate different size ads and get rid of ones that don't work well.

• Let your ad(s) run for as long as they continue to bring in orders for you, while advertising in 5, 10, 20 or 50 other publications at the same time, to also generate a steady stream of orders and to reach more people.

Display and classified advertising can open up an entirely new source of prospects and customers to a business if done properly. In the first part of this article, we discussed a few of the important aspects of this method of advertising.

In this part, we will complete our exploration of this method by discussing a couple more critical elements to consider before implementing this into your business, so here we go.

Key Your Ads:

• The biggest mistake many beginners make when starting out in the mail-order business is that they fail to key their ads so they know what publication people saw their ads in. They just don't understand the importance of it and/or they just don't want to take the time to learn and incorporate this element into their advertising methodology.

• The term “Keying your ads” just means tracking your sales by linking them to specific ads based on the insertion of a code of some sort in your address so that when people write and order something from you, you immediately will know where they saw your ad.

• Online advertising is much simpler, the tracking can be accomplished easily by inserting a small bit of unique programming code (conveniently called a “tracking code” or “tracking pixel”) into the digital ads that will automatically tell you which ad the sale or opt-in came from.

• You should keep a record of every name and address of every publisher you send an advertisement too. Also record the date you sent the ad and the date you received a checking copy, proving that your ad appeared. Lastly, and probably most important, record the "code" you used so you can immediately identify where it came from.

• Here is an easy way to do this for your mail order sales: If your address is "123 Anytown St," it could become "123 Anytown St, Suite A" for one publication and "Suite B" for another. The postman will still deliver your mail to "123 Anytown St." Of course, if you live in an apartment complex and there are apartment numbers you could turn "111 Johnson Apt A" into "111 Johnson, Apt A-1" for one publication and "Apt A-2" for another. Post office box addresses are also simple. Turn "PO Box 585" into "PO Box 585, Dept A-1" for one publication and "Dept A-2" for another.

• Another method of “keying” is to change the name on the ad. You might see the name "Harry's Hunting Guide" instead of Harry Johnson. Harry might also use "Harry of the Great Outdoors" or even "Harry's Field Guide to Big Game" on his ads relating to these products. You can see the endless possibilities, so just use your own imagination and soon, keying your ads will be a normal part of your business.

• At the same time be sure to keep track (on your Record Sheet or computer spreadsheet) of how many responses you receive from each publication. After 3 months, look over your Record/Spread Sheet and get rid of the publications that didn't do well.

• You'll go broke if you spend $10 per month advertising a 2-inch ad if you only receive $1 back in orders. After a while, you'll be able to see where it pays you to advertise your particular product and then you can test some larger ads in those publications. Continue using this method and you'll always get orders in your mailbox/inbox. It's a win-win situation for everybody!

Tabloids -vs- Adsheets:

• One question concerning advertising that many people ask has to do with whether it's better to advertise in tabloids or adsheets. Both Tabloids and AdSheets are fantastic advertising vehicles. Sometimes people feel a small 1" camera-ready ad gets lost in a tabloid filled with 100's of them. This may be true in some circumstances and not true in others.

• Do you look at 1" ads in tabloids? Of course, you do. You scan the pages and your vision is always directed to one or two on the page that might catch your eye. Ask yourself "why" they caught your eye. Was it because the ad was placed in a specific area on the page? Was it because of the headline or the word "free"?

• Sometimes classified ads work well in Tabloids and AdSheets and sometimes they don't, just look in the back of the Globe or Enquirer. They have page after page of classified ads, don't they? If nobody were reading those ads and responding to them, the advertisers wouldn't keep submitting ads to the Globe or Enquirer. So evidently, people ARE still reading and responding to classified ads - even if there are 100's of them. Test it for yourself to see and do what works the best for you.

Keep in mind that many people will try to sell you information on “What's the best day to mail?” and “When is the best time of the year to advertise?”. These people think they have it all down to a science and they will work hard to convince you of the righteousness of their methods.

However, Don't be fooled, there are NO set rules that can be employed by everyone. That's because there are a number of ways to approach the marketing of various products. If you sell travel services and read a report that told you not to advertise during the summer months, you'd go broke. The summer is the travel industry's biggest money-making season!

Don't get hung up on claims made by people who sell themselves as being expert researchers. There is no better way to determine what is best for your business than for you to try it for yourself and see what works. You are the person in control of your business and you have to be the one where the buck stops. Take advantage of your authority and consider every angle you can think of until you determine what's best for your company's product and/or service.

Well, that pretty much wraps-up our discussion on Display & Classified Advertising. We hope you take-away some value from it.

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I hope you find this information helpful. Thank you for reading.

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