Buy/Sell Links

It is quite apparent that many of the Internet’s advertisers, are not necessarily the best marketers. This article focuses on how you should plan your advertising campaigns and some factors that you should consider:

1) Identify Your Target Market

It is crucially important that you know the group of people that you are targeting, with your advertising. You need to put yourself in the shoes of your customers and see things from their perspective. Your site should obviously be relative to your product or service, but also consider bigger sites – such as social media and forum networks, as your target market may be hanging around these sites too.

2) Set Specific Goals

You would be surprised at how many people don’t set goals and just amble along, hoping for the best. How many sales do you want each day? How many people do you want to sign up? What is your objective for a particular advertising campaign? I assure you that there is a kind of magic in the relationship between setting goals and the actual results that you receive.

3) Target Your Message to Your Audience

You need to tailor the message of your ad, to your target audience. If you get too technical, the less technical people will not relate to your message. Once again, put yourself in their shoes and try to imagine what they will expect.

4) Get Good at Ad Content

It pays to learn how to write good advertisements. Separate the ad into parts and work on each part individually. Probably the most important part of the ad, is the Headline. Is your headline catchy? Does it create interest? Experiment with different headlines and see which works best for you. Consider using a question as a headline or a partial headline such as, “I Hadn’t Made a Penny Until…”. Ultimately, your headline should separate your product or service, from that of your competition.

5) Match Your Message to Your Customer’s Needs

Your customer wants to buy from you, but they just don’t know it yet. Let’s suppose you have a weight loss product that you know for certain, will help many people. What is their need? Well, let’s suppose they’re desperate to lose weight. So your ad could look something like, ‘lose 15 pounds of weight in 2 weeks! To Get Your FREE Sample Click Here’. Now there’s a message that will cause interest!

6) Make the Call to Action Clear

There’s no need to go to extremes here, with flashy text or graphics, but you should consider things such as, underlining and bolding text links. Text input boxes should be pre-populated with an appropriate message and drop/pull-down menus, all have their uses for making the call to action clear. And finally, think about a button on your web for that is labelled ‘Submit’. Could this label not be changed to a more positive call to action, such as, ‘Yes, I Want a FREE Copy!’? Use every method possible, to stack the deck in your favour!

7) Co-ordinate Your Ad’s Appearance

Where you place your ads, should influence their appearance and you should consider changing things like, colour, background, font-color and font-style, so that it looks like a natural part of its environment. This way, your potential buyers will feel that your ad is just a natural progression of the whole process.

Create Numerous versions of Your Ads

It is strongly recommended that you create a number of versions of each of your ads, so that you can track which ones are more effective than others. You should make subtle changes to each, such as the font style and colours, and the actual ‘Call to Action’. Never assume that you are finished in designing your ads and always believe that you can improve your ads. That way, you are on the road to constant improvement.