Two kinds of Advertising for a Marketing Strategy

Advertising is the lifeblood of any business. If you do notlearn how to advertise your products and services bothefficiently and effectively, you won't be in business long.While the Internet has lessened or eliminated many of thecosts normally associated with starting and running a smallbusiness, and it's now easier than ever, you'll neverrealize significant profits if you don't grow your businessthrough effective marketing.

There are really just two kinds of advertising - that whichyou pay for and that which you get for free. And bothshould have their place in your overall marketing strategy.The problem arises when one does not understand how or whento use each.

Everywhere we look it seems that someone is claiming youcan get rich online by taking advantage of the freeadvertising the Internet offers.

While it's a true statement, the misleading part is thatit's almost always followed by something like, "We'll giveyou a list of over 984324874984 places to advertise forfree!" They normally go on to explain how anyone can getrich on the Internet because all of the advertising isfree, and if you just send them $29.95 ... well you knowhow it goes.

Unfortunately, as anyone who has tried posting zillions offree ads on the Internet will tell you it just doesn't workthat way. What you really need to know about posting freeads online is that for the most part it's a waste of time -unless you're targeting other marketers - because anoverwhelming majority of people who visit free ad sites areother online marketers like you who are trying to promotetheir own business.

Effective "free advertising" strategies do exist, but theyaren't what the average online marketer thinks of whenhearing this often hyped-up phrase.

Are you ready for the one concept that separates the menfrom the boys, so to speak, online? Here it is:

Free advertising is the laziest way to promote your site!

You don't really think that Yahoo became the most popularweb site on the Internet, getting millions of visitors perday, by using free advertising strategies do you? Heck no.Among other things, they spend millions of dollars per yearon things like buying advertising on other big sites andadvertising on both radio and television.

Now before you say you don't have millions per year tospend on advertising, allow me to show you how you canapply these concepts to your business on a smaller scale.The good news is that if you use the right approach you canstart with a few dollars. It doesn't really matter whatyou're marketing, but let's assume that you sell artwork atyour web site. How could you utilize paid advertisingprofitably?

Now before I scare you off with the thought of having tospend lots and lots of money on advertising, there'ssomething that you need to realize. And it's a basicconcept you should be able to immediately agree with:

If you spend $50 on advertising and it generates more than$50 in net profits, that's a good investment.

Simple right? Well, through the use of proper testing and a"scientific" approach to advertising, there's no reason youcan't turn your original $50 ad into millions of dollars inprofits. It's just a matter of developing a system thatcreates a profit, and then reinvesting your initial profitsback into your business in order to further expand youradvertising.

Remember the artwork? Assume that through proper trackingof your website you're able to determine that 1 out ofevery 100 visitors to your site buys artwork. Let's alsoassume that on the sale of every artwork you make a $50profit. Do you see that any ad you buy which delivers morethan 100 visitors to your site per $50 spent is aprofitable investment?

Promoting a site should be approached with this type of ascientific or mathematical attitude. Any advertising you dois either profitable or not, and you need to know which itis so you don't waste time and money.

Here's a somewhat simplistic strategy that you could use toget started:

Use a combination of free or low-cost strategies to promoteyour web site, generating initial traffic which will serveas a starting point. Through proper tracking of your site,determine the exact "value" of a visitor in terms ofdollars and sense. This is absolutely critical. Utilizepaid advertising that proves to be profitable according tostep 2, based on the value of a visitor and the number ofvisitors generated. Through ongoing testing, tracking, andtweaking, try to increase the value of a web site visitoras well as response to your advertising. Repeat steps 2-4as necessary - or forever. The power of this scientific ormathematical approach to web site promotion is that onceyou have completed the steps you will have an almostautomated advertising campaign that can literally send youall the traffic you need. Rather than spending hours andhours each day promoting your site, you simply buy moreadvertising.

The bottom line is that there are only 24 hours in a dayand there's only so much you can do during that time. Freeadvertising strategies can be effective, but normally,anything that's "free" is going to "cost" you time.

On the other hand, if you could spend $1,000 a day onadvertising to make $1,000 a day in profits -- withoutspending hours doing it -- why wouldn't you just do that?It's not hard at all. Consider Overture.com for example,where you can buy click-thrus for as little as 1-25 cents.

That fits the formula quite nicely. Overture alone won'tsend you enough traffic to make you rich, but it's a goodexample of effectively promoting your site without spendingmuch time doing it. There are lots of others.

Give this 2-step scientific approach a try. If you find youjust can't seem to make the formula work, there can only bea few reasons for it - either you're not advertising in theright places, your web site isn't doing its job, yourprofit margins are too low, or your product or serviceitself is the problem. Figure out which it is and you can'tfail.

Steven Boaze, Chairman, is The Owner of Boaze.comCorporate Web Solutions Which houses Web Development services. Steven is also the author of two successfulBooks along with numerous articles on Marketing and Advertising published by Boaze Publishing. http://www.boazepublishing.biz Copyright © 1998-2004 Boaze.com