1: Bigger Is Better

The old adage that ‘bigger is better’ isn’t always true, but when it comes to ad size in a PPC campaign, a bigger font size can get you a better click through rate (CTR).  Erin Sagin of Word Stream reports that a bigger ad can increase your CTR by as much as 30%.  So look into getting some ad extensions to increase your ad’s size and make sure that users can see your copy, because if they can’t see it, it doesn’t matter how good it is.

2: Use Your Keywords

If you are paying for certain keywords, obviously the people who are looking those keywords up are going to be interested in those terms.  If you pay for keywords, but don’t have any of them in your ad, users will be far less likely to click on your ad.  Make sure they know your ad is relevant and use the keywords you are paying for so that potential clients know that your product is relevant to their search.

 3: Tell Readers What They Will Gain

A lot of people are excited to share their product with readers, and that makes sense.  However, you aren’t selling a product; you are selling a benefit.  Your product will do something for clients.  Don’t tell them what the product is, tell them what they have to gain from it.  People who have warehouses full of mattress aren’t selling the mattress, they are selling a good night’s sleep. Pharmacies don’t sell aspirin, they sell headache relief.  Determine what benefit your product is offering and sell that.

4:  Use a Creative and Engaging ‘Call To Action’

Using an effective call to action (CTA) is one of the most important parts of writing effective copy.  Keep in mind that your potential clients have seen any number of CTAs in a given day, so don’t go with the clichéd ‘Act Now’, or ‘Buy Now’.  Instead, be creative and make your CTA unique to your product.  The best way to do this is to roll the benefits of your product into the call to action.  If your product is designed to teach someday to play guitar, make that your call to action: “Learn to play guitar!”  If it is designed to help entrepreneurs develop a business plan, try something like: “Start your own business now!”  Be sure to include at least one keyword in your CTA.

5: Promote Your Unique Features

Both Salam Aslam of Omnicore and Erin Sagin of Word Stream encourage online marketers to promote their unique features.  This is key to differentiating yourself from your competition.  If you have free shipping, make sure the people looking at your ad know.  If you have a money-back guarantee and your competitors don’t, make sure you mention that.  Do you have a secure payment feature that others don’t?  Promote it.  By listing these things, potential clients will be familiar with the features that makes your product unique.

6:  Know Your Competition

In order to promote your unique features, you first have to know what they are.  To do this, you need to research your competition.  The mistake that some people make is that they think they already know who their competition is.  The might think that they are competing with big box stores, or retail stores.  This might be true, but if you are bidding on keywords, look up those keywords and see what other ads are popping up.  Follow the links, check out the prices and features of your competitors, and then modify and refine your product and prices in order to place yourself ahead of competitors.

7:  Be Concise

This might sound like a simple statement, and an obvious one given that most PPC ads are shorter than Tweets, but there is a method to this.  With so few characters, you might ask how you can tell readers what they will gain, use keywords, and create a call to action.  To do this without going over your character limit, combine them all.  Convey the benefit your product offers through your CTA, and make sure that your keyword is in that CTA.  This way you are doing three things with one sentence.  For instance, perhaps you are selling a cook book and you are using the keyword ‘recipe’.  Try something like: “Make a great dinner with these recipes!”  Here you are using your keyword, offering a CTA, and telling the reader what the benefit is all at once.  In this way, you can be concise.

8: Follow your Stats

My PPC program gives users step-by-step instructions that shows them how to check the stats on their PPC ads and figure out which campaigns are working most effectively.  This is key to making sure that you can maximize your ads, increase your CTR, and make your ads are more cost effective.  Keeping track of these stats is the best way to maximize the profits and minimize your spending.  Don’t rely on a single ad either.  As Sam Mazaheri from AdStage reports, you should always create and test multiple ads so that you can figure out which ones work best.

9:  Consider Images

Images can often times be more eye-catching than words.  As PPC Hero reports, these ads can be extremely efficient, though they are not to be confused with image search ads.  If you are promoting a restaurant or fashion items, including an image of your meals of clothing articles might be helpful.

10:  Eliminate Customers

This one sounds like it is counterintuitive to generating business, but it can be helpful if you are selling a specific item, or a high ticket item.  Let’s say, for instance, that you are selling a program that costs $500.  This may be well out of the price range of many potential clients.  If there is a known demand in your niche for big ticket items, and you want to target buyers who are willing to spend that much, including the price will prevent people unwilling to spend that kind of money from clicking on your ad.  This will reduce your CTR, and will reduce the number of clicks you get, but it will also make sure you aren’t paying for clicks that aren’t making you any money.  This is also good if you have a niche item.  Though this method isn’t always the best approach, it is one you should consider.

Final Thoughts

Though including prices for big ticket items and including image aren’t best for all PPC ads, they are something you should be aware of when putting your campaign together.  That said, it is vital to include keywords, set yourself apart from your competitors, and have an effective CTA.  Without these items, it will be difficult to get a high CTR.  Likewise, you don’t want to rely on a single ad.  Try a couple of different combinations so that you can compare and contrast your campaigns and figure out what combination of CTAs and keywords work best.  Giving careful consideration to these approaches will give you an edge when it comes to writing an effective PC campaign.

If you found this article helpful and would like updates on my latest posts, be sure to follow me on Twitter @MikeBashi, on Facebook, or add me to your RSS feed, and if you want access to my PPC program, which teaches you how to get higher click-through rates, go here.

1: Bing Has the Hardware

As mammoth as Google is, the only way you can even access it is through hardware, and Google doesn’t make hardware, at least not home computers or laptops (their foray into the tablet and cellphone business has dragged down the company’s profits).  Microsoft, however, powers 8 of the top 10 selling laptops in the world, so when users open up their new PC, chances are the default search engine is going to be Bing.  With Windows 10 having been recently released, and Chris Crum of WebProNews reporting that Microsoft expects to have their operating systems in the hands of over a billion users by 2018, it seems like Microsoft is going to be making Bing a major player in the search engine business over the next couple of years.  Without any hardware to promote their search engine, Google will be at a distinct disadvantage.

2: It’s Usually Cheaper

Because Google Adwords is the most popular search engine, far more people use it.  While this might get your ad viewed by more people, it doesn’t mean that your dollar will go further.  With so many other people bidding on the same words, the cost of each click will rise exponentially.  On Bing, you might pay only 25% of what you are paying on Bing, and it might even end up getting your more or as many visitors.

3: Better Incentives

If you’ve signed up for Google Adwords, there’s a pretty good chance you received a card in the mail for $20 in free Adwords money.  This means that you can spend a whole $20 to test your ads before sinking any of your money into the service.  The problem is, even with a $50 credit, it is difficult to test a campaign, especially given how much more expensive Google is.  Bing is far more generous and is currently offering potential users $150 credit to start, and since their ads tend to be significantly cheaper, this $150 will go much farther when it comes to testing your initial campaigns.  You could be turning a profit on your ads before you even have to pay for them.

 4: More Detailed Control

Since most advertisers are target a national or international audience, being able to make your ads work a specific times in specific time zones.  As Mark Irvine from Word Stream observes, Bing allows user to do exactly that.  Google doesn’t yet have that option.  It also allows other demographic controls, such as age, gender, and devices.

5: Better Stat Tracking

It might be unfair to suggest that Bing Ads have better stats than Google Adwords; both sites have excellent stats.  Bing Ads, though, has easily navigable stats that allow you to see what words your keyword combinations cropped with so that you can adjust your keywords to increase your conversion rates.  These stats are extensive and are helpful when tweaking your campaigns.  Google Adwords has similar stats, but I find Bing Ads to be more easily navigable.  The stats are also relayed in a way that is easy to interpret with clear bar graphs, as noted by James Love at InfoTrust.

6: Better Customer Service

Almost any small business owner who has advertised on Google Adwords will have horror stories about the ‘terms and service’.  With so many details, and so much vague wording, it is easy to unintentionally violate the rules set out by Google Adwords.  When that happens, you get banned.  Because Google has so many clients, it isn’t a big deal to them if they lose a customer, and because they have so many big name companies, it is actually better for them to eliminate the biggest clients’ competitors.  This can be frustrating.  Bing, on the other hand, has far clearer terms and services, and should you violate them, they are far more likely to take the time to educate their clients and help them improve their ads so that they work within the guidelines of their regulations.

7: It Allows For Exact Word Matches

At one time Google did have an ‘exact match’ option that actually was an exact match option.  This meant that if you entered a key word, only users who entered that exact search word would see your ad. Google still offers ‘exact match’, but now they define this as “exact terms or close variations of exact terms”, meaning that words with similar spellings and different meanings might trigger your ad to show up, and if somebody accidentally clicks your ad, you’ll be paying money for somebody else’s spelling mistake.  Variants can be helpful, but for users who want to target specific keywords, this can be a problem.  Only Bing offers this option right now.

8:  Better Interface with Social Networks

While there is room for improvement with how Bing Ads interfaces with social networks, Mark Irvine from Word Stream notes that Bing at least has a leg up on Google Adwords.  While Google is intent on promoting its own social networking services, Bing has no issues using your standing with sites like Twitter to reinforce your credibility.  Where Google Adwords places the number of your Google+ followers next to your ad (that’s if you have Google+), Bing Ads includes the number of your Twitter followers.  This helps bolster you reputation and makes it more likely that users will click on your ad.

9: It’s More Innovative

I don’t mean to imply that Google isn’t innovative.  After all, part of the reason Google has such a strangle hold on the market is precisely because it has been so innovative.  Bing, however, is the little guy taking on Goliath, so it has to be more innovative.  As a result, it has put together better stat tracking info, and offers more detailed control, as mentioned, but it is constantly coming up with new features that Google doesn’t have. It allows users to control their search demographics, be it for age, gender, or device, and allows you to include negative keywords so that your ad doesn’t show up when your keywords are paired with words not associated with your products.  As Brian Jackson from itBusiness observes, Bing is constantly improving its services.  These kinds of features, coupled with the constantly evolving stats that Bing offers, demonstrates the kind of forward thinking that tech users used to see in Google and are accustomed to seeing in Apple, putting Bing ahead of its competition in terms of innovation and giving it more unique features.

10: You Can Use PayPal

This is a simple one, and most people have payment options other than PayPal, but for a lot of internet users, PayPal is their exclusive go-to payment service when making transactions online.  As Mahesh Mohan states, there aren’t too many Google products that accept PayPal.  Bing, however, has no issue with PayPal, making it far more user friendly.

Final Thoughts

Google Adwords can be an extremely effective service and can generate a lot of money for you, but Bing Ads is certainly worthy of consideration.  If you have the funds, it might be a good idea to run both and fine tune your campaigns using the detailed stats provided on Bing to put together a more effective campaign on Google, though some features on Bing will allow you to target more specific users.  With its extra features, innovation, more affordable prices, and increasing market share, Bing Ads is something you should at the very least be keeping your eye on.

If you found this article helpful and would like updates on my latest posts, be sure to follow me on Twitter @MikeBashi, on Facebook, or add me to your RSS feed, and if you want access to my PPC program, which teaches you how to get higher click-through rates, go here.

Navigation Menu

Whether you are advertising through Bing, Yahoo, or Google, one of the things that search engines values is a clear navigation menu.  When setting the navigation menu up, there are several tabs you want to make sure you include.  First, you must have a ‘Terms of Service’ tab, and likewise a ‘Privacy Policy’.  Some sites have one or the other, but it is a good idea to have both.  Likewise, you want to include a ‘Contact’ tab.  This is important not only because the search engines look for it, but also because your potential clients may have questions and you want to make sure that you are accessible to them.  A ‘Home’ tab is also something the major search engines expect you to have on your landing page, so be sure to include that as well.

Security Seals

Whenever somebody is visiting your site and isn’t familiar with your brand, they are going to have questions, not only about the quality of your products and services, but also about the security of your website. If people are going to be completing an online business transaction with your site, they will want to know that it is secure.  Having security seals from reliable firms that evaluate the level of security on websites branding your page as safe is going to help ease these kinds of concerns.  Make sure you take the necessary steps required to make your website secure, and get the seals so that your clients know you can be trusted.

Sign-in Option

The sign-in option is important for several reasons.  One, it helps you build a list.  Anybody who opts in is obviously interested in what you have to offer, and if you have similar offers in the future, you will be able to pitch your new deals to your regular clients without having to find them through PPC campaigns and other advertising methods.  Whenever you have a new product, you can pitch it to your subscribers first, get their feedback to improve the product, and also generate some revenue to put into advertising when you launch the new product.  The sign-in option is also important because it allows you to keep your landing page concise as you can take visitors to more detailed content page that explains your product after they’ve signed in.  This way your landing page doesn’t seem overburdened with content when people arrive. If your site does have too much content, visitors may find it too daunting to read and leave the page, increasing your bounce rate.

Content

Another key component of your landing page will be the content.  You want to make sure that the service or product you are offering is clearly outlined and defined.  This is important for two reasons.  Firstly, you want your potential customers to know exactly what it is you are offering so that they know what you are selling.  This seems obvious, but some marketers make their landing page vague with the hopes of getting people to sign up to their mailing list in order to find out what exactly is being offered.  The problem is that if visitors are not interested in the product when they find out what it is, you will then have a mailing list populated by people who aren’t interested in your product.  This clarity is also important because the search engines like Bing and Google have policies on what kinds of products they sell.  If you are unclear, and they think your product might not work in concert with their policies, you could find your account suspended or banned, especially when working with Google.  Aside from clarity, you also want the content to be concise. You are making a pitch, not a full explanation of what you are offering.  Give them the details after they opt in, and keep your message short and simple.

Keywords

When putting your content together, it is also important to make sure that your landing page’s keywords and metatags match the keywords that you are using in your PPC campaign.  This is not an endorsement of keyword stuffing.  I always suggest avoiding keyword stuffing, but I do strongly suggest that you use your keywords wherever it makes sense to use them.  If your keywords and metatags are in sync with the keywords used in your PPC campaign, the results are sure to be better than they would otherwise be.

Videos/Optional

A lot of online marketers have been including videos on their landing pages, and this can be an effective technique; however, if you do have a video on your landing page, you want to make sure that it is not on autoplay.  Some search engines, like Bing, have a policy about autoplay videos, and though your PPC ads will likely continue to be posted for a day or two, once they discover your site uses autoplay, the campaign will be suspended. This is also a good practice as visitors usually associate autoplay with spammers and potentially unsafe websites, and if they are accessing a site from work, they don’t want your audio suddenly blaring from their computer for all their co-workers to hear.  If you do have a video, make sure it is short, that there is a volume control on it, that users are able to start and stop the video, and that the length is displayed for users.  This will make it user friendly and your potential clients will appreciate that they have control over the media and that they know how much time they need to invest before watching it.

Sales Pitch

Aside from these points, you also want to avoid selling something directly on the landing page.  Instead, your landing page should describe what you are about and what you do, but the offer should be on another page.  This is recommended for several reasons.  Firstly, you want to collect e-mails in order to build your list.  Secondly, you don’t want your landing page to be too long, or to ask for a commitment from your visitors when they’ve just discovered your website.  They might also be interested, but unsure.  If you collect their e-mail address instead, this will allow you to send several pitches to them should they not pick up on your offer the first time they visit your site.

Final Thoughts

There are a host of details you need to know about PPC marketing, details that I cover in my PPC marketing program, but regardless of how effective the quality of your PPC campaign is, the quality of your landing page will define the success of your campaign.  You want to make sure you have a landing page that clearly articulates what you are promoting and is easy to navigate.  You want security tags, an opt-in option, and you want to make sure that your videos aren’t on autoplay.  For those of you who are not a web designers, you can sign up for a program like Optimize Press 2.0 and use Word Press to set up an easy-to-use page.  Make sure your landing page conforms to the outline mentioned above, and you will be on your way

If you found this article helpful and would like updates on my latest posts, be sure to follow me on Twitter @MikeBashi, on Facebook, or add me to your RSS feed, and if you want access to my PPC program, go here.

1: FREELANCER

Freelancer is going to be at the top of most lists, and it is at the top of mine.  If you are a business looking to get work done, whether it is programming, writing, or graphic design, Freelancer is a great way to get good, affordable work done in a timely fashion.  When getting banner, you can even get different graphic designers to submit work, and you can then choose which you think is best.  If you aren’t happy with the work, you don’t pay.  When you do pay, they accept every kind of payment method that you can imagine.  Their fees are relatively low: $3 or 3% of the cost of the project (whichever is greater), and they split the cost of their service up between the business and the freelance worker, though their fees for the freelance worker can be as much as other sites that only charge the workers, so some take issue with the fact that they double dip.  If you are a new business, you might want to hire the new freelance workers as they are often equally qualified and work for less, but once you get a freelancer whose work you trust, you will find you don’t mind paying a little extra for work you know is good.  Freelance workers and businesses also rank each other, so be sure to treat the freelancers you work with well so that other workers are willing to work with you, and keep an eye on the rankings of the freelance workers you hire.

2: UPWORK (FORMERLY ODESK AND ELANCE)

Elance and oDesk were two of the most popular freelance websites and have recently merged, rebranding themselves as UpWork.  They offer rankings of both businesses and freelance workers, so if you are looking for quality work, you can always check out the freelance workers feedback.  UpWork also has tests that their freelance workers can take to demonstrate their qualifications.  Though they don’t have as many freelance workers as Freelancer, they still have over 8 million, compared to Freelancers 10 million.  The rates for services don’t differ much from Freelancer, and as for money transfers, their payment methods are all pretty much the same.  If you are picking between the two services, it is more about which site is more navigable for you.  The one advantage that UpWork has for businesses, is that they deduct service fees exclusively from the freelance worker.  If you pay $10, the freelancer gets $9 and the company UpWorks takes $1.  No service fee is charged to the business as a result.

3:  GURU

Guru works in much the same way as the other sites, but they have limited services and far fewer freelance workers.  Unlike the other sites, they don’t offer hourly rates.  They also don’t offer phone support, nor do they offer time trackers.  It likewise doesn’t have any testing services, so the only way to evaluate the workers is through buyer ratings and past experience.  A lot of freelance workers who use the site have had complaints, and so move to other services, but those who are on the site are often as qualified as those found on Freelander and UpWork.  Some prefer Guru because, according to Andy Singleton from assembla, they have a high percentage of US-based workers, but some businesses prefer sites with international workers because their rates are often lower.  The site does offer all the most common payment methods, and functions in much the same way as the others.  Still, the general consensus is that the setup is inferior to UpWork and FreeLancer.

FINAL THOUGHTS

If you are a business looking to get work done, these sites can be very helpful.  If you are freelance worker, the sites may not offer you as positive an experience. Your first payment is held for three weeks with some of the sites, and all payments after that are held for two weeks (or a month if you should choose) and require a minimum amount of money to transfer the funds to you, at least for most sites.  This allows the sites to hold your money and make interested during the waiting period.  If you are new and have only picked up one job, you might not see that money until three weeks after you gotten enough jobs to be owed the minimum transfer requirement.  The sites usually take the fee from the freelance worker, and if the client isn’t happy with the work, they can refuse to pay.  Also, if they aren’t planning on being long term customers, they might take your work and opt not to pay you.  At that point there is little recourse.  The broker will ban them from their service, but it won’t mean anything to them if they weren’t planning on using the service again.  This doesn’t happen all the time, but it does happen.  If you are a business, be sure to treat the freelancers fairly.  If you do, they will do good work for you.  If you don’t, it will be hard to develop a productive working relationship.

If you found this article helpful and would like updates on my latest posts, be sure to follow me on Twitter @MikeBashi, on Facebook, or add me to your RSS feed.

https://youtu.be/NDASWTzkd4s

1: PAY PER CLICK (PPC)

You won’t finder a bigger advocate for PPC marketing than me.  The beauty of PPC is that you can start running it on a modest budget, and still get targeted traffic.  You pick the key words that you want your ads to show up with, and you pick the price you are willing to pay, and you only pay if the ad converts to a visit.  You can get same-day traffic that is targeted and affordable.  If you are going to go this route, be sure that you have an autoresponder set up on your page, so if people do visit your website, and are interested in your content or products, you can get them on a mailing list and contact those visitors again in the future.

2: EMAIL MARKETING

Not all email marketing works effectively.  I always recommend avoiding mailers and buying lists, because the emails you send out with those methods will be going to people who did not ask for emails from you.  They are cold sells, and a cold sell was hard enough when they were done in person; online it is even harder to gain a stranger’s trust because people are always worried about scams.  Instead of mailers and buying lists, use your autoresponder to build your own list.  This is the most targeted traffic you could ask for, because it is people who have visited your site, and have left their email because they are interested in your content or products. You are going to get a much higher conversion rate with those kinds of emails than you would with a list you bought.

3:  CONTEXTUAL AND BEHAVIOURAL ADVERTISING

Like PPC marketing, contextual and behavioural advertising are great ways to generate same-day traffic in an affordable way.  It does work a little differently.  Rather than posting text ads in search results, you are placing banners ads, or rather, buying media space on websites that have signed up for programs like Google Adsense.  Just as Google or Bing might load your ads up on their search engine, they also load up ads on the media space of websites related to your niche who have signed up for their services.  They are a little more expensive, and you have the option of paying per click, or per impression.  If you ads get high conversion rates, paying per impression is your best bet; if you get low conversion rates, pay per click is likely the way to go. You will have to invest in banner ads, but this investment is worthwhile because these ads placed based the context of the websites combine that with the behaviour of the users (based on their browser history), making the traffic highly targeted.

4: MEDIA BUYING

If you’ve develop a strong campaign through contextual and behavioural advertising, media buying might also work for you.  Where contextual and behavioural advertising post your ads on collective websites that each get low traffic, media buying entails you contacting webmasters from websites with significant traffic, ideally sites within your niche.  Rather than paying per click, you can negotiate a space on a popular website and get your ads to pop up all day for a predetermined period of time, or have your ad put in a small rotation of ads.  If your campaign has a high conversion rate, this approach would likely be your best option because you pay a set fee and you can access a larger, specific audience.  This can better than contextual advertising because you know exactly what website your ad is going on, and you know who the audience is, which is not always the case with contextual advertising.  However, it can be more expensive and doesn’t guarantee traffic.  If you don’t have confidence in your campaign, you might want to work out the bugs by testing it through contextual advertising.

5:  ONLINE ENGAGEMENT

The great thing about online engagement is that it costs no money at all.  The bad thing is that it doesn’t get the same level of immediate results on a consistent basis that an approach like PPC does.  This method takes time, and requires that you invest personal time, rather than money.  Still, it is a method I recommend not only because it can help to raise awareness and increase your brand recognition, but also because it has become standard practice with all business who do work online.  There isn’t a single company in the fortune 500 that doesn’t have a Twitter account or who doesn’t use social media to enhance their online presence. Though it might seem like it requires more time than it is worth in some cases, it does help to build a solid and loyal base that can be the foundation of your business.

FINAL THOUGHTS

It can be hard to rank these methods, because a lot of them might vary in success depending on your niche and approach.  These are the ones that I’ve found to be most effective, but you always want to test and find out which approach works best for you.  I don’t rely too much on online engagement, but I do employ it and think it is important.  I get a lot out of PPC and media buying, but I tend to stay away from contextual and behavioural advertising, not because they don’t work, but because PPC and media buying work better for my niche.  Test the waters, and see what works best.  The one thing that I cannot stress enough is that you should absolutely get an autoresponder before driving traffic to your site so that you can build an e-mail list.  The last thing you want to do is drive traffic to your site only to see it pass through like water through a stream.  As you may have read on my site before, the only thing better than 1000 unique visitors a day, is making sure all those visitors return.  To do that, you need an autoresponder.

If you found this article helpful and would like updates on my latest posts, be sure to follow me on Twitter @MikeBashi, on Facebook, or add me to your RSS feed.

https://youtu.be/jKfCBmBll4Y

BUILD A LIST WITH AN AUTORESPONDER

Have you ever visited a site that asked for your email address before you start reading?  Or perhaps one that has an option to enter your e-mail address to get updates?  That is an autoresponder.  If you have visited my site in the past, you will know that I am a big fan of autoresponders.  The last thing you want to do is drive traffic to your site, only to watch it come and go with no return visits.  The only thing that is better than 2000 unique visitors a day, is making sure those 2000 unique visitors become regular visitors.  Autoresponders allow visitors who enjoy your content or are interested in future deals, to received updates via email.  Every email address you get goes on your list, and just like building a following on Twitter or Facebook, you can build a significant email list.  Then, when you have new content, or a new deal, you can send a notification email out, and all your past visitors will be made aware.  This won’t drive new traffic to your site, but it will ensure that past visitors will be more likely to return.  Can’t afford an autoresponder?  Collect the emails that pop up in your comments section.  These are often times faux emails, so if you may want to put them on a second list and monitor your conversion rates on those e-mails to make sure they are going to nonexistent inboxes.  Or use social networking sites as an alternative until you can afford an autoresponder.  One thing you want to avoid doing is making it mandatory for visitors to provide you with an email before reading your content. If you do this, one of two things will happen: they’ll leave, or give you a fake email. Neither is good for business.  I don’t even put a pop-up invite on my website because I find it ineffective.  Let your audience choose whether they give you their email, and when they do, it will lead to higher conversions.

MAILERS

Mailers are companies who collect emails, categorize them under certain niches, and then offer to send emails to their targeted readership for a price.  This is another method that is quite popular, but has become less effective over time.  Fifteen or twenty years ago, when emails were less common, companies who offered mailers had much higher conversion rates.  Over time, audiences have become annoyed with spam and have opted to provide faux emails when asked for an email, or end up marking inbound emails from certain sources as spam.  As a result, this doesn’t always get a high conversion rate, but it still can be effective.  For instance, some mailers are marketers themselves, and only send emails to their specific niche.  If you share the same niche with a marketer like this, you may see great success and they might send the email personally to a readership that trusts them.  To avoid paying too much, you can negotiate a price.  For instance, you may go with a PPC option where they only get paid when people visit your site.  This ensures that the person you are paying is invested in your success.

BUYING LISTS

Buying lists is similar to mailers, but rather than paying a third party to send your emails, you are buying the list from them so that you can email people on the list directly.  There are pros and cons to this method.  The benefit is that you pay a one-time fee and get unlimited access to the list.  You can therefore send out as many emails as you want, and you only pay for it once.  While this sounds great, there are several problems.  The first issue is that these people have not signed up to receive emails from you, and so may simply mark you as spam.  Getting a name they trust to email them on your behalf, as you do with a mailer, may be more effective.  Another issue is that these lists might be comprised of faux emails, so you may essentially be paying for fool’s gold.  What makes this even worse is that is you upload these emails to your autoresponder, and if your list grows to a certain size, you may have to pay more for your autoresponder as most charge you based on the size of your list.  That doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth trying. I do this, but create separate lists on my autoresponder and test the conversion rates.  I keep emails that lead to conversions, and delete those that don’t. This way I keep my list to an affordable size, but I always keep the lists I build I build myself separate from lists that I buy.

TRADING FOR LISTS

Some online markets, especially those who are just starting out and don’t have a lot of capital, opt for trading lists rather than buying lists.  They may have built up a list of between 300-500 emails, and offer to trade that list with a marketer within their niche so that they can expand their list.  I do no recommend this, but you can use the principle behind it to your benefit.  The reason I don’t do this is for branding purposes.  I want the people who give me their email to trust that their email won’t be given out to spammers or some questionable marketers.  That is bad for my reputation, which in turn means it is bad for business.  The people on your list may not know that it was you who gave their email out, but I am not interested in running that risk.  Also, as with buying a list, you run the risk of giving up your targeted list to a person whose list may be comprised of faux emails. Still, the principle behind this method works.  What I do instead of ‘trading lists’, if offer to act as a ‘mailer’.  If there is a colleague whose products I am confident in, I may offer to act as a mailer on behalf of that person and highlight their services to the people on my list if the fellow marketer agrees to do the same for me.  I only do this for products I would endorse, and I do not do it very often because I want my readers to trust me and not be overburdened with emails.  In return, the marketer will do the same for me.  This works better than trading lists for two reasons. Firstly, you don’t run the risk of losing credibility.  Secondly, when your email gets sent out to their list, their readers are being contact by somebody who they trust, not somebody they’ve never heard of before.  As a result, the conversion rates are often higher.  When you test this out, you may find that you get no conversions, in which case you know not to exchange services again in the future.  If there is a high conversion rate, then perhaps you and the other marketer might create a symbiotic relationship where you share products with each other’s readers in the future.  Trading lists can be effective, but I don’t recommend running the risk of alienating your readers.  Instead, offer to act as a mailer for somebody willing to do the same for you.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Email marketing can be one of the most effective methods to driving traffic to your site.  During the dotcom boom in the late 90’s, people started to mistrust emails and marked everything as spam.  As a result, it looked like email marketing might be on the way out.  Audiences, however, have adapted when they do give you their email, they want to hear from you.  As a result, effectively targeted lists with authentic emails lead to far more conversions than did emails sent ten or fifteen years ago.  The trick is getting the lists with authentic emails so that your autoresponder isn’t weighed down by emails account that people don’t even check.  To do this, test the lists you are given access to, whether it be through mailers, buying lists, or trading lists.  If you are interested in protecting your brand, be sure to avoid trading your list so that the people on your list trust your brand.  Emails are a personal and private space, and as such can see far more success than banner ads, which people often tune out.  Therefore, be sure to explore this method, but weigh your options carefully and rely on testing to determine with approaches are most effective.

If you found this article helpful and would like updates on my latest posts, be sure to follow my on Twitter @MikeBashi, on Facebook, or add me to your RSS feed.

HOW IT WORKS

Major search engines like Google offer programs like Adsense where webmasters sell their space to Google, who in turn populate that space with ad campaigns paid for by advertisers.  With contextual advertising, these ads are loaded up based on the website’s content.  With behavioural advertising, the ads are populated based on the behaviour of the audience.  How is this done?  Companies like Bing and Google access the audience’s browser history through their cookies, which allows them to determine what sites the individual audience members have been visiting and what subject they have been looking up.  Ads are then loaded based on this information.  This is part of the reason Google created Chrome, so that they could more easily access browser and search history to better align audiences and ads.  What makes this process particularly unique when compared to contextual advertising is that this method is also used with social networking sites, most especially Facebook.  Facebook uses space they’ve created on their network to share ads with individual users, both through banner ads and in users’ news feeds. These ads are based on interests and likes, a method used by websites like Twitter and YouTube as well.  These avenues are more far more intimate than Google ads, reaching people on their own personal pages, and can be far more effective.

PROS

There are several benefits to this approach, but the most obvious is how targeted the traffic is.  Companies like Bing and Google don’t only look at the pages visited, but as Andy Betts of Econsultancy notes, they also looks at time spent on a site, the frequency of visits, how recent the visits are, and what products the audience has purchased or clicked on in the past.  The other benefit, especially when it comes to social networking sites, is that the ads are posted in the most frequently visited spaces: people’s own social networking sites.  There are no sites on the internet that are visited more often than social networks (not even adult sites), and so ads there are viewed more than any others.  The other benefit is that on sites like Twitter and Facebook, ads pop up in news feeds and so seem like they are part of the of the news feed, which makes the audience far more likely to click on the ads.

CONS

The primary drawback to behavioural advertising is the cost.  A reported by the Houston Chronicle, the superior benefits of precision traffic means the cost of the advertising is significantly more.  This can be a problem not only because it is difficult for those without capital to afford a campaign that is large enough to be worthwhile, but also because if the campaign isn’t a success, it can end up costing you money without bringing in any money.  This is why the banned ads need to be effective, another drawback because it is an additional cost.  Still, given that most advertising methods require a banner ads, this is a cost that any online entrepreneur is going to have to take on eventually.  If you want to use this route, then Bing or Google might serve better than Facebook.  The other issue is that ads are not always targeted effectively.  On a computer that is shared by a family, for instance, you may find an ads for Depends popping up on a Youtube when viewing a 50 Cent video (this one actually happened to me about a month ago).  I’m not sure that 50 Cent’s audience is terribly interested in adult diapers, so I doubt ad placement like that will lead to conversions.  Likewise, though algorithms won’t show ads for Paris Hilton’s newest perfume when you are looking up flights to Paris (unless you happening to be looking up the cost of a stay at a Hilton hotel at the same time), you may find that for topics that are more divisive, that ads may pop up on less than ideal places.  If, for instance, somebody writes an article that speaks to the negative consequences of Viagra or Cialis, ads for such medications may pop up in those spaces.  You may also find that ads on social networking sites are redundant.  For instance, I have a friend who is a big reader, and ads for his favorite authors always pop up on his Facebook, but he already has the books by those authors.  He also gets a lot of audio book ads, but he has no interest in audio books.  These appear so frequently on his Facebook that he complains about it to me almost every time we talk, so in this instance, the ads are not effective.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I always encourage the people I coach to diversify, and behavioural advertising can be a great way to do that, but it is a method I always encourage people to use cautiously due to the cost.  Before getting into this method, you should definitely test other, more affordable methods, like PPC and media buying.  This methods require less capital and allows you to test and develop effective campaigns and strategies.  Once you have these mastered, I would suggest branching out to contextual advertising, and only after you have had success there would I suggest moving onto social networking sites.  Be careful with your capital.  Some of the people that I coach have seen immense success on Facebook, and others, myself included, have sunk a lot of money into Facebook or Twitter with little results.  I’ve also found that people in specific niches, like online marketing, never do well on Facebook, even though they do extremely well with PPC, media buying, and contextual advertising, which leaves me with the impression that the approach simply isn’t effective for some niches.  If you aren’t getting the results you are looking for, don’t keeping doubling down with this approach.  And again, start out with PPC and then media buying before sinking any capital in to behavioural marketing.

If you found this article helpful and would like updates on my latest posts, be sure to follow my on Twitter @MikeBashi, or sign up for my RSS feed at the top of the page.

How It Works

What happens with contextual advertising is similar to what happens with PPC.  You create some banner ads for your site, and then create a campaign through Google, Bing, Yahoo, or another similar service provider.  They have any number of clients with blogs or website, with Google having the most.  Now these websites might not get a lot of traffic individually, but they do get targeted traffic.  With a small readership, their space isn’t valuable enough to offer media buying, so instead they sell their space to Google or similar company.  Google, or Bing then have tens of thousands of websites that collectively get millions of visitors.  Individually, they are worthless, but when combined they get more traffic than some of the mostly highly ranked sites in a given niche.  When you load up a campaign, rather than your banners showing up on search queries, like what happens with Adwords, the banner loads up on sites that have keywords related to those you have selected for your campaign.  People see the ads, click on your site, and targeted traffic comes straight to you.

Impressions vs. Clicks

When you sign up for your ads, there are two ways to go about it.  You can pay per impression, or per click.  This is the beauty of contextual advertising, because it offers the best of PPC, where you only pay when people visit your site, with the benefits of media buying, where you can get multiple clicks for the same price.  If you pay for impression, your ad will load up for a set number of viewers.  If you get a high click rate on those views, you can get more clicks than you might have through PPC.  However, if the ad is ineffective, you might not get any clicks, in which case, you can opt for PPC so that you only have to pay when you get traffic.  You can test your ads, and if they are getting a significant number of clicks, you can pay for impressions.  If they aren’t getting a high click-through rate, you can pay per click instead.

PROS

There are a number of benefits to this.  One, you get targeted traffic.  These are sites that have included keywords related to your niche, and so their readers and people who land on their page after a search inquiry where they are looking up those same keywords.  When you consider that you are likely going to be working with Google, Bing, or Yahoo, you have the added benefit of the most advanced algorithms on the planet.  They want the ads to work, so they pick the best spaces for your ads.  You also get your ads on sites that have small, but intimate traffic.  Often times, the visitors are friends of the publishers, which means they are sometimes more likely to click on an ad to support their friends.  It is also affordable, so if you have banner ads, you can set up campaigns that are pretty cheap, though I find that Bing and Yahoo are better priced than Google and can potentially get you more clicks per dollar.

CONS

One of the cons to this is that you have to have effective banner ads.  Some sites have as many as three or four ads on their site, so you are competing with them.  As a result, your ad will have to stand out.    You might not be a graphic designer, and you might not be good with photoshop, but you can get a good banner ad for relatively little through sites like Design Crowd.  Just post your requirements and text on the site, and then let graphic designers compete for your cash with proposed banners, which would make it affordable as this can be done for as little at $50.  This added cost is a necessity if you have decided to go with contextual advertising.  Another issues is that though the ads are targeted, there is room for error.  While the algorithms won’t be posting travel ads to New York when you visit a fan page for Brooklyn Nine Nine, if you are in a polarized field, it might be hard for the algorithm to tell whether the site your ad is being hosted by shares the same views as you do.  For instance, you might have an atheist writing an article about the Bible, but a Bible study course might pop up on the website.  Chances are the people visiting that site are the least likely people to click on that ad, but by and large, this kind of thing is not an issue.  The other issue is that Google has very strict policies, and if they think you’ve violated one of them, they might oust you before you see any results.

FINAL THOUGHTS

For anybody just starting out, I strongly recommend PPC before getting involved with contextual buying, and likewise suggests exploring media buying to get some experience with banner ads, but if you’ve gotten your feet wet and you feel like you are ready to spread out and diversify, contextual advertising if definitely a method that can get you some serious traffic.  Don’t be too disappointed if the results aren’t what you expect at first, and don’t sink in any more than you can afford to lose, because it can take a little more time refine the process than it does with PPC, but a lot of the same principles apply.

If you found this article helpful and would like updates on my latest posts, be sure to follow my on Twitter @MikeBashi, or sign up for my RSS feed at the top of the page.