Copyright 2006 Christopher T Robinson

Advertising will be one of your 1st promotions and is a corner stone for marketing your business. However it is critical to the success of your advertising campaign to track and test your ads. Only when you do this will you be able to see which ones were successful and those that bombed. This will save you a ton of money and ensure the continuing success of your advertising campaign.

Tracking your ads: This is fairly simple to do and can be done in a couple of ways.

You can use software like adminder or make use of tiny URL Monitor your ads carefully and have a tracking URL for each ad and a different one for each place you advertise with.

Record all your findings on excel or a similar program

Record both the ones that failed and those that were successful

Build a swipe file of successful ads and responsive places to advertise.

Build on your successes and learn from failures.

Testing your ads: The best way to do this is by split testing. This works well in publications like newsletters and ezines. Here is how to do it:

Write or have written a set (4-6) classified ads all for the same product and pointing to the same market

Take 2 of them and place in the ezine or newsletter you have chosen to advertise them. It is important to place in the same ezine at the same time.

Monitor the response and sales conversion by using your tracking system as seen above
Choose the one that is performing the best

You can expand the ad and make it into a Top Sponsor by adding more benefits
Expand further into a Solo Ad. You may require a little professional help with this

As always record your results on excel

Using the right ads: None of this will work with the wrong ads. Classifieds are best to use on websites and when doing split testing in publications. These are the cheapest most basic ads and are therefore the best to begin your advertising campaign with. When you are sure that the publication you are advertising in is a responsive one and you have the right ad then repeat with a Top sponsor or Solo.

Types of ads:

Classified: A basic ad of about 5 lines (60 characters) These ads are generally used as pre selling ads. They will make the reader curious and encourage click through. They are the cheapest ads and will be found at the bottom of the publication. Basically they are made up of:

An eye-catching headline

Benefits

A call to action

URL

Top sponsor ads: These ads will be at the top of the ezine before the featured article. They will be an expanded version of the classified ad and will include more benefits. They will either pre sell or actually sell your product or service.

Solo Ads: are more expanded than the solos ads. In fact they can be an HTML page and will go out alone to all members of the subscriber database.

Always remember to advertise continuously. You must not let your potential customers forget you. Results may not be very large to begin with but as you continue your advertising you will find better responses and build a good sized swipe file of places to advertise.

So now you know how to make your ads, test and track them. Now go ahead and put these techniques to work for you and see your ad campaign take off and sales increase.