Internet Advertising for the Beginner and Small Business
Writen by Joe Leech
Pittsburgh, Pa. May 2006
We are going to clarify and put this subject into focus in
a usable form for the small businessperson or "the average
guy".
The subject is broad and hundreds of books have been written
on the topic. There’s no way to digest them all. College
textbooks, "how to" books; books for professionals; books
for large business advertising departments.
Let’s start with a few fundamental facts:
Everyone who has any kind of product or service to sell must
advertise. They must advertise constantly regardless of if
they are new or have an established brand. You have many
choices of tools such as print media (subdivided of course
into magazines, papers, etc.); public electronic media
(radio, TV)... but as this is an Internet based article, we
consider: E-mail; Ezines, Classifieds, Safelists and Pop Ups
just to name a few. To be effective, one needs to use a
full mix of available resources. The small, and particularly
beginning business is assumed to have a very limited budget.
Have we covered the bases? Probably.
Are these items factual? Yes. All one has to do is to look
around and see what’s happening to confirm the information.
Giants such as Pepsi, Coca Cola, McDonalds and Wendys, beer
bottlers.. all with established branded names continually
advertise and do so in all media.
On the Internet, the "gurus" also continuously advertise.
Pick a name, do a search engine search and see the tools.
You must advertise to get people to read your message. It’s
no longer enough to build a great web page and it will do
your work.
Your job is to get people to that site. No one will buy from
you if they don’t hear or see your message. In fact, it has
to be seen several times.
Random, one shot exposures such as a visit from a PPC ad or
a search will not do it. That is also one of the "cast in
concrete" bullet points that should be listed at the
beginning of this article.
The corollary to that is you must have REPEATED exposures of
your message.
Let’s look at some of your options and see if they meet that
criteria:
PPC: No Banners: No Classifieds: No Safelists: No FFA: No
But there are some "Yes" answers if it’s done right.
These include Email and Ezines (repeated readerships). Email
has limitations. Unless you have permission to do repeat
emails, you are probably spamming and in fact, the recipient
may have your message "auto trashed".
But there’s a way to do use these two tools.
What is the first objective of your advertising?
Think about that for a minute. We’re going to take a line of
space here for you to answer that. You say , "Joe, the
objective is to get my reader to buy from me".
Close, but no cigar. If’ I’d agree with that as the LONG
TERM objective, How is it accomplished and what is the SHORT
TERM objective?
Here’s the Lesson of the Year... make that the decade, and
make it the lesson for both the novice and veteran
advertiser; the small business person and the large
business.
THE OBJECTIVE IS TO GET A NAME AND EMAIL ADDRESS ACCOMPANIED
BY PERMISSION TO CONTACT THE PERSON.
Let me repeat that:
THE OBJECTIVE IS TO GET A NAME AND EMAIL ADDRESS ACCOMPANIED
BY PERMISSION TO CONTACT THE PERSON.
Now when you do this you have the beginning of a list, and
if you talk with any Internet Guru, they will first all
agree, and then tell you that they all have PERSONAL lists
numbering in the tens of thousands. Many have lists of over
100,000 names and it is their most valuable asset. Their
books, their courses, their products can all be hijacked,
duplicated, or whatever. Their list is their wealth.
Some will say that from any advertisement they run, they
would far rather get an email and name than make an
immediate sale (Stephan Ducharme, for example, in his free
audio interview).
If this is then the agreed upon objective, the first task
and goal of the small businessman is to learn how to build
their list, or as an option, have access to the list of a
proven successful business person who operates in the same
marketing field. That, by the way, at first seems nearly
impossible... but using certain procedures available to
virtually anyone if you know where you look, you CAN access
and nearly duplicate that list and do it first legally, and
secondly at virtually no cost!
So, Mr. or Ms Small Business person: What is your FIRST
objective in business? In fact almost before designing your
product or service, and second only after choosing your
market?
YOUR FIRST OBJECTIVE is to LEARN how to Build or Acquire a
List. In short, to get to your future customer base.
Here’s the meat of this article, and HOW TO DO IT... and
yes, there is a catch 22 in a way. It takes advertising to
get advertising! Like it takes money to make money.
So the trick: To do it as cost effectively and as
productively as possible.
Think of it as fishing. You have to use some bait to catch
fish. The fish you catch might become the bait for even
larger fish. But you have to have some bait first.
You are going to "fish" this way and the "fish" you are
looking for are names and email addresses.
Your "Bait" or "baited hook" is going to be an irresistible
free offer.
There’s no strings attached to this free offer except to get
it, the person gives you a name and email address to get it!
So now we go into Phase II... We must define what an
"irresistible offer" is. That’s objective #1 here. Then we
must decide where it is we are going to "fish" and how. If
we were fishing in "the real world" we’d want to do it where
we know there are fish, right.
Where are the fish located in your area of interest?
One great place is Ezines. As opposed to "the ocean at
large" (think running classifieds, FFAs, etc) we might know
where there’s a "good fishin’ hole"... or sunken reef; etc.
In fact, we know by type of "fishin’ spot" if we can find
trout, muskies, sailfish, cod... etc.
The subject of an EZine group is your defined "fishin" hole.
But before we can go "fishin'", we need some equipment, and
we need how to use it.
Equipment here is the tool to collect leads and start the
response. A good autoresponder is a must, and of course,
knowing how to set it up is like knowing how to bait your
hook.
Let’s recap in this primer: The primary objective of any
advertising is to capture and build a targeted name list.
When you have the name list, you can create multiple soft
sales campaigns with the contact it needs to lead to a sale
action.
You build the list by first doing targeted advertising which
does not sell anything but extends some kind of free offer
that offers the target market an item of true value and
interest in return for only requesting it; the request
requires that they provide you with a name and email address
and at least an implied permission to respond to their
request.
If you have learned these three points, you are well on
your way to getting to the head of the pack.
Your follow up lessons simply now become technique and
learning where the tools are. Be careful as you select the
tool, you select one from a source who has the credibility
in using it and you are not just "buying into" someone’s
new, but unproved idea. Various Internet searches will lead
you to the right sources.
Learn and prosper!
http://www.rbizsite.com/faga.html will take the reader to a working example site as
discussed in the article and provide additional resources for advanced study of the topic discussed
(How To Get 1 Million visitors without paying a single dime)
