Advertising your website isn’t a simple task. It’s truly a science to run an effective ad campaign.
Obviously the most critical aspect of a campaign is reaching your target market. One of the best ways to find websites that reach your target market is to do a quick google search on keyword phrases that you feel your target market would search on. Check out the advertising opportunities on the websites that show up fairly consistently on each of your searches.
Before placing an ad, contact the webmaster and find out how much traffic the website receives. Be sure that your ad placement will be prominent on a page that gets frequent traffic.
If you are advertising with a banner ad, don’t use a cheesy free ad. Hire a graphic designer to create something visually appealing, unique, and that effectively helps brand your website. This really doesn’t have to be an expensive undertaking. You can post a project on a website like www.elance.com and probably have a very good looking banner designed for $25.
If you are promoting a business opportunity it is especially important to have a banner of your own created. Don’t use the same banner that every other member in the network is using. Chances are your competitors in the business network are all using the same banners. In some ways, this is good because it can build brand recognition. However, if people are used to seeing the ad at websites they frequent, they may block it out.
Make sure that your ad will appeal to the traffic of the website you are advertising on. You may be promoting an advertisement about a home business opportunity for example. If you plan to advertise on a website geared toward women, a banner ad with a fast car or a nude woman behind a hundred dollar bill just isn’t going to motivate this segment of your target market to click. You would do much better to run an ad that features competent business women, or mothers with young children.
It’s equally important to consider your landing page. If possible, try to create a unique page for each of your ad campaigns. Gear it toward the type of traffic you will be attracting. Even consider welcoming them directly. If they click through from a site called ‘XYZ.com’ then you would say something like “Welcome XYZ.com visitors… Here is a special deal just for you”, or some other targeted message.
This is a skillful method of recognizing the visitor and also taking advantage of the referring websites own branding and trust that they have built with their website visitors.
If you are advertising on well known, reputable sites – the click throughs are going to already be a warm lead for you. Try to leverage the trust they have in the website they are coming from.
Don’t limit yourself to just advertising however, consider other methods of driving traffic to your website. For example, consider opening a Google Adwords account. Adwords can be a very effective way of showing up on Google’s own search results and many websites that host Google’s ads.
Distributing articles to websites and article directories, participating in forums, blogging and commenting on blogs are all other ways of obtaining links from relevant websites. Never use spammy techniques. Always offer valuable comments, questions or information. Consider every blog comment or forum post as a representation of your business.
Get involved, network and build a reputation for yourself that will earn the trust of your perspective website visitors.
