Advertising on the Internet can play tricks on you, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the rules. While there are no magic formulas, it is a good idea to learn from others who have gone before you to avoid the dangers they have encountered. It is extremely wise to use good judgment about any information that may influence you or your online business decisions.

What you are about to read and understand directly impacts a web user’s capability to communicate with you. Ten of the most popular web advertising methods still maintain their independence, but come with certain technical flaws and disabilities.

1. Video Ads

I’m a firm believer of utilizing videos to advertise a product or service. Actually, I think it’s the best overall affluent tactic ever invented. But, Web videos have their technical limitations with multi-user support. There will always be one user who cannot view a video properly, or not at all. If support is not built in, a blank window will appear. Developers must remember an estimated 25% of the world still use old machines and outdated browsers. What’s more shocking, those same users must deal with slow dial-up Internet connections.

2. E-zines

Advertising with ezine publishers can be very productive providing the list owner has a target market. The old, “Fan Zine” market typically has its information embedded within a realm of influence. These skillfully crafted publications offer a specialized interest. But, one false positive exists in ezines – The quality of the list. Or, is it?  Advertisers who are smart enough to test realize this and try hard to overcome shotgun marketing failures. It could be a number of things that didn’t pass inspection by the readers. Obviously, return on investment remains in the forefront. Calculating profits will often be delayed due to unfamiliar expectations of the publisher’s audience.

3. Banners

People use banners to advertise on the Web, plain and simple. The main cycle of operation is to increase the persuasiveness of a message with graphics. Banner usage has remained steady for businesses that use the kinds of graphics that are appropriate to the role of an audience. Their subtle ways of communicating emphasizes a customer benefit in every message they produce. Why? Because it works. Or, does it? The downside is compression and it doesn’t blend in with the rest of the page. Web graphics should be oriented on the page with an active caption that is quick to load.

4. Affiliate Programs

Voted the top of its class for generating web site traffic and sales, affiliate programs offer a cluster of activities for resellers. The vast majority of e-commerce systems configure routed orders to their appropriate sales partners. Program owners virtually maintain influence over sales and enhance customer experience. However, a good working affiliate program should have the proper cookies, IP, and sessions in real time operation. This is what makes it real, because there are programs which have difficulty delivering on performance.

5. Press Release

The power of news crafted into a good story has a phenomenal affect over driving visitors to your web site. Distribution knowledge (plus) a well written and newsworthy document (equals) media attention to interested public viewers. Most importantly, if you deliver the right angle to an editor or reporter in a courteous, yet professional manner, then you have succeeded in separating real news from promotional jargon.

6. Articles

The correct use of articles have stood the test of time by being a permanent fixture to targeted audiences. This encourages problem solving at its best, however, article marketing methods designed to establish you as an expert can quickly misrepresent any business qualities. If I’m so amazed at your knowledge and so curious about what other problems you can solve for me, then be prepared for my visit to your online enterprise.

7. Blogging

A widely popular term for people with a mission to engage personal or business dealings online. Bloggers from all walks of life manage to express their own beliefs and opinions in a vibrant way. While blogging can be entertaining and a great learning resource, there’s a limit on what you can say, how you say it, and where you say it that can be detrimental to your job or business. If you plan on using blogs for personal or business reasons, write on the facts and learn how to react to any post where it involves your credibility.

8. Email Marketing

If you think email is king over any method of web promotion, you’re 100 percent correct. You can communicate instantly with family, friends, business prospects, and customers. If every email marketer can grasp the fascinating facts about the technical aspects behind their operation, things will run much smoother. All major ISPs implement a form of content filters and personal response systems that has resulted in creating a “brick-wall” effect on any sizable amount of incoming email from a single source. Ask any successful email marketer, ‘what their main responsibilities contain’, and 99.9% will say it’s what you send, clean bounces, manage unsubscribers, manage complaints, and keep the followup process active. Lot of work, isn’t it?

9. Pay Per Click

If every web marketer could understand all the intricacies of search engine optimization and page ranking, they wouldn’t need PPC. The harsh reality is if you can get it right, you’ll generate loads of targeted traffic to your site. Newly updated web applications offer users the ability to control campaigns in real time. But, in order for everything to work properly, the account manager must also become marketing manager. You don’t have to be a marketing metric statistician, however, you don’t need to pay for something you can get for free, either! Search Engine organic listings earn more quality traffic and exposure than sitting in a side bar on the page filled with other ads.

10. Podcasting

It is a client side browser activity. The type of service it provides is very similar to Radio, with the exception to being a web based learning tool or entertainment resource. Podcasting is also a rarely NOT supported system. It’s a bandwidth eater and can interrupt frequency levels and can serve you with a non-existent, or very low quality audio file. However, millions of users remain loyal to their favorite stations and individual personalities. Listeners have the power to tune in while surfing the web, thus, steering attention away from the main show. Throw ads into the mix and you now have reduced attention span levels by 50 percent.

Advertisers must have common knowledge before seeking out under-tapped opportunities, under marketed products, services or markets. Only a handful of Internet Marketers can massively increase their sales and marketing methods. Fewer still can add lucrative new income streams, products and services to a business mix. Anybody can personally engineer ways to get enthusiastic applicants. Effective Web advertising can quickly, significantly and continuously multiply profits. However, this will not stop anyone from coming up with ingenious new selling systems. It’s inevitable!

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I’ve been studying and writing ad copy for 30 years. My eyes and ears have experienced tons of advertising messages. Some are out of the ordinary to say the least. Take a look at what’s around you. Every consumer product is branded with some type of logo, either on Television, in a newspaper, magazine, flyer, or on the product itself. A few however, stick out like a sore thumb. It’s like the winning team waving a victory flag after a close game!

Advertisers want to be noticed, and with today’s economic turmoil, some go to the extreme to get attention. In fact, these oddball promotions made a huge impact on their business.

Here’s my top ten of all time…

#10. Bald Head Web Address: I’m sure you’ve heard of people placing advertisements on their body parts up for the highest bidder on eBay, Right? Well, recently I attended a fundraiser for our local homeless shelter. I noticed this well dressed young man walking up to donate. He wasn’t wearing a hat and was completely bald. Except for the tattoos around his head. His entire head was tattooed with many web site URLs. I approached this young fellow and asked him how many web addresses were on his head. He said, “26 total.” And that he was working on one more. He told me he owns a tattoo parlor, and he gets $250 per URL. I then asked, “What happens if one of those web sites dies off?” He replied, “I’ll get rid of it for another advertiser!” Go Figure.

#9. Going Out Of Business: A long time clothing store decided it wasn’t working out with the state of the economy. The store owner came up with the idea of placing two dump trucks back-to-back in front of the building. Both trucks were loaded with fake clothes and other items that appeared in the store. A huge sign stretched from bumper-to-bumper: “Going Out Of Business Sale. One Week Only. What Don’t Sell Will Be Hauled To The Dump.” They reported selling every single item from 60-80 percent off.

#8. Fishing Tournament Trailer: A popular fishing club that hosts a tournament trail at one of our local lakes has a one-of-a-kind trailer. They use it to haul around their gear, tents, scales, and other items needed for their fishing tournaments. It’s a 12 foot tandem axle panel trailer loaded with small ads all over the sides, back, front, and even the top. Each ad represents a sponsor. A one foot square logo with address and phone number covers the entire trailer. From a distance it looks like the trailer is camouflaged, but when you get a closer look, it’s littered with advertisements. In fact, is has so many ads it took me 30 minutes just to glance at all. And I thought Pixel advertising was so unique!

#7. Beauty Solon Hair Knots: During a business trip, I stumbled upon a small, yet busy Beauty Solon. I decided to get a quick hair trim before the meeting. I walked inside and was fortunate to get a chair. One of the young ladies finished with her client and motioned for me to come forward. While she was trimming my hair, I noticed a tall, well dressed female mannequin standing only a few feet away. But, the hair was full of twisted knots and made of several colors. The mannequin stood upright, pointing to what appeared to be a special looking shampoo and conditioner. I asked the young lady, “What is with the knots in the mannequin’s hair?” She explained to me the shampoo and conditioner will help eliminate tangles and will aide in bright and colorful hair. She further stated that since they placed the mannequin in their Solon they couldn’t keep it on the shelves. Only two packages were available and I witnessed a sale right before my eyes!

#6. Rotating Car-On-A-Pole: An auto parts facility (junk yard) has what it takes to be noticed. Approximately 60 feet high sits a Voltswagon that rotates on top of a huge 36 inch diameter steel pole. The junk yard is roughly a quarter mile off the highway and can be seen while driving past the entrance to their road. Their name and phone number is displayed on both the car and the pole itself. The car stops rotating after 5:00 PM when the junk yard closes. And, that’s exactly what is says on the sign: “Junkyard Closed When Car Stops.”

#5. Sawmill Giant: A replica of Paul Bunyan stands handsomely holding its ax in one hand, while pointing the way to the sawmill with the other. Only thing is, it towers above 25 feet!. The name of the sawmill is on its chest with a dark colored beard, hat, suspenders, bluejeans, and work boots. If you have trouble finding the sawmill, just look for big Paul Bunyan by the Highway. Believe me, you can’t miss it.

#4. Audio and Video Store: A 1957 panel van is outfitted with enough sound system to hear miles away. But, buried beneath the speakers is a lift away console, which emerges into a full surround sound theater. Once inside two people can sit comfortably and watch their favorite video on four wide screen Television monitors. This incredible mobile entertainment center is simply awesome to see and hear. And, of course, their advertisement is beautifully displayed on the exterior. But, that’s not all this fancy shop engages in for advertising. Once a week they place their entire catalog on two FULL pages of the newspaper – under the Obituary section – the most read section of any newspaper. WOW – That’s nearly 250 products!

#3. Real Estate Broker Lights: While driving through a nice rural neighborhood one night, I noticed a house that had Christmas lights lit up all over the place. Bright lights were on the chimney, gable ends, doors, windows, and even on the brokerage sign. Here it is July and this house is brighter than Yankees Stadium at night. I wrote down the phone number off the signage and called the broker the next day to see if the house was available. The broker answered and told me the house was sold an hour ago!

#2. Port-O-Jon Rental T-Shirt: One day nature called while on a construction job site. While inside the Port-O-Jon, a truck pulls alongside and a worker begins to clean each one out. When I made my exit, the worker stood ready to clean the one I used. He had a bright red t-shirt on with BIG black letters that said the following: “You Dump – We Pump – Give Us A Call.”

#1. Direct Snail Mail Smell: A local furniture store mailed me a sales letter one day. This was a regular two page letter that outlined many super bargains. But, that’s not all that accompanied the letter…it had a wonderful perfume aroma. I read it over and checked out the envelope and began to sniff. I thought, “Boy, does this letter smell great.” I knew the couple who owned the furniture store, so I decided to give the owners a call to see what they were up to. I told them both I received their letter with a strong perfume smell to it.

They told me a surprising story. John and Kristy tried direct mail in the past, but failed every time to yield a good return. This time, John asked Kristy if he could barrow her best bottle of perfume as he prepared to mail 5000 sales letters. John carefully sprinkled a few drops of this expensive perfume on each letterhead. They both took part inserting the letters into the envelopes and sealed each one with postage.

Approximately three days later, John started to receive customers and began to make sales. He coded the letter with instructions to bring in a coupon for the items on sale. In fact, they sold out the bargain item, then worked on selling out their entire inventory of kitchen tables and chairs, mattress sets, and sofas. This popular furniture store sold $32,000.00 worth of furniture in two weeks time – all due to the smelly sales letters. However, it dealt a not so rosy smell to women of the house. It appeared the women had something to say to their husbands, why they were receiving such a smelly letter, and who sent it. Nevertheless, John and Kristy had an astonishing 72% open rate!

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Most businesses have no idea what it takes to get just one customer. They are so busy trying to include their marketing budget into a percentage of their sales, that during a recession they cut their ad budget. This is a huge mistake.

The very principle to continue advertising at their current level, they will eventually get their customers. But, how well do they know what one customer is worth? Calculating your customer’s worth is basically done by taking the average sale number, your profit per that sale, how much additional profit a customer is worth to you, and determine how many times they come back and buy. You will want to be very conservative when adding this up.

Next, figure out what a customer costs by dividing your marketing budget by the number of customers it produces. If you spend $1,000 on marketing and you get 1000 customers, they are costing you $1 a piece. Prospects are the same. Maybe out of that $1,000 you get 10,000 prospects for $.10.

Calculate how many sales you get for so many prospects. The percentage of prospects that actually become customers. This will be your closing ratio. If you get 10,000 prospects and you have 1,000 customers, it’s a 10% closing ratio.

Additionally, the marginal net worth of a customer is figured by subtracting the cost to produce that customer from the profit you expect to earn from them over their lifetime. Your goal should be spending less to get customers through your acquisition cost. However, this method is one way to generate customers in a short term.

The key is to try and do business for free on a front end sale where you will be attracting new customers. This will ultimately be the driving force to cut back back and reduce how much it cost you to get them. Every business right now wants as many new customers as they can get, but noody really knows how much a customer is worth. So, they end up NOT knowing how much they can spend to get one.

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As tough economic conditions have caused general advertising revenue across the board to diminish, newspapers across the nation are closing their doors entirely. Some are willing to take a chance of converting over to the Internet in hopes of keeping the local news in front of their loyal subscribers. Others who are currently using the Web to generate ad revenue have already experienced low volume ad sales.

The thing is, a local newspaper that once filled neighborhoods with the community news in print is NOT going to reach that same audience with the Internet. Why? Not everybody has the Internet that reads the newspaper. And Not everyone who does will read the online version. In fact, 23.7% of the World still does not have Web access. What’s more, 32% still uses dial-up from their remote or rural location. This makes it difficult to view all of what the media has to offer.

Newspaper owners have NO idea what they are about to face when it comes to Internet advertising. With all due respect to the industry I love, calculating profits and measuring metrics is venturing into unknown territory for most publications. With little or no way to know if online news or ads even reach their target audience, it’s shotgun marketing at its best! The only way to know is to measure it.

Online Advertising Analytics

More Web staff will be needed to help process log files for measuring and analyzing the effectiveness of their web site in terms of customer experience, return on investment, and site effectiveness. They must learn how to collect massive amounts of site visitor and usage data to provide a better customer experience and determine ROI. Employees will have to adjust with greater intelligence regarding how their online publication operates. Everyone will need to know how to execute precision marketing, effective sales, and real-time customer service. This will be extremely important in the current economy when they can’t afford to waste time, resources, or money.

Understanding Data Collection

Various niche publications that choose to place their entire operations online must enforce a niche concept that rests on the importance of customers to its company. They must determine the needs of their customers. Develop their competitive advantages. Select specific markets to serve. Determine how to satisfy those needs and analyze how well they’ve served their customers. Online sales and conversions are not enough. They need to find out who the customers are, what the customers want, where and when they want it. This type of research can also expose problems in the current news service, and find areas for expansion of current services to fill customer demand. This should also encompass identifying trends that may affect sales and profit levels.

Advertiser Experience

Every media kit from every publication is negotiable. One of the best kept secrets in newspaper advertising is how to get better rates than what the publication tell you is available. All will quote you their rate card numbers. And they will offer you a discount if you agree to do multiple runs of the ad. But, what about online ads? Will they be upfront and inform you about the banner impressions you couldn’t track? Or will you ever hear from a visitor who has been bombarded with pop-up display ads? How will they combine news and ads for a pleasurable reading experience without compromising standard business relationships? Clicking Web ads while reading the latest news column weighs heavily on whether the visitor will return to read more.

For once, newspapers hold an edge. While larger publications hire professionals to do their research, smaller ones are close to their customers. They can learn much more quickly the likes and dislikes of their customers and can react quickly to change in customer buying habits. While there is NO safe prediction on where our economy is heading, a decision to go entirely online is seldom a purely rational one. One that can influence your reader’s behavior. As you explore various techniques for presenting your publication online, do not ignore psychological and emotional appeals. It might save your paper!

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Advertising in magazines and newspapers can play a major part in growing your business. But many people go at it the wrong way. In fact, many people conclude that advertising in these type of publications don’t work for their business. However, it doesn’t need to be this way. Most people are so busy they simply don’t have time to understand how magazines and newspapers work.

If you can take a little time to really understand the concept of how to make it work, you’ll be on your way to move ahead of your competitors, because most people truly don’t.

1. Magazine and newspaper advertising is vastly different from all other advertising types, and must be treated as such. This type of advertising can (and should) be a superb lead generator, but remember you are competing head to head with dozens of your competitors. There’s no other marketing or advertising tool where competition is so fierce. Even though advertising in these publications presents you with the challenge of competing against all your competitors, you can guarantee 99% of them have ads that are ineffective. That’s your edge. As long as you follow each of this you’ll steal business from right under their noses.

2. Recognize when people find you, because they’re already looking to buy. People using magazines and newspapers (whether free of paid) are immediately excellent prospects for you. Whenever someone looks at your ad they’re interested at your product or service. This cannot be said in all other forms of advertising or marketing. When you advertise in the local newspaper your ad needs to grab the attention of the reader and convince them they need you.

With magazine advertising your ad still needs to grab the attention of the reader, however, your reader is already interested in your product or service. Therefore, your goal is not to convince them they need you, but to ensure they choose you over and above your competitors. Hopefully, you’ve learned how important it is to use a headline in all your advertising. That doesn’t mean your headline is the name of your business. This is probably the biggest mistake 99% of businesses make with their ads.

3. You must prepare in advance. Many people leave the creation of their advertisement until the last moment. They say, “Just repeat last years ad,” or “Will you create something for me?” – are things that are said all too often. Unfortunately, if you want your advertising to be successful, you have to spend time on it. This has to be just like all your other marketing and advertising tools. If you do you’ll benefit greatly – I guarantee it. And please don’t ever ask the magazine or newspaper reps to design your advertisement. They design about 60% of the ads, and they all look the same. This generally means unsuccessful and they don’t truly understand what makes a successful ad.

4. Your ad must be big enough to get your offer and message across. The owners, directors or partners of many businesses are simply happy to put short or single line entries, semi-display, or in-column ads in the magazines or newspapers, and then conclude it don’t work.

Here’s a reality check: Single line entries, semi-display ads or in-column ads don’t work. They hardly ever cover their cost. Why? Because you can’t say enough about your product services to convince people they should be buying from you or at least talking to you. Don’t fall into the same trap. Your ad needs to be big enough for you to tell the prospect why they should be calling you – and not someone else.

5. Understand the multiple ad rule. Magazines and newspapers group together different businesses in the same product or service page, and people know they are going to have a good selection of companies to choose from. It therefore stands to reason in 95% of cases every person looking for your business will follow this rule. They’ll choose one, two or three companies to call or visit. Therefore your advertisement MUST ensure your company is chosen in this case.

6. You must achieve rule five or else. If you don’t achieve rule Five, your advertisement will sit on the page and blend in with the rest. There will be no hope of gaining interest – it’s as simple as that. The only reason why magazine and newspaper advertising flops is because the ads fail to stimulate the prospect into calling or stopping by – over and above the rest of the competition. It stands to reason that if your ad doesn’t entice people to call – it will fail. I know this is obvious, but when you take a look at most of the ads in these publications it seems most people don’t understand this basic assumption.

7. You must create your ad with one purpose in mind – to achieve your primary objective. This last rule ties all the previous rules together. It’s the “mechanics” of your advertising. Your ad should be created to achieve your primary objective. For many, this is to receive a phone call from the reader, or a website visitor. For others it could be for people to walk into their premises or store. The key is this…your ad should be created to fulfill this one primary objective – and this one objective only.

Many people try to achieve several things with their advertising. You’ll never achieve great success if you take this approach. One objective means one outcome. The outcome YOU want.

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