Developing Your Check Lists

As you go out to market your product, you need to know how to judge the various forms of advertising you will run into.

The following check lists were developed to help you best develop your Internet strategy and should drive your initial research.

The task for today, Tuesday involved working on check lists. Developing a system in detail that will answer FAQ's for the person starting out, and provide an outline of simple techniques and procedures that universally show a step by step methodical approach to market and promote a business on the web.

Search Engines

Search engines are the simplest solution. Sometimes too simple. People just believe in these things, and I don't know why. It's not like you find anything half the time you are looking in. I've never been through so many dead ends to get where I'm going.

Search engines perform a function of cataloging the Internet, but I use them for finding niche markets. Once I go there, there is no point in searching any more. Here's the criteria I developed:

1. If you can name your product or service in four words or less, search engines are something to consider. Especially if your customers will use those words to search for you. One site sold books, and got on top of the search engines for online books. Meanwhile, his customers were searching for specific titles...morale of the story is, sometimes they are looking for words you have never thought of...yet.

2. If you can afford to always focus on them and stay on top, they can be a powerful tool. Be prepared to fight this battle every week though; if your keyword is one lots of people want, beware!

3. It is better to pay someone on a monthly basis, or a per click through (per lead) basis to test these out. Services run from $100 to $1,000, with clickthroughs costing anywhere from 5 cents to a dollar. Twenty five cents seems to be a norm.

4. Places to visit are a good reason to use search engines as a form of advertising; when I searched for Sturgis, I found all sorts of info about the area.

5. Vacations and investing are big online, and easy to search for.

Banner Ads

Banners are advertisement usually found on high traffic sites that lure the potential customer to click that banner and bring them to another site so they can sell or promote a product or feature. The focus and purpose is to first, arouse the attention of the prospect by making an attractive offering and reducing the resistance of that person, inviting them in. Methods used are the suggestion of incredible offers that sound too good to be true like "Websites only $10 per year". In addition, colors, graphics, and various visual stimulation are used in addition to or combined with content. Often many email addresses are captured from my understanding but research had shown that many of the people who have clicked on these Banner Ads were kids with no or little prospect to convert to sales! Measurement of success is always difficult unless you can track how many times your site was clicked on and of those clicks how many sales were made, and how many became a steady customer for future products or services.

One benefit of banners is the relationships that are created business to business. Since Banner Ads are like selling or bartering space off your website, it is important to contact a related but non-competitive business that will attract the most amount of customers to your site. This is almost always a mutually beneficial situation. If you have lots of traffic to your site it can be most profitable and add credibility to your site if dealing with a well known, reputable company. On the other hand, linking with a sleazy fly by night company will destroy your credibility and you may get flamed and lose prospects.

Here's things to check for:

1. Figure out how to package your product or service into a condensed form of advertisement.

2. Take a few bits of necessary info and formulate what you want customer to see.

3. Write a 2-6 word headline; be sure to include the words, "Click Here". Make it a headline, a call to action as well.

4. Keep it familiar. Emulate Windows; 90% of people use it, and by using what looks like drop down menus, check boxes, and scrolling bars, encourage people to use a behavior they are familiar with. Since they are familiar with Windows, this seems to help increase response.

5. Search for other banner ads and see what styles you like and which ones work.

6. Contact sponsors and check their success rates if possible.

7. See if you can have a banner ad created by a professional for barter, low cost or free!

8. Negotiate to see the profitability of putting your ad on another business's site.

9. Test it out to see if it is working, try different sites and track where your responses are from.

10. Drop the ones that have poor response, and try different related sites, and repeat.

11. Do a bit of investigation and check for references to secure the credibility of that company.

12. Ask your customers, friends, and mentors for feedback, and then modify and refine system.

Why is a website worth looking at, what to look for when selecting a site for research and marketing possibilities:

1. Search for related topics and words that deal directly with the item or subject we want.

2. See that a site is professionally created and look for links that go to other credible sites. You are looking for the few players, the circles of influence, that have developed for a specific subject. For Harley's, there are circles around the traditional bikers, as well as the emerging hobbyists who use this more for recreation than a lifestyle...say, a temporary lifestyle change, at least for the weekend.

3. Look at the main pages by shortening the URL to the minimum, review it and add to favorites if it looks good enough to save and is related.

4. Does the site offer banners and deal with the same general subject matter e.g. How to Improve Your Harley's Performance.

5. Look to see if they have an active directory and if it is one that would be viewed by our potential customers, then see what it takes to be listed on that site e.g., free, barter, or fee/commission.

6. Review site and directory and see if noted people have been listed and this would be a good tip that the directory is worth being listed in.

7. See if discussion boards are listed on site and review them if possible.

8. Notice if there are offers to promote our business in the site.

9. See if sites ask for exchanges of information and bartering.

10. Notice if the format is similar to the one we have, the same ideas etc....

E-zines

The e-zine is just a fancy way of saying an article or collection of articles published online. Most of these come in the form of "newsletters" and consist of various information that will hopefully be of value to those subscribers and visitors. The focus and purpose of the Ezine is to attract attention to other sites and services or products that will be available to purchase at a profit for the company offering it. Information is always of value and is the best way to get the interest of the person. You must offer some idea or concept that they cannot find anywhere else, or at least give that impression. Then, after giving a taste, build the desire to form that mental need for more.

To properly measure the success of an ezine is to record the responses from the replies of the customers. If you are promoting the website of a friend by sponsoring his information in your newsletter, perhaps an open dialogue with that friend will enable you to track your success through his response, and this may up the value of your newsletter to him and others, opening other opportunities.

1. Always offer something for free to spark interest in the Ezine.

2. Publish or Swap Articles in other Ezines if possible.

3. Focus on Ezines that are related to your product or service.

4. Build Business to Business relationships with publishers

5. Gain access to ezine recipient list and offer yours.

6. Use ideas from others in tailoring your offer.

7. Search out for different and new Ezines and evaluate them. Did they have important information, are they sponsored by a company or and individual, what is their method of delivery, their topics, is it worth pursuing and contact owner to see how we can be published as well.

8. You can use search engines to find access to ezines or you can go directly to related subjects columns and find a wealth of publishers, companies and individuals who are eager to provide this information. There is email, fax, and mail access available from most publishers.

9. Sites to go to include:
http://www.dominis.com
http://www.bizweb2000.com/wwwboard/messages/1488.html

Classified Ads

To develop a system for using the marketing potential of the classified ads we should begin as before by first figuring out what we want to say and how to get out the message we want in the space available. You don't want to waste time in the wrong medium and there are many to choose from. For example, it would not be a good investment to advertise diet foods in a Hot Rod magazine, or investment opportunities to Fly Fishing subscribers. For this reason it is important to be selective on line just as in print. Now many print ads are going online as well to enhance their coverage area.

The places that most people traditionally go to look for things is to four basic areas:

1. Search Engines- Yahoo, Excite, Infoseek Alta Vista, and other popular sites.

2. Magazines- Online magazines are often linked to companies in that industry.

3. Newspapers- Almost every big newspaper can be found both in print and online.

4. Internet Malls- Perhaps the poorest place to look since most are read by other advertisers.

These sites are for the most part very similar to print advertisement. Besides the content of the item or service you are advertising there are a few important ingredients that should exist.

1. An Email Address- essential link to make instant communication possible.

2. A Website link- to show more info on your item at little or no cost!

3. A Photo- not as important to non-tangible items but visual is great if applicable

It may be wise to look at other classified ads for like item to see that you are fair with your ideas of value, fair to yourself and fair to your customer. Value is determined by many factors that should be appraised by a standard check list that you would have to customize to your certain product or service.

1. Condition- a general description of that items workability, aesthetics, or future potential.

2. Value- with regards to market value, is it obsolete, cutting edge, or just traditional.

3. Resale-ability- Can the customer get his or her moneys worth out of it eventually.

4. Popularity- Is that product or service accepted and credible, is it adaptable to similar items.

The check list for placing your ads depends on the item you want to list. The first thing after putting your information as listed above together is to find the best medium to advertise and then do it and monitor the results. This is best done by the following.

1. Research- find the best places to place your ad, the related mediums that are best suited

2. Contact- you will be issued a password to protect your ad from unwanted modifications

3. Evaluate- if free no problem but many cost $ so try to be sure its the best place to go.

4. Test and Retest- monitor results and responses, many will share where the got your info.

5. Modify- dump some and ad others, you'll have to try a few before the right one if found.

6. Check out classifieds 2000 located at www.classified2000.com/ and they will get you in the right direction. This is seen in over 100 leading web sites and will be like getting the most exposure at once.