Effective Ezine Ads
If you want to make these work, you have to do them right. There are a lot of trashy ezines out there, and a lot of obnoxious ads, which get ignored, or immediately deleted. Advertising this way won't do you any good at all.
However, finding a topically relevant, high quality, informational ezine, with a good reader base, in which you can place a well-worded and effective ad, is a different thing! This strategy can help you to place highly targeted ads that reach exactly the people you need them to.
That is both the key, and the advantage to ezine ads. Targeting makes all the difference. If you splatter ads out there in ezines that are not related to the product or service that you are marketing, you'll get little, if any, response. On the other hand, if you choose your ezine within a tight focus, to market directly to people who have an interest in what you are offering, it can be very effective.
Choosing the right ezine is more than just picking a relevant topic. Let's take cooking for example. There are people who are interested in cooking, who are interested in recipes, but who are NOT interested in buying cookbooks. There are also people who are interested in purchasing cookbooks, but who do not purchase utensils where they cannot see them.
Each ezine will attract a specific type of readers - there will be some variety within that, but half or more of them will fit a certain buyer profile. You need to find an ezine with a buyer profile that matches your own buyer profile. If you have a product for middle class people who have no time, but also have a limited budget, then you'll want to find an ezine that is enjoyed by middle class people who have no time, and a limited budget. Notice I said, "enjoyed". Not just one that gets subscribers within that target group, but one that gets read!
Subscribe to the ezine yourself. Test the quality of the issues before you advertise in it. You'll want to be sure that the ezine offers something of interest, that the topics covered relate to your product, and that it is high quality.
There are two kinds of ezines:
- Those that are used primarily as a marketing tool by the publisher. These will typically have ads in them that link back to the products that the publisher is marketing themselves. Ezines that feature affiliate links may be a crossover type, but often they are principally for the benefit of the goods of the publisher. This type is not good to advertise in, because its primary purpose is advertising, NOT informing.
- Ezines that are published for informational content. Now, these may be an extension of a website, and may promote that website some, but the primary purpose of them will be to offer a benefit to the reader. Many of these are ad-supported. People who receive free information that is good quality generally understand that either they have to pay for it, or the publication will have ads in it. Your ads can be one of the peripheral offerings in the ezine. A certain percentage of people will read the ad, and check it out.
The best ezines to advertise in are those that have ads scattered between the articles - but not too many! If articles are broken up by ads, then people tend to ignore the ad to get to the next part of the article. If the ads are between articles - a natural stopping place for readers - then they are willing to be distracted temporarily. Top of the page ads do not always perform the best - in fact, if I were to choose the location for my ad, it would be the first ad below the last article. When people finish with the ezine, they will naturally be ready to go somewhere else. But that location ONLY works in an ezine that gets read from top to bottom. Bottom of the first article is an excellent placement as well.
Many ezines now use HTML formats. This means that they can have a sidebar, or multi-column layout which accommodates more flexible ad options. When you purchase your ad, you should have some control over where it is placed. You may not be able to specify EXACTLY where it ends up, but you should be able to choose between top placement, bottom placement, sidebar placement, etc.
You can also purchase "Solo Ads". These are ads that are sent out as a separate mailing, that is not part of the regular ezine. They have an advantage and a disadvantage.
- They are usually MUCH more expensive than a standard ad, but they are not necessarily more powerful. Pricing is based on the fact that you get the entire mailing to yourself. A well written ad can be very effective because you have the space to say as much as you need to say. That is the side that the publisher promotes.
- The down side is that because they are not part of the regular ezine, most readers can quickly identify that the entire email is an ad. A certain percentage of them will delete it before they read more than the title. Writing an interesting title can reduce those numbers, but still, people who are in a hurry (and who isn't now?) will identify "ad", and click delete.
With the regular ezine issue, there is other information that they consider to be of value which they want, so they read the issue. With a solo ad, that value information is typically lacking, so their incentive to read is also gone. You can try a form of article marketing with a solo ad, and give information with a byline if you like, but for that to work, the article and the byline have to be carefully written.
Track your ad results, so that you will know which ads work, and which ezines deliver the most effective marketing. You have to track click throughs, and purchases, both. A high clickthrough rate is just an indicator of what people think they want. If they don't find it on your site, you'll get a lot of clicks, but no sales. Good information for you, but useless unless you can find a way to convert them to buyers once they come in. Effective ads may actually draw fewer clickers, but more purchasers! The bottom line is that a good ad will increase sales or revenue generation.
Article marketing can also be done through ezines, and there are many ezines which accept article submissions.
Ezine advertising takes intelligence, understanding of who your target market really is, and some patience in learning to do it effectively. But when it works, it can work very well.
Written by Laura Wheeler
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