1. If your Advertising isn’t working – STOP IT!
   I know it sounds obvious but here’s what often happens: People run advertising because they feel they ought to. They’re not really sure if it’s working but they are hesitant to stop it because it may be one of their main forms of marketing.

   By the end of this report you will have enough information to ensure that you are never in that position again. You will either be running great ads that produce great results, or you will be spending your marketing money elsewhere.

2. Only use Direct Response Advertising
   There are two types of advertising – direct response advertising and brand advertising.

   Understanding the distinction between the two will immediately save you a fortune.

   Brand advertising is used by companies like Coca Cola and the large car manufacturers to build and increase awareness of their brand. Unless you have huge amounts of money which you are happy to lose, you should avoid brand advertising at all costs. For a small business it is a complete waste of money.

   The only type of advertising you ever want to consider is direct response advertising. The only purpose of direct response advertising is to produce a clear response.

   The type of response may vary depending on the type of business you are in and your overall marketing strategy. You may want the response to be an immediate purchase. You may want the response to be for someone to contact you to ask for a brochure.

   The great thing about direct response advertising is that you can instantly tell whether it is working (see the next point) It either produces a response or it doesn’t. One of the reasons that most small business advertising does not work is that it’s a combination of half hearted direct response and highly ineffective brand advertising.

   Fortunately, you now know the difference. In the land of the small or medium business, direct response is King!

3. Testing and Measuring
   It is absolutely essential that you test and measure all of your advertising.

   If we are going to engage in direct response advertising we obviously need to be able to measure that response, otherwise we are not going to know if the ad is working.

   At the very least we need to know how many people responded, how many of them were converted to a sale and what that is worth to you. Then you need to compare that figure to the cost of the ad and you can immediately work out how profitable the ad was, or whether you should stop running it.

   So many businesses just allocate a certain mount of money to an advertising budget, spend the money every year…and they’ve only got a vague sense of whether the ads are working are not. This is crazy. If your ads are working, you want to roll them out on a larger scale. If they’re not, STOP and use the money on one of the dozens of other marketing strategies that can bring you a 100 or 200 or 300% return on your investments.

   You will obviously need some sort of system for asking people who contact you for the first time where they heard about you. If you have a larger business, you may even want to set up a separate phone line with a number that only appears in your ad. If you’re directing people to a website, you may want to set up a special web page that also only appears in your ad. This will ensure that you can clearly identify when people are responding to your advertising.

4. Your Headline is the most important part of your Ad
   In the ad itself the most important element is the headline. The headline is either the heading that goes at the top of the ad or if there’s no heading it’s the first words of the ad. The headline needs to grab peoples’ attention. One change in a headline can produce a 50-100% increase in response.

   One of the biggest challenge that any advertiser faces is getting people to read their ad – let alone for the ad to produce a result. So the main purpose of the headline is not to sell your product – it’s just to get people to read your ad.

   The headline should be about your readers – not about you. If your headline has the name of your business in it, you are probably losing out. Imagine you owned a company selling fire alarms. Which of these headlines do you think would be most likely to get the reader’s attention:

   Simpson Fire Alarms – Your Guarantee of Safety

   OR

   Is your Family’s Life worth the price of a round of Drinks?

   Be adventurous with your headlines. Test different versions to see what works best. There are no rules – except what works.

5. Remember AIDA
   There’s a classic formula used by advertisers and it’s well worth remembering. The formula is AIDA. This stands for

   Attention
   Interest
   Desire
   Action

   If you follow this formula in every ad that you write, you will greatly increase your chances of success.

   Attention – the first thing your ad needs to do is grab the reader’s attention. You achieve this with your headline.

   Interest – once you’ve got their attention, you need to create an interest in your product or service.

   Desire – There is a big difference between being interested in a product or service and desiring it. You need to convert the reader’s interest into a strong desire for what you are offering.

   Action – Even if someone desires what you have, it is not enough until they take action. At the end of the ad you need a call to action. Tell people exactly what they need to do to follow through and make it easy for them to do so.

6. Benefits, Benefits, Benefits
   One of the principles that should drive all of your marketing is communicating the benefits of your product or service.

   The copy of your ad needs to be a personal communication to the individual reading it. And it needs to be about them. It needs to address their needs, desires and fears and it needs to constantly communicate the benefits of what you are offering.

   Nobody will buy anything from you until they have explicitly understood how they will benefit from what you have to offer. So here’s a useful tip. When you’ve written your ad, imagine stepping into the shoes of your prospective customer. From this perspective does the add fully convey what those benefits are? If not go back and fine tune the ad until it feels right.

7. Don’t Advertise on a Left Hand Page
   This one piece of knowledge can turn an unsuccessful ad campaign into a successful one. This has been tested again and again. When you read a publication, your eyes are drawn to the right hand page as you flick through so statistically, more people will see your ad if it’s on the right hand page.

   If you look at the big national magazines and newspapers, you will see that most of the large advertisers are on the right hand pages. The few that appear on the left hand pages will be paying less because their advertising agencies know that less people will see the ad.

   When you book your ad space, tell them you want it on a right hand page. Very few people in your position ask for this, so the publication will normally oblige. If they tell you they can’t guarantee it – tell them you’ll advertise in a future edition when they can guarantee it. You’ll soon discover how obliging they can be!

8. Never pay the full rate for advertising
   Apart from knowing that you want your ad on a right hand page, the person selling you the advertising needs to know very early on that you have absolutely no intention of paying the full rate.

   Most advertising rate cards are far too high and you can always negotiate. If you’re a small business remember that large companies who use ad agencies are buying based on the readership or audience levels rather than the rate card – so haggle and negotiate. If you can pay 20 or 30% less for your ads it can turn an unprofitable ad into a successful one.

   Here’s another handy little trick to pay less for your advertising. The closer to the deadline you can book your ad, the better. Sales teams work towards targets and as the deadline approaches they get more desperate to fill the ad space. They become far more open to negotiation.

9. Don’t Follow the Competition
   One of the biggest mistakes people make is advertising in publications just because their competitors are in them. Don’t for a minute think that all your competitors are there because their ads are producing great results. They’re more likely to be there because everyone else is and most of them wont have a clue whether their ads are working.

   In fact, this is a well known sales trick used by the people selling ad space. If they can get one or two of your competitors to advertise, they can call you up and tell you how you’ll lose out if you don’t advertise too. What they fail to mention is that your competitors probably never test their advertising, often haven’t got a clue how to market and are only advertising because they think you will. This is a highly effective way to sustain the advertising industry. It’s not a great way for you to run your business.

10. Don’t buy into the myth that Advertising is essential for your Business Success
    Now that I’ve shared some of the strategies for making your advertising work for you – I’ll let you into a secret. I’m not a huge fan of advertising for small businesses. If you can get it right it works brilliantly – but generally, advertising is one of the least effective ways to grow a business.

    There seems to be a cultural myth that to run a successful business, you must advertise. Whoever came up with that one is the same person who said that if you get a university degree you’re guaranteed a great, fulfilling career.

    Advertising is just one of many marketing options that you have. But you really shouldn’t be dependent on it. In fact, here’s a strategy I use with my clients which is really powerful:

    When I work with a client, one of my goals is to get them to the point where they have so much great marketing going on it makes little difference to their business if they stop advertising.

    Why do I do this? Because quite honestly I’ve seen more business owners pull their hair out through advertising problems than anything else. Ultimately, my work isn’t about marketing. It’s about Freedom. It’s about giving business owners the freedom that comes from having a successful and profitable business which is supported by multiple pillars of marketing.

    It’s hard to be free when the future of your business involves trying to get a couple of ads to work in a crappy local newspaper.

    So start to think out of the box. Ideally, you should be using a combination of up to at least ten other marketing strategies to grow you business. They include (but are not limited to).

• Telephone Marketing

• Direct Mail

• Internet

• Email marketing

• Direct Sales

• PR (Why spend money on advertising when PR gives you coverage for free)

• Strategic Alliances

• Lead Response Marketing

• A multi level Referral system

  Have a look at this list. How many of these are you implementing in your business? More importantly, what would happen to your business if you could start to combine some of these extra marketing approaches? How would that effect your profits? What would that do to your financial freedom?

  Here’s another thought. At least four of the items on this list will cost you either nothing or very little to implement. Why throw money at advertising when some of the best marketing is free? Now take those new thoughts in your head and write them down. You’ll soon be the hero in your marketing organization!

Blog advertising expenditures have grown 300% in the past year, according to Henry Copeland, president of blogads.com, and blog advertising is still obscenely cheap. In fact, companies can make a really big brand splash for $25-$75K.

Blogs provide advertisers an excellent opportunity to reach a devoted audience niche. Nonetheless, a new American Advertising Federation study on “Digital Media Trends” reports that 58% of “advertising industry leaders” said that they personally are “struggling simply to manage existing online efforts, let alone stay ahead of the curve.”

And, while blogs’ impact is magnified because they reach influencers, blog numbers, until recently, have been little more than curiosities to big brands.

I predict that the cost of blog advertising will rise exponentially in the next 6-12 months. And, as traditional advertisers try a heavy-handed approach to creative, many companies will skulk away, having convinced themselves that this newfangled social media doesn’t work.

Although every publication on the planet seems to have run at least one article about blogs, the first question I am asked in every time I talk about social media at conference is still, “But do blogs really work for corporations?” Pretty soon, communicators who don’t know the answer will be asking, “Would you like fries with that?”

It’s not their eyeballs, it’s their mouths

With click-through rates in traditional online advertising dropping, inexpensive blog click-throughs are as high as 1%. Advertisers are starting to appreciate the influencer constituency on blogs, where the distinct advertising value of these audiences “isn’t their eyeballs, it’s their mouths,” Copeland says.

Successful blogs are edgy, have a sense of humor, and are recognized experts in a narrow niche. Blog audiences look at traditional ads, like “Click here, get 20% off,” and say “screw this, I’ve seen it everywhere,” Copeland says.

A flood of book, TV, movie, and music advertisers are spending money on blog advertising, Copeland says, and automakers have also caught the wave. While most blog advertising is now aimed at consumers, there’s huge opportunity for B2B because many of the blogs with the largest audiences are business-focused.

With a mere $23K, I was able to generate a 0.857% click-through rate on ads on 177 blogs for Up Your Budget I, the campaign I created for Budget Car Rental last fall, at an average cost per click of only 3 cents. Audi’s viral marketing campaign, Art of the Heist, generated 85% of its traffic with the 15% of the overall budget it spent on blog advertising, according to a member of the creative team who spoke at an online ad conference last fall.

Average blog ad buy up 300% over last year

A flood of book, TV, movie, and music advertisers are advertising on blogs, and auto companies have also caught the bug, Copeland says, with the average buy up more than 300% over last year.

If you think blogs are not a viable ad medium, consider this: Many blogs are achieving “big media” reach. The celebrity gossip blog Perez Hilton, for example, or DailyKos have 500,000 readers a day, which is a quite a “big media” reach.

A 2005 Blogads survey of blog readers showed that certain niches (like politics) have a median age of 45 and median income of $85,000, and a high level of C-level executives.

Copeland reports that Blogads CPMs are still relatively low: $0.50 to $3.00. Banners are going for $10-$15. Average cost per click is $1.50. Some campaigns are down at 3 cents while some are at $10. “Good creative and quality of audience cohort makes a huge difference,” he says.

Running traditional ads on blogs is a formula for failure

There are several blog networks, including Federated Media, publishers of BoingBoing, the second most popular blog in the world according to Technorati. It reaches several million readers and RSS feed subscribers a month, with CPMs averaging $5.

Running traditional advertising on blogs is a good formula for failure. Blogs are based on niches and communities and it is counter-productive to run generic ads on blogs. Blogs are fundamentally about links, so multiple links in ads are vital.

“Folks are beginning to loosen up and realize that they can’t run the same creative across all media,” Copeland says.

Copeland offers the following guidelines for effective blog ads:

While only about 5% of blog ads use video now, the percentage is likely to grow because giving people the sense that they will see something cool when they click is important. However, advertisers shouldn’t get too focused on shimmering, jittering images, Copeland says, because they’re distracting.

How much do you have to spend to do an effective campaign on blogs?

Remarkably little, considering the possible results. “It depends on what you are after,” Copeland says. “If you want to make big brand splash, you should spend $25 to $75K. If you have a very creative/viral approach or want to target a specific sub category of tastemakers, you can spend $5 to $10K.”

In other words, you can create a blog advertising campaign that will have great impact for less than the cost of a single ad in a national print magazine.

Agencies have begun to play a much bigger role in blog ad buying than a year ago, but a lot of the creative flops because agencies are not grasping the renegade atmosphere of blog communities.

What’s next?

Copeland predicts:

• We’ll see an increased reliance on “people-powered marketing,” which is to say stuff like the Mentos/Coke fountains on YouTube that give an incredible boost to certain products.
• You’ll see studios buy ads to promote mashups that their viewers have done.
• You’ll see voters doing ads for their favorite candidates, with candidates turning around and paying for air time for those same ads.

One thing’s clear: No company, organization, or association or media buyer can afford to ignore blogs any longer. Early adopters have taken the lead, and blogs finally entering corporate consciousness. What are you waiting for?