Advertising Effectively

During this section of the Business Start Up course we will take a look at how you can increase sales through Advertising your Business, product or service effectively.

Advertising is how you generate sales - it's as simple as that. It is also a great way to waste money, lose potential customers and also see your business go down the pan! That is, if you advertise irresponsibly.

To begin with, let us take a look at just a few ways in which you can advertise your business:

1. Newspaper advertising (both local and national press).

2. Leaflets and posters in your local area.

3. Placing adverts in a local shop or newsagent.

4. Advertising through large 'advertising companies' who specialise in key site promotions, e.g. Admedia who specialise in motorway service stations and licensed premises.

5. Search Engine advertising either via Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or natural Search Engine rankings.

It would be pointless at this stage going through each of the above advertising options in detail and pointing out the benefits and pitfalls of each. The reason being, that before you carry out any form of advertising, you must first learn and understand how to 'use' advertising for your business effectively.

How do you know if it's going to work?

Many entrepreneurs and business owners advertise their business through a variety of different mediums. 95% of them will not be able to tell you how effective their advertising is. They may be able to tell you if their sales have increased, or even decreased for that matter, but they won't be able to tell you EXACTLY how much revenue an advert has generated. So how do we do that I hear you ask?

Simple...... test and track EVERY advert that you create.

Lets say for example you decide to place an advert in a local newspaper that promotes your On Line  website. You place the advert in the paper for 1 day only. How do you know how many people visited the website as a result of that advert, and also how do you know how many sales were generated? Let me explain:

Option 1

To track exactly how many people visit your website as a result of the advert, first you need to create a domain name that is similar to your main website name, or one that is relevant to the advert that you are promoting. This new domain name will be used in your advert, so make sure you choose it carefully. It is important that you use a different domain name to your main website name as this will allow you to filter out 'normal' everyday traffic from those who have been directed to your site via the advert. For example:

 Main website name - www.how2become.co.uk

 Tracking domain name - www.how2b.com

Now you need to ensure you have a marketing system in place that will allow you to track the number of hits this domain name receives as a result of the advert, and also the number of sales conversions it makes.

In order to achieve this you need to:

Step 1 - Sign up to a powerful marketing system such as 1SC - http://www.marketerschoice.com.

Step 2 - Once you have signed up to your marketing system you will then be capable of creating 'Ad trackers' which basically do exactly what it says on the tin - track your adverts. All you need to do is give the Ad tracker a dedicated name, for example - 'Newspaper Advert Tracker'. Then you insert the URL of the page you want customers to go through as a result of the advert into the 'destination URL' in the Ad tracking system. Once you then save the Ad tracker the marketing system will then provide you with a unique tracking URL code.

Step 3 - Once you have your unique tracking URL code, simple forward your Tracking domain name to this code via your hosting company and then you will be able to see exactly how many people click through to your advert, and more importantly how many people go on to make a purchase.

The importance of testing and tracking your advertising

The importance of setting up Ad trackers for adverts which direct potential customers to your website is very important. It will allow you to gauge whether or not the advert is cost effective. If it is, then you can run it again. If it isn't, then you can try something else. If you have no idea whether or not the advert has generated sufficient revenue to make it worthwhile, then what's the point in running it again?

You can use the above form of Advertising tracking for the majority of advertising including leaflets, posters and even Pay Per Click. Just make sure you use a different URL in your advert so that you can effectively track the advert.