The Proven Formula For Writing Powerful, Effective Online Ads, Landing Pages, Sales Letters and Email Marketing Pieces!

First of all, I want to pass along to you a formula that is quite ‘Old School’ and not as sexy as more modern Buzz Words - but one that serves me well even today.  What it amounts to is a bare-bones structure that will work for every ad you ever write.

1. Headline: If at all possible, grab the reader’s attention by appealing to a strong desire that you think he possesses. Again, I want to point out that it’s possible to grab the reader’s attention with just about any kind of startling headline, but, to the degree that headline isn’t directed at his immediate needs, you’ll have to be all the more benefit oriented very quickly in the copy immediately following the headline. If the headline appeals to the reader’s needs, it gives you a big head start.
2. Subheading, opening paragraph, or both: Again, your focus should be on trying to make the reader say to himself, “Hey, this ad is about me!” If you don’t accomplish this right from the outset, the chances are excellent that the reader will move on to the next page. People are interested only in ads that propose something that will be to their benefit. By now, this should be a great truth indelibly stamped on your forebrain.
3. Body copy (main text): State every reason you can think of why the reader should reach into his pocket and buy your product or service. Twenty reasons may not be enough. It may be the twenty-first reason that causes him to buy. You’re paying for every inch of white space in the ad, so do both yourself and the reader a favor and fill most of it with copy. The more reasons you can think of why the prospect should buy your product, the better your chances of selling him. Give it your best shot; it may be the last one you’ll ever have to sell the person who’s reading your ad right now.
4. Closing: Close the sale by (A) throwing in one or two parting lines, perhaps repeating your strongest selling points and then ‘Tell Them What To Do‘! Tell them ‘click here to buy‘ or ‘Join our Ezine Now‘. Leave nothing to chance, tell them what’s next.

If your work involve (online) PR you communicate quite often with editors of web sites and magazines of your interest. Here are some tips that can be of help.

1. Don’t send immeditely you see some new section/site about your/your client industry. Find some time and read what kind of articles they publish, how they are written to see if they use more formal or funky style in writing, how long are the articles etc.

2. Go to the meeting with the editor. Many people never find time to see the editor of the certain site/magazine. They think it is enough to send a press release and content-hungry editors will publish it if they like it. Internet is great but don’t avoid face2face meetings.

3. Don’t send the same press release to everyone. Try to identify your most important media partners and adjust your press release and content of your email to them. It is not enough just to change the name of the recipient when you write Dear, [editorname]. Everyone likes to see that they are important, and also not many editors like to publish the same content like dozen of other media.

4. Don’t bold keywords and sentences in your press release. Editors are smart enough to know what is important and what is not so imporatnt.

5. Send objective news and not over-hyped press releases. Usually editors don’t want to publish over-hyped press release because they will sound as a free ad and not informative news and they won’t bother to adjust your press release.

6. Proofread your press releases.

7. Give a proper Subject name for your emails. Many people send press releases with blank Subject line or with the Subject line: For immediate release

8. Send your press release in the body of email and as an attachment. Because many editors won’t publish it immediatelly and they want to save the file somewhere, but some other editors don’t like getting attachments. Also, some local letters can be shown in error if sent in email because of recipient email client’s settings.

9. Don’t be pain in the ass. Once you sent the news don’t call every day and ask when it will be published. It is good to know what is the standard schedule for publishing and if you see that it passed too long since they got your email (in case of web sites several days) you can call them.

10. Give some benefit to journalists. Some exclusive information, product review or taking them to your company travel/conference or sponsoring their trip that can be later used in their articles is usually a nice thing to do. They will appreciate it.

UK will be probably the first country from the group of major advertising countries in the world where the total online ad spending in 2009. will be higher than total TV ad spending according to a study released by agency GroupM (part of WPP network).

Also, it is estimated that online ads will surpass TV ads in Sweden within the next 12 months. Logical answer for UK market is that BBC is publicly funded so they are not depended on advertisers.

WPP’s GroupM in their study “This Year, Next Year” study doesn’t think that online ads will surpass TV ads in UK in 2008. they predict that at the end of 2008. online ads will have 24.8% and TV ads 26% of marketshare.. However, they also think it will happen in 2009.

It is interesting that the forecasted Internet spending be more than 10% of the total global ad spending.

Choosing your web hosting provider is the next logical step after you have registered your domain name. However, it is not easy to find the right web hosting deal. There are many companies that offer web hosting services. If you make a search on Google for the keyword web hosting you will get more than 100 million results!

If you want to have a successful online presence you need to have reliable web hosting. Your web site has to be always online and accessible. Otherwise, you will loose clients and prospects. Let’s compare this with a traditional business. If you have a shop in “offline” business name of the shop is your domain name and business space and infrastructure is your web hosting. Imagine a cafe that don’t have electricity once a day for one hour or a fast food service where there is only one employee instead of four!

WEB HOSTING TYPES

You have to choose your web hosting deal depending on type of your site. You won’t choose the same web hosting deal if you have a personal web site, web site for email newsletter subscription and archives, e-commerce site or web forum. There are 4 main web hosting: virtual (shared) hosting, dedicated server, collocation server and reseller hosting. The two most used are virtual (shared) hosting and dedicated server.

Virtual (shared) hosting is the situation where many web sites reside on one web server. This is the cheapest web hosting because many users split the cost for web server. You can find quality virtual hosting from $100 per year.

Dedicated server represents a hosting where company lease the whole web server from web hosting company. That web server is located in the web hosting company. Dedicated server is the right choice for company that doesn’t want to share there server with other users. Dedicated server can be managed and un-managed. In the first case web hosting company will take care about setting up and constant updates and upgrades of your web server while you will have to do that in the second case. Advantage of this type of web hosting is that you can completely accommodate your web hosting to your needs. Also, dedicated server is the only logical choice for web sites with lots of visitors. Because of costs for a dedicated server that start from $100 per month, usually this hosting is chosen only by companies which take their Internet business very seriously.

Collocation server is similar to dedicated server. Difference is that company doesn’t lease a web server. They place their own web server in the web hosting company. Also, company has physical access to their web server while it is not the case in using a dedicated server.

Reseller hosting is targeted to companies that want to start their own web hosting business.

Useful web site where you can find a web hosting that will fit your needs is http://www.webhost.thelist.com

FACTORS YOU HAVE TO CONSIDER

You have to take several factors in consideration in order to be satisfied with your web hosting.

Web space

Web space is determined by the type of your site. Certainly, if you want to have a web site with basic information about yourself and your work without using web applications that 50 MB of web space will be enough. On the other hand, if you want to have complex e-commerce site with several thousand products in your database or web site with members, you don’t have to take anything less than 1 GB.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth represents data that has been transferred from your web site and that include graphic details, images, banners, files for download etc. Content is very important for planning your bandwidth. For most sites, 10 GB monthly bandwidth is more than enough while for some other sites like desktop wallpapers sites bandwidth can be often even several hundred GB per month.

Up-time or visibility

Up-time or visibility represents time expressed in percents that show how much is one site online. Don’t be fooled because someone guarantees for example 98% up-time because it is not enough. You don’t have to take anything les than 99.7%. Believe us, that difference is very big. Useful site checking your up-time is http://www.netmechanic.com

Email accounts

It is important to know what you will get in your web hosting package regarding email accounts. Will you get only a so called catch –all forwarding which means that all emails sent to anything@yourdomain.com will arrive to your email address or you can set-up email accounts for several users? For how many? Is it for 5, 10, 100 or unlimited email accounts? Also, it doesn’t hurt to check do you get a so called POP3 email address (“real” email address), web mail or both? Having a POP3 email address you will be able to check your emails using your favourite email client and web mail enables you to check your emails at any place that has computer and Internet connection.

Server type, tools and control panel

The two most often used hosting are on Unix-based or Windows platform. That fact has for the result program languages, databases and scripts that you will be able to use. On Unix-based platform, usual choice is PHP language in combination with MySQL while on Windows platform ASP or ASP.NET language in combination with SQL Server. You have to check do you get a database in your package and how many. Today, modern web site has to be database-driven.

Also, it is recommended to be informed about tools that you get in your web hosting package, no matter if they are applications for web statistics, file manager and things like that. Best solution is if you get a cPanel along with Fantastico. Using Fantastico, marketers without technical knowledge can install most popular web applications within 2-3 clicks.

Technical support

Technical support is one of the most important things in choosing your web hosting, especially if you are a marketer without technical knowledge. You have to be sure that your technical support will answer your emails within 24 hours. This is not only important for choosing your web hosting company, it is important to literally any company that sells products and services, for example software company.

Some companies are so well organized that you will receive response from them within 1 hour! You can get an image about your future technical support about the way they can be contacted. Is it only via email or they have a support phone, too? Do they have a toll-free number? Do they have trouble-ticket system? Also, very important thing is their working hours. Do they provide technical support only during their working hours from 9 to 17 or they offer 24×7 technical support? The best way to see how professional they are is to make a list of questions, contact them and – wait to get the answer.

Testimonials

It is a common practice that web hosting and software companies have Testimonials section where you can read recommendations from their happy customers. Don’t rely only on that section. Many web hosting companies offer you to see their portfolio of web sites that they host. Contact several webmasters and ask them about what they think about their web hosting provider. Very useful thing in finding best web hosting deals and recommendations is to visit popular web forums like http://www.webhostingtalk.com and http://www.sitepointforums.com

You see that there are several factors that influence in choosing your web hosting package. You have to be aware that like with everything else, when we come to web hosting you usually get what you pay for.

Incentives and contests are popular ways to get new members for your web site or email newsletter. Let’s face it – we all like to get something free or with some discount. These techniques offers to your subscribers exactly that.

There are many email newsletters. How can you stand out from a crowd? You can have a web site full of quality content so that your visitors can easily decide to subscribe to your email newsletter. However, you can increase your subscription rate by giving stimulation to your visitors to become your subscribers.

Let’s compare these two ads:

1) Subscribe to our eMarketing Newsletter and read useful articles about email marketing!

2) Subscribe to our eMarketing Newsletter, read useful articles about email marketing and save on our products up to 40%!

I think that many of you will agree that the 2nd ad will have better results.

Companies who know to use email marketing effectively offer exclusively to their subscribers to buy their product on discount. Usually they have already implemented a coupon field in their shopping cart or they send the special link in the email newsletter. In our eMarketing Newsletter example coupon name can be something like this emn150707. As you can realize, first letters are acronyms for the newsletter name and numbers represent a date. They can include a link that can be something like this:

http://www.yourcompanyname.com/index.asp?c=emn150707

This way you can easily track how many subscribers bought using this link and this way you will be able to give them a discount.

It is best to make it like a limited time offer, so you say that this offer is valid until July 20th.

You don’t have to give incentives using only coupons. Another incentive example can be: “Subscribe to our Email Marketing Articles Newsletter and get beautiful mouse pad”. Of course, you can make mouse pads with your company name and logo.

When we talk about contests we can say that there are two types of it. You can offer contest based on drawing. You can get email address submissions and choose the winner. After that, sometimes you can send them announcements if you improve your product. Of course, you will need their permission to do that.

Example: “Subscribe to our Best Practices Guide Newsletter and every month one lucky winner will get our award-winning desktop email marketing software!”

In the second type of contest you have to do something to maybe get the prize. You should have certain skills. For example, email marketing software company wants to make a logo and slogan and they announce that the one who will make the best logo will get the prize, for example software.

The first type of contest is interesting for people who want something for free. Second type is interested also for those and for people who like challenges. The second type of contest is very useful for company. They’ll get the logo and slogan and also advertise their products, in this case their list hosting services.

If you want to have many people who will take part in contest you have to register your contest on as many places as possible and to advertise it on your web site and in your email newsletter. You can find some other companies which have contests and ask them to exchange links with you. The good thing is to send press releases to some popular online and offline magazines which are

similar to your business. These are good ways to promote your contest.

Internet is getting very important part in our lives, especially in business. Successful business can’t be imagined without Internet presence. Many companies have their own corporate web sites and email newsletters but it is not enough. Online advertising is the next logical part of every integrated marketing campaign in order to spread the word about your company.

Online advertising is much more different than in early Internet days, back in 1995. At the beginning of online advertising age the most used banner formats were 468×60 pixels, 120×60 pixels and 88×31 pixels. Many website publishers use 728×90 as a new standard for premium banners. Several years ago new ad formats appeared like so called skyscraper ads. We recommend you to visit Internet Advertising Bureau to see universal ad packages.

http://www.iab.net/standards/adunits.asp

Online advertising spending grows exponentially. According to a research made by IAB and PWC online advertising in USA in 2006. was 16.9 billion dollars which is 35% grow from 2005.

There are many sites that have some ads. Usually they are smaller or larger animated images called banners. Online advertising is so oversaturated that many studies show that people developed ability to screen out ads. The first banner was published on HotWired web site in 1994. It is a famous banner with text: “Have you ever clicked your mouse right HERE? YOU WILL!”

At the beginning banners had decent click-thru rates, sometimes even 10%. Today, usually CTR is between 0.1-0.3% even lower because of banner saturation.

Marketers needed new online advertising models so they started making ads using Flash. Using Flash technology, marketers are able to make interactive ads that look like mini home pages and in most cases those ads have much better CTR. Ads made in Flash can be seen on many popular portals like Yahoo! and MSN.

Today, the best results show email advertising, contextual advertising and video ads. Email advertising is great if your ad appears in double opt-in email newsletters with targeted subscribers. Good ad campaigns can get 2-5% CTR in email newsletters, blogs or video ads.

Google made a revolution in online advertising introducing the contextual advertising models in their services AdWords and AdSense. AdWords is based on a model that advertisers can choose desired keywords so every time someone makes a search on Google with their selected keyword their ad will appear on Google side bar or on the top of search results. This is good because many people don’t see them like advertising, they see them as search results, and therefore, CTR is higher. It is Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising so that advertiser only pays when someone clicked on their ad. AdSense, on the other hand, allows publishers that they ads appear like texts only on relevant web sites that have similar target audience like their business. Google AdSense is great for web site owners, too, because they can monetize their web site traffic. It became possible to have Google ads in RSS. This is very useful for bloggers. Google also tests contextual ads based on CPA model and in video.

Another good choice for PPC advertising is using services like Overture (now Yahoo! Search Marketing) and AdBrite. Overture allows keyword bidding and many popular sites like Yahoo! and MSN use Overture service for their sponsored search results. AdBrite allows you to choose web sites on which you want to advertise.

We have listed several useful free services that will help you in making your next successful PPC campaign.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

Keyword Suggestion Tool

Free Search Engine Ranking & Keyword Tracker

Search Engine Placement Check

When you start with online advertising you have to be able to give answers on several questions.

1) What do you want to achieve?

If you don’t want where you are going, you will never get there. You have to know what you want to achieve with your online advertising campaign. It is like when you make projections in your business plan. You will have to make your Internet marketing plan. Your goals can be to get 100 clients, 2000 subscribers to your email newsletter, brand awareness or anything else. Just be specific and clearly define your goals in order to achieve them.

2) Where to advertise?

This is the next logical step. Depending on what your goals are you will choose your target sites. Do you want to use online advertising for your branding? Then the good use can be larger banner campaign on popular ad networks. It is most likely that you won’t have some great CTR but many people will see your ad and it is cost-effective. If you want better response rate, good thing is to advertise in email newsletters. If you want to get clients with minimum risk you should use PPC advertising on search engines or affiliate programs based on pay-per-sale.

You won’t choose same places to advertise if you want to reach newbies and decision makers. You have to know what you sell and to whom. Market segmentation is essential.

You have to choose quality and visited web sites. We have listed several useful free services that can help you to determine site popularity.

Google PR Checker

Alexa

Netratings

Compete

Link Popularity Check

3) Out Of The Box approach

Don’t be scared to experiment with your ads. We have already said that there are many ads, so you will have many competitors. You want to get the most from your advertising dollars. Test, test, test! Be creative and use technologies like Flash or DHTML in order to make your ads stand out from the crowd.

4) Words sell

You have to choose good message for your ads. To clearly define your offer and to call on action. Don’t forget to include words like “Click here”, “Register Now!”, and “Free Report”, to offer contests for popular gadgets like iPod. Good thing is to include interesting questions in your ads, questions that start with “How To…” messages that start with numbers like “7 Email Marketing Best Practices”…

Things to avoid

Although, some people can tell you that pop-ups can bring you many new subscribers, we recommend you not to use pop-ups. Different studies show that people don’t like this technique. Don’t make your banner images bulky, it will have a slow loading time. Not everyone use broadband. Optimize them to have good loading time. Some people make their banners look like Windows dialogue boxes or place a combo box image on their banners in order to mislead their visitors and to have better CTR. Don’t use that technique. Also, it is recommended that your banner be above the fold (in the first scroll) and rather on the left than on the right side.

Successful business can’t be done without partnerships and cooperation. On the Internet you can have a perfect partnership model – using affiliate programs.

What are affiliate programs?

Affiliate programs, which are also known as associate, partnership or referral programs are type of business that includes two parties: a seller and partners or affiliates. In order to have better sales and reach more customers many sellers start an affiliate program to sell their products and services.

Here is how it works. For example, if company A sells software and company B joins in their affiliate program to promote company A software they will earn commission for every new customer or prospect they bring to company A web site. Every affiliate has an unique ID so this way seller can track sales made by each affiliate and to pay them for that.

Affiliate program types

There are two main types of affiliate programs: affiliate programs which are based on cost-per-acquisition model (CPA) and affiliate programs which are based on cost-per-click model (CPC). Of course, much better solution for sellers (and in most cases for affiliates, too) is CPA model. In this case, seller is interested to have as much affiliates as possible, because this way they can’t loose – they pay only for new clients. Commission depends on products and services in affiliate program and can be from 5% to even 40%.

CPC affiliate program type means that the seller will pay a fixed price for every click that is made on their affiliates’ web sites. Usually click price is in the range from $0.10 - $1.0. This is more risky for companies because they will have to pay even if their affiliates don’t generate new sales and with this model it is always a risk of possible fraud clicks.

Affiliate programs are most widely used in selling books, software and web services. Some of the most successful businesses on the Internet are built on partnerships like Amazon.com and Google with their AdSense program.

Affiliate programs are great for webmasters, too. Very few web site owners can completely sell their ad inventories and with affiliate programs they can fill their unused ad inventory.

Start your own affiliate program

You can start selling your products thru affiliate programs with using specialized services like ClickBank, LinkShare and ShareASale or having a custom affiliate program script built for your needs.

Having an affiliate program you won’t be limited to selling only on your web site. You will have 24×7 salespersons with the help of other web site owners who will join your affiliate program. Best of all, it is completely automated process so you won’t have to do nothing. You will only have to maintain your balance on your affiliate program service and they will pay your affiliates for sales they generate. Usually, you will also have some upfront investment when you start using some affiliate program service. You will pay a one-time-fee and a commission for every sale made thru that affiliate program service.

If you are a web site owner, you have to find several affiliate programs that are best match for your web site. Targeting is very important in order to have success with using affiliate programs. You won’t have much success if you have a webmaster resource web site and promote affiliate program for cosmetics. In this case you will have success if you promote services that are aimed to webmasters. So you will have to start promoting affiliate programs for web hosting, domain registration, Internet and email marketing software.

Some affiliate programs are two-tier based so you will earn money even if some other webmasters join to the affiliate program thru you. You will get a commission each time that new webmaster makee a sale.

You can find affiliate programs that fit to your site’s content on sites that offer affiliate program services. Usually, they offer Sellers and Affiliates section. Also, there are specialized directories for finding affiliate programs like Associate Programs and Affiliate Programs.

As you can see, power of affiliate programs represents a fact that it is a win-win situation – both for sellers and for affiliates.

Writing articles is one of the best ways that you can do for your Internet promotion. Writing articles can be put in PR activities section because in most cases you won’t pay that your article appear in some magazine, web site or email newsletter. That’s why articles are usually more useful than ads. People believe more in what they read than when they read something and they know that it is an ad.

Benefits of writing articles

1) Building your web site content and getting repeat visits

On of the most known rules on the Internet is “Content Is King!” People are constantly looking for quality content and if they won’t find it on your web site they will leave to your competitor’s site and probably never come back on your site again. With writing articles that are relevant to your business you will create a web site full of useful information and when people see how much you offer on your web site they will most likely subscribe to your email newsletter, as well. To increase sign-up process for your email newsletter you can put some of your articles in “teaser” format and write that if people want to read the whole article they have to be members of your email newsletter.

2) Branding yourself or your company as an expert

Whether you write articles mainly for purpose of publishing on your places like web site and email newsletter, or you want that they be re-published on many other places, you will have a branding benefit. If your articles offer quality information to your readers they will view you or your company as an expert in your area of business. For example, if you are a company that sells email marketing software, you can write articles that will help email marketers to get the maximum from their email marketing campaigns.

3) Search engines and link popularity

As you probably already know, link popularity is very important factor for better ranking on major search engines like Google. The more sites link back to yours you will have a better page rank. Writing articles is ideal way for having a better placement on search engines. If your web site offers quality content many people will link back to your web site if they know that your web site will be useful for their readers, too. Also, if your articles get re-published on many places like web sites, article submission directories they will also link to your web site because you can (and definitely you should) include a resource box at the end of your articles where you will include your web site URL, as well. Also, you will include several relevant keywords in your articles that will help in your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

4) Targeted subscribers

Like in above mentioned example, if you are an email marketing software company you will write articles about email marketing. Your articles will appear on places that focus on email marketing and readers of those articles are also interested in email marketing when they read that topic. If they like your articles and want to find more about your company it is most likely that they will visit your web site URL in your resource box. This way you will get targeted visitors and subscribers. Did I mention free?

How to write your articles

1) Don’t write your article like a sales pitch – you should offer quality and useful information in your articles and to focus on ”selling” in your resource box. Also, never include affiliate links in your articles. You should include a max. 5-line resource box at the end of your articles. There you can write something about yourself, your company, and to include your web site url and phone number.

Resource box example:

______________________________

Dejan Bizinger is web manager at B92 and Internet marketing consultant. B92 is media house in Serbia with national TV and radio coverage and most visited web site. For more information about Dejan Bizinger please visit http://www.bizinger.biz

______________________________

2) Catchy title – it is very important that your articles have catchy titles and first two paragraphs because it is usual the only thing visitors will see on article search engines. Then they will decide whether to read your article or not.

3) Clickable links – it is good that links in your articles be “live” or clickable. You have to see from place to place if it is enough to include a usual http://www.yourname.com link or you have to put in HTML tag like http://www.yourname.com

Where to promote your articles

If you are interested that many people use your articles for publishing on their web sites or email newsletters you have to promote your articles. Best way to do it is to submit your articles to specialized article submission web sites and email newsletters.

There are many article submission resources, but some of the most useful are:

Web sites

Go Articles

Ezine Articles

Idea Marketers

Article Depot

Article City

WebProNews