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The previous article examined some of the basic ideas involved in advertising.
We looked at why a company may want to advertise, the factors involved in
choosing a suitable venue and the costs and time involved. We also explored some
of the practicalities to consider and how to research your potential venue.
Once you've chosen where you're going to advertise, the next critical factor
will be how well you know the target audience. The more information that you
have to hand, the better you can tailor your content around their needs and
expectations.
You need to make sure that you speak in their language, try to give them what
they're already used to, or grab their attention with something new. But be
warned, these are pushy and innovative times. Whatever gimmick or spin you use
to stand out may well have been tried many times before, so don't over-rely on
it.
Like a good informative web page, the ad needs to first of all catch their
attention, and compel them to click on it.
There should be more focus on the benefits of the software than the features,
and the ad should really push the download or sale. It should also be as
compelling and striking as possible - not easy when you're limited by a number
of characters, file size or space to work with!
Bear in mind that like any strategy, your advertising will only be as strong as
its weakest link. Don't spend thousands of dollars on good placement, only to
use some awful home-created banner that you knocked together with Paint Shop Pro
4 three years ago.
If graphic design is not your strong point, then get a firm to design some
decent graphics for you. The same goes with writing the ad copy. Most people can
write, but few are writers. Try to make sure that someone with more than a
thesaurus-dictionary gift set writes your copy for you.
Aside from the wording, the basic market principles apply. Grab their attention,
tempt them, and compel them to act. "50% discount" is eye catching, as is some
form of "only valid today" type of offer.
But when the potential customer clicks on your ad, you're only half way there.
You now need to make sure that the page they land on carries on the good work.
Realistically, many will click on the ad out of idle curiosity, and very few (if
any) will have made up their minds to purchase already.
You should therefore use a separate landing page, as opposed to your regular
main website page. It should contain the same information and use the same
language, tone and focus of the ad, but now you're not restricted as to what you
can do, or how much space you have to work with. Here, you have all the space
you need to go all-out with the sales drive.
On a technical level, make sure that your landing page is not linked from
anywhere in your website, so as to ensure that everyone coming to this page has
been driven there by the ad.
If you're sharing a landing page, then at least make sure that you use a unique
referral string. To be able to evaluate the success of the ad, it's critical
that you can distinguish these visitors from the regular site visitors.
This brings us neatly onto the subject of tracking, without which you are
effectively deaf, dumb and blind to the effects of the ad. A unique landing page
on your website is ideal, and if possible, make this point to a separate payment
page as well. You can also use cookies or referral strings in order to sharpen
the accuracy of the tracking.
Usage of decent web log analysis software should let you see how many people
came to the landing page, how long they spent there, which links they then
clicked on, who downloaded from there, who purchased, and perhaps even who came
back to the website later.
The analysis and follow-up of the campaign is surprisingly often completely
overlooked. This is a great loss, as in some respects this is one of the most
important stages of the whole process.
When it comes to gauging the level of generated sales and registrations, you
need to take into account the final date of the ad, plus the full length of the
trial version and then add a little extra time. Some may view the ad, click,
download the software, but may not install it for a few days or even longer.
As an example, a company may choose to run a series of ads in a newsletter that
is sent out from Monday to Friday of a given week.
Some people may not respond to the ad until the following weekend (or later),
and only then download your thirty day trial. So we're already looking at 35
days after the ad was first run, and that's assuming that they install the
software as soon as they download it. Some people may even register after the
trial has elapsed. So don't go writing it off as a failure on day two of your
advertising campaign.
To accurately evaluate the success of the campaign, you need to go back to your
original goals.
If your primary goal was to achieve a higher level of sales, then it should be
reasonably easy to see how many were generated by the ad. As with everything
related to advertising, your data won't be 100% accurate, but it should give you
a good idea.
If the primary goal was increased exposure, then you should be looking at how
many people were exposed to the ad, how many viewed the landing page content and
website, and perhaps even downloaded and purchased the software.
At this point, there are four possible scenarios.
(1) The ad appears to be successful.
Your goals have been achieved as a direct result of the ad, and more advertising
with this vendor may be considered for the future. Even with this success, don't
rule out the fact that your figures can be further improved, but don't forget
that they can worsen too.
You should also be careful not to immediately engage in a long-term contract
with this vendor. Not only because there are other advertising options out
there, but also because any ad has a certain lifespan until it reaches its
saturation point. At the very least consider trying different products, wording
(or graphics) or even a different type of offer or discount.
(2) The ad doesn't appear to be successful.
There has been little generated in terms of exposure or sales, and you can't
help but feel that the venture has been a failure.
The first thing you have to do is to try to determine the reason for this.
It may be the product itself, the ad copy, the ad, or perhaps the targeting was
off. It may even be as a result of the ad placement, or the offer or discount
not being generous enough.
If the ad failed, it is very important to ascertain exactly why. Don't just
dismiss it as a failure, or a "bad" place to advertise, and don't be afraid to
go back to the vendor for feedback. If you explain that you're interested in
making this work, as opposed to complaining that they didn't deliver the results
you expected, you'll usually get a positive response. See what they can do to
help, after all, it's in their interests that you walk away satisfied by your
experience.
(3) The ad appears to break-even, but little more than this.
Go back and read number (2). Not being a success counts as a failure.
(4) You're not sure whether the ad was worthwhile or not.
There has been some response, but it's difficult to see whether it was a
worthwhile experience or not.
It's very important that you get to the bottom of this. Go through your
statistics again, and filter through your logs to see exactly what the visitors
did, where they clicked, and why they behaved as they did.
It is extremely important that at the end of the process, you know whether it
was worthwhile or not. Failure to do so will result either in a wastage of money
or a wastage of opportunities.
It's all too easy to throw money away on bad advertising. It's just as easy to
be scared-off by risks, or for that matter throw potential opportunities away.
Like any form of marketing, there are no guarantees that you'll achieve the
results you hope for. But by failing to try, you're absolutely guaranteed never
to reach them. The best you can do is to prepare the ground and cover all
options as thoroughly as possible, take a deep breath and then take the plunge.
Be seen, be sold.
Copyright 2005 Dave Collins
About The Author
Dave Collins is the CEO of SharewarePromotions Ltd., a well established UK-based
company working with software and shareware marketing activities, utilising all
aspects of the internet.
http://www.sharewarepromotions.com and
http://www.davetalks.com
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