How To Start Your Own NewsletterYour Road Plan To Email Marketing Success |
11. Creating a Comprehensive Online Media KitCreating a comprehensive online media kit You can get advertisers’ attention for your Ezine by creating a comprehensive online media kit for them that has all the information they need to place an ad in your Ezine. You would be boosting up your chances of catching the advertisers’ fancy by creating a catchy one-line link on your Ezine. For instance, if you have an Ezine on Real Estate you could place a link titled ‘Are you looking to reach ‘x’ number of prospective home-buyers?’ that directs them to your website, which gives complete advertising information to real estate developers who are interested in placing ads in your realty Ezine. Your one-line revelation will tell them that the niche market they are looking for is the one that you are targeting. Your advertisers will love to know all there is to know about your Ezine and whether they should place their ads in your Ezine or not. They would want to know the subscribers rate, the click through rates of ads placed in your Ezine, testimonials from other advertisers, etc. A good idea is to create a website or an email template which has an all-inclusive information which can be of benefit to your advertisers. This is known as a media kit. Your media kit is like your portfolio, which has all the data and statistics about your previous works and what you have to offer. The following pointers can help you come up with a great media kit. You can write about why is it a good idea to advertise with you. You can mention the perks and benefits and the competitive rates that you offer. It is basically a sales letter and you have to be professional and precise in writing it. Don’t over-use marketing lingo and give practical information to the advertisers. Also provide demographic information about your subscribers, as in their age groups, profession, locality, and so on. Use percentages, charts and figures effectively to describe your subscribers. Provide them with a rate card, which has all the information about different rates that you have for ads. You might want to have different rates for different sections, different dates, etc. For example, you might have different rates for ads that are placed in your Ezine around Thanksgiving Day to new years day. Mention it clearly so that it is easy for anyone to go through it and make their decision. Some of the most effective items you can place in your media kit are testimonials from other advertisers or subscribers that vouch for the effectiveness of the ads placed in your Ezine. For example, real life experiences of an advertiser earning considerable revenue from placing ads in your Ezine and getting benefit of your vast reader base. Or if a reader has emailed you about how the ads have helped him or her in discovering a great product, publish it here. This is highly effective as your potential advertisers will immediately relate to the experiences and it is way better if others talk about you rather than you blowing your own trumpet. You can get the advertisers and readers to comment about the ads by specifically asking them for their feedback. You can encourage the readers to comment generously and you can email the advertisers and ask them to email you about the response they receive. Provide all the necessary contact information that can be utilized to contact the appropriate person for placing ads in your Ezine. Give out email address, phone number, fax number, postal address, whatever you can and want to use for this purpose. You can also have an online inquiry form, which can be used for advertisers if they seek more information. This form can ask for information like name, email address, other relevant information, phone number and a suitable time to contact them. You can also have an online order form which has fields like name, contact details, ad text/ad copy, credit card details and so on. If you want to process advertising orders online, you must accept credit cards and you must have a very trustworthy web page secured by the acceptable security standards. Contact your existing advertisers regularly via email and inform them of the offers and deals in your advertising rates. The words and phrases that your advertisers will love are ‘improved’, ‘competitive’, ‘slashed down’, ‘discounted’, and of course ‘free’. If you have a weekly Ezine, offer them one out of the four ads for free or at 50% off rates. This is something that can be done when you have an established Ezine and have a loyal readers as well as advertiser base for your Ezine. But this is a strategy you can keep in mind for later. 4. eZine Promotion & Using Autoresponders www.Automatic-Responder.com Building Your List with Paid eZine Advertising Some Internet Marketers can get clueless when it comes to unleashing the full potential of paid eZine advertising. One of the most common dilemmas is that whether should the Internet Marketer advertise the product or service he is selling directly to the subscribers of the eZine he is paying advertising for? This can be a wise method, but with ifs and buts. For one, the advertisement must be compelling and attention grabbing. Secondly, there is no telling if the eZine’s subscribers constantly practice a buying habit until you put some money to find out. Investing even a small sum of money can be risky to a number of Internet Marketers who are on tight budgets. But in spite of the risk factors, eZine advertising can still be rewarding, if done right. Thus the solution: the marketer would be wiser if he or she uses eZine advertising to build his or her mailing list. It makes sense, anyway. Since some eZines display more than one sponsored advertisement, you can grab the subscriber’s attention by giving a free or risk-free product or offer through your ad. When the subscriber clicks on your ad, he or she can opt into your mailing list in exchange for the free offer, which can be a free report or even a trial service. While you are not making a hard sell through your advertisement just yet, building your list by getting other eZine’s subscribers subscribed to your eZine allows you to follow up with them in the future, as and when you have new offers. Refrain from Buying Bulk Mails I am sure that you have definitely come across advertisements that read: “1,000,000 email addresses for $29.99”. And these bulk mail companies can even offer you these names in a CD at your doorstep. Sure, having 1,000,000 subscribers is the best thing that could ever happen to any Internet Marketer and often sounds too good to be true. But very often, it always sound too good to be true. What many beginning marketers do not really know is that these bulk companies harvest the email addresses using robots and other wares on the Internet. That is how the 1,000,000 email addresses come about, whatever the amount is. Now, the really awful part is that if you purchase the so-called 1,000,000 names even at a low price, not only is it a waste of money, you are risking being accused of spamming. It is no longer a surprise how you often receive spam mails on Viagra, OEM Software and things you do not even need in your inbox. That is so possible, because of the 1,000,000 names, no one knows you or even ask to be subscribed to your mailing list. On top of that, not all 1,000,000 email addresses are really in use because a portion of them can either be own by the same owners (one owner can own more than 1 email accounts) or are obsolete. When you read such ads again, tell yourself that it is a waste of money. Weakness in Safe List How would you like to send your commercial emails to people you do not know, but are expecting to receive such mail from you? Wait a minute. That does not sound right. How can this be? It is simple, if you know what is really going on. Everybody who is on these lists, also known as safe lists, knows that they will be receiving emails from other members. This is possible because that is one of the conditions of their “safe list” membership. And those who join these lists are willing to agree to this condition because they themselves would want to send out their own commercial emails to the others on the list. The result: everyone is sending emails to each other but no one is reading them! It gets worse when some savvy members sign up for the membership using a free or less-frequently-used account to store the useless emails they will never bother to open and read. Having said that, it is always wiser to start your own mailing list and build it with opt-in subscribers, no matter how tempting safe lists can be or how many members there are in a safe list. Newsletters are generally used as tools to market other products or services. You would hardly have a newsletter which itself is an end-product. For this reason, advertising is an integral part of building and publishing any newsletter or ezine. Before you start your advertising campaign, you need to carefully plan it. Start by asking yourself what is the purpose of the campaign – what product would you be advertising through your ezine? There are many key aspects of a successful campaign. Let us discuss each one separately. The Timeframe One of the first things you need to decide is how much time would you give your campaign. You cannot have an indefinite campaign. It is always advisable to fix a start date and an end date to your advertising campaign. The reason for this is that within a specific timeframe it is easier to track the performance of your campaign as well as set up a budget. Besides, if at the end of period you find your campaign to be successful, you could always continue with the same strategies. Budget Setting up a budget for your campaign is not as easy as it sounds. You may have a specific amount in mind but simply using up the whole amount at least initially may not be the wisest idea. Online advertising comes in many forms. You could run a series of 5 campaigns as well as a series of 50 campaigns. The key is to spend your money right. Some campaigns are obviously more expensive than others. Some may even be free. This means that it is not simply a case of saying that you are going to run a series of five different campaigns covering a range of advertising media and so you will split your budget equally between the five campaigns. You do not know what campaigns yield better results by simply knowing the costs. Any successful campaign is formed of the right ingredients. The hardest part of your advertising campaign is not to set it up or maintain it but to find the right ingredients. This can only be done with time. I would suggest that you do not stretch you budget initially. Start with a few campaigns well within your budget and track their performance over a period of time. This will give you a better idea of what strategies work for you and what don’t. In fact, it may not be a bad idea to spend less than half of your budget initially. This way even if you lose all your money you would still have money left for other campaigns. On the other hand, if your initial campaign works, you could continue with them and also jack it up a notch.
|
Browse Site3. Invite Guest Writers to Write in Your Ezine 5. Free Resources on Writing Skills 6. Write Attractive Descriptions 8. Free Hosts – a Definite No No 10. Suggest the Change Subtly to Your Readers 11. Creating a Comprehensive Online Media Kit 13. Always Look for Opt in Ezines 14. Auto Responder Improvements |
||
| copyright - 2006 - kenmathie.com | |||