Advertising For Newbies: Banner Advertising In 5 Steps or Less

by Coree on September 2nd, 2009

OpenSign 300x173 Advertising For Newbies: Banner Advertising In 5 Steps or Less Advertising your business is a main ingredient to any marketing plan and one of the ways people will know you are actually IN business and DO exist. We’ve talked a lot about social media marketing or word of mouth, which are both super important ways to advertise, but believe it or not..there are still people out there that don’t participate in social media and that’s a huge market you’re missing if your not advertising to the general public.

If you are a new business owner you know what it’s taken to get your business or product launch organized and ready to go. The next step is to get your name out there and if you have never advertised before you are probably wondering where to begin advertising. Remember, advertising is just one slice of the marketing pie, but it’s a big slice! Here are some tips that will help you with your advertising options:

1. Master Of All

You don’t have to be an expert at all types of advertising to get started. Begin by focusing on one or two types of advertising and get good at them. Decide which areas are “good” by testing and tweaking formulas. If you try to do this with too many types of advertising at once it can be overwhelming and confusing. Dont let yourself get to the point that you’re doing NOTHING because you are frustrated. The goal is to do SOMETHING and learn from it.

2. Banners Are Beautiful…And Powerful

One of the simplest and still most effective forms of advertising is banners. If you are fortunate enough to have a software program or a designer to create a banner for you, then start using them. If you don’t then you have a couple options. You can outsource by going to sites like guru.com, elance.com, or even Twitter to find a freelancer. Another option that I’ve heard does a great job is 20 Dollar Banners. You’ll get a professional banner design as low as $20 (depending on what you want designed) and usually with a 24 hour turnaround. It’s nice to have great looking banners, but remember…the only ones that will produce results are the ones you place…so just get one done and get started placing them!

3. Fish In Your Pond

Now that you have your banner, you need to start finding websites to advertise on. Blogs are one of the best places to start, but be particular about the blog you choose. You want to advertise to people that want what you have, right? So, start by finding blogs that talk to your niche market. You can use BlogCatalog, MyBlogLog, or other blog directory and search your keywords to find possibilities. If you are marketing a home based business you might try money making blog Sites. Use search terms such as “Home Based Business”, “Make Money from Home”, “Opportunity Review Sites” to get you started.

4. Do Your Homework

You’re not off the hook yet! Once you have a list of sites that YOU would actually read, you need to check their stats to choose the one that would be most probable to see advertising results from. Alexa.com is a traffic ranking site that will give you the low down. There is a whole training I could do on how to use Alexa for your benefit,but for the short term, the basic rule of thumb is to look for sites that are ranked 300,000 and below. Usually the lower the rank, the better…but also look for fluctuations over the past 30-60 days. If a site is getting a lot of traffic you know your ad will be seen.

5. Budget and Begin Advertising

Now that you have a banner strategy it’s time to start placing ads. With your list in hand, analyze the traffic & stats for each site, your monthly advertising budget, and decide where to spend your budget. I would suggest contacting the blog owner directly before actually placing the ad online. Right now everyone is looking for advertisers for their blog, so you might ask if the blog owner would consider a discount if you agreed to run your add for multiple months. Give it a shot..it’s pretty likely you will get good results as long as you are reasonable.

Remember in advertising you can never say the wrong thing to the right person. The wrong thing is the thing that is never said. The marketer that wins, is the one with consistency. Give yourself a goal of placing 3-5 ads per day to start out. The most important factor is to take consistent daily action.

Do you have other advertising or marketing questions you would like answered? I LOVE questions!! Please leave them here in a comment or shoot a quick email to coree at marketlikeachick dot com. I’d be happy to help!

To Your Success,

PS ~~> Looking for ways to build your list? Expert List Builder, Jimmy D. Brown, has been kind enough to allow me to offer you his 21 day “List Marketing Minute” E-Course for FREE! Jimmy has taught the best, names like John Reese & Nicole Dean, how to master the skill of list marketing. You can sign up here to join the e-course and get started instantly!

Advertising For Newbies: Banner Advertising In 5 Steps or Less

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