Classified advertising has been around for a long time offline, and it didnt take it long to hit the online market either. Classified ads are an economical or free way to promote your business on the Internet. There are a variety of websites where classified ads can be placed and there are thousands of other places that offer opportunities to post classified ads next to relevant content.
Your advertising dollars need to be carefully utilized and closely monitored as you unveil and implement your marketing campaign. Your campaign will succeed if you do some homework ahead of time and monitor its effectiveness throughout the life of the ad.
However, there are also many ad campaigns that fail as a result of poor planning, inadequate tracking, or inattention to what is happening. Making some of the mistakes that cause an ad campaign to fail can be avoided by paying attention to some simple guidelines and basic facts.
The reasons that many classified advertising or other types of ad strategies fail include:
Lack of focus on the customer as the most important person in the process. Ads that focus on the company or its owners or founders will turn customers away quickly. People want to know about products and benefits not your company or your product features.
Not knowing the customer is a major flaw for many advertisements. People will create ads without truly knowing what their customers value and they never take time to put themselves in the customers place. Potential customers see through this quickly especially since theyre looking for whats in it for me. If they dont see that immediately, theyll ignore your ad and move to someone who knows them better.
Its all about benefits and not features. As stated above, people arent interested in features. Theyre looking for something to make their lives simpler, easier, and less complicated. If you can show them how your product can do that, youll have a potential customer that becomes engaged and converted.
Placing a single ad and then moving to another site to place the ad and continually hopping around the Internet wont gain you any customers. People typically need to see, hear, or read something 7 times before it really sinks in. Your ad campaign should run long enough on a single site for readers to take note and take action. You may get some immediate traffic, but odds are that the majority of your traffic will arrive after consistent advertising on the same site.
Not tracking the progress and effectiveness of your campaign can lead to failure every time. If you dont know how well the campaign is doing, how do you know if you need to make adjustments or changes? No response to your classified ads after the campaign has run for about 6 views to the customer, then maybe your headline is ineffective or your content is confusing. Without tracking, you dont even know something is not working and youve wasted time and possibly money.
Placing ads on classified advertising sites or in Ezines or other publications that are not relevant to the product being promoted is a real killer. You wont find traffic you want and desire with this strategy youll just waste your time and the websites space.
Creating ads that promote so many products that its hard to discern whats being sold can cause a campaign to fail. Keep your ads focused and promote a single product (or no more than two) with your ad. The less noise you include in your ad, the more likely you are to succeed.
Misleading and deceiving your clients is a sure ringer for failure. Dont make promises, commitments, or offers that you cant fulfill. Not being truthful is the quickest way to your demise.
Providing poor customer service after the potential customer reaches your website can turn visitors away quickly negatively impacting your conversion rates. Make sure you have the technology and resources to provide optimal customer services after the ad runs or youll fail miserably.
Planning ahead and preparing for a successful classified advertising campaign is essential your long-term success. Short term gains mean nothing if there are no long term plans to support your campaigns. Keep the above in mind as you prepare your advertising campaign and stay focused on your objectives.
Professional goal setting is critical when it comes to establishing, managing, and maintain your online business or offline ventures. Goals are an essential part of your business and your personal life. Professional goal setting is comprised of two critical parts:
1.Creation of a long-term goal.
2.Development of action plans or milestones to achieve the goals.
Unfortunately, many people only focus on the first step. They have an end goal in mind, but they dont have a clear plan for how to accomplish that goal. Without action plans and milestones, goals have little purpose and are often abandoned before the journey even begins.
Professional goal setting and creating milestones requires the completion of multiple components. There is a smart way to remember how to create the steps that lead to success. In the world of business, the acronym SMART is a good way to remember how to create milestones:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Related
Time-sensitive
Unless you have actions associated with each component of your goal, it will be difficult or impossible to reach your destination.
Specific. Create specific milestones. Be very clear about what you want to accomplish. Intead of a goal that says, conduct niche market research, your goal should be, conduct niche market research and determine the top 10 potential niche products by April 10. This is a very specific milestone and will help you achieve your goals.
Measurable. Having actions and milestones that are measurable makes it easy to evaluate progress and identify problems. You can easily determine if you have listed your top 10 potential niches by April 10!
Achievable. Milestones and goals must be achievable. This does not mean they cannot be challenging. Quite the contrary. Make sure they are challenging yet achievable. For example, if you set a milestone to research, evaluate, and list 10 potential niche product ideas by tomorrow morning, is that possible? Do you have the time and resources to do this? Are you setting yourself up for failure? Think realistically about what is achievable and then stick to your action steps!
Related. Many people set goals and then create milestones that may have no relevancy. As hard as this is to believe, it happens. The milestones that get you to your goals should be relevant to the accomplishment of the goal. Identifying potential niche products, determining a single niche product for focus, finding content specific to the niche, creating an interactive website to communicate the niche, and other related actions are all important.
Time-sensitive. Professional goal setting and creation of milestones must include time-sensitive parameters. Start by creating a time to reach your goal. If your desire to is to have your online niche business operational and productive by June 1, then your milestones should be created with that in mind. Create milestones with time-sensitive dates to help you accomplish your goals. For example, conduct niche research by March 15, choose the top niche product by March 20, identify all sources for niche related articles and content by April 15, and so forth until you have a plan that has you racing towards your goal.
Professional goal setting is a process that requires planning, focus, and commitment. Goals without actions are useless. But professional goal setting that includes all of the components of the SMART process will get you there on schedule and successfully.
Get started today by creating your long-term goal and creating the steps to help you achieve your dream. Youre only steps away from success.
Think your business has nothing else to learn about podcasting? Here are 5 areas you should be paying careful attention too if you want to keep your podcast from going stale and stay out of legal trouble.
Take advantage of the freedom
Podcasting is considered the voice of the people since unlike TV, Radio and movies it is not subject to current broadcasting regulations, allowing podcasters to really let their imaginations and creativity flow, to create shows covering topics that would be taboo or heavily regulated under other media forms. For example, an author of erotic books could create a podcast to talk about the newest books being released, provide reviews, read aloud, erotic poetry and even imagery.
Avoiding legal trouble
Most music is copyrighted and when using commercial music podcasters just like any other media form require a license to use. Using copyrighted music without permission could result in serious legal trouble, as will scenes from movies and TV shows. Be cautious and understand the law to avoid trouble. A large selection of royalty free music is available for podcasters online.
Get help
If you find yourself struggling to understand the podcasting process and struggling to edit your podcast, consider if you truly have the time to make your podcast a success. Many businesses and individuals may start a podcast for a few weeks or months then give up when they realize how much work is involved. Podcasting like press releases, Web sites and viral marketing are an affordable expense for most businesses.
If you have trouble doing all the work yourself, take advantage of the talent in your business. A staff member who writes press releases and copywriters may be able to offer help with creating interesting dialogue. While an in-house engineer can be responsible for editing the sound and incorporating musical elements. Ask volunteers to help out within your business and give credit for their assistance.
Stop and play
Once you’ve recorded your podcast, added in music, and edited there is one final step you should always take. Take a few minutes and actually listen to your audiocast. Is the podcast actually interesting? Would you subscribe to it? Better yet, would you actually listen to the podcast in its entirety? If your podcast doesn’t’ capture your attention it probably won’t hold your viewers attention either. After listening to the podcast, you might decide that your voice just isn’t the best to represent your company. Some podcasters may decide to add in a professional voice talent to complement the host’s voice and to be used in between segments.
Set some limits
Are you taking to much time with ads and music in the beginning before your podcast gets started? If so, change it, viewers are likely to turn off a podcast if the beginning bombards them with a ton of advertisements and is too slow to get started. The music is important part of the podcast but it still belongs in the background, unless your podcast plays music. For talk segments, background music is soothing and sets the tone of the show, but it should not be so loud the listener is struggling to hear you talk. When using sound effects and music to fade in and out (during the beginning and end of the podcast) don’t overdue it! Make sure your music compliments your show and doesn’t distract or frustrate your audience.
Regardless of the subject used or your business type, don’t take your podcast too seriously. Experiment, try out unexpected ideas to set yourself apart from the competition and remember to have fun with it!