The other day someone (let’s call him Andy) called the office complaining that he ran several ad campaigns with a well known ad platform with absolutely no results and paid over $3000 for this campaign. After asking him a few direct questions, I realized that Andy had not done any type of research before plunking down this kind of money on his ad campaign for a Clickbank product. Andy got excited about the product because it supposedly made money for people with the â€click of a few buttons’... When I asked him who he was targeting, the answer baffled me... "Who doesn't need money? -- Everybody is a prospect for my product... it's that good!†The reason I’m telling you this is simple: This type of thinking is surprisingly common and often leads to small business owners losing money with online advertising. More specifically, they: - Don’t take the time to figure out who their ideal prospect is... - Expect too much without even testing their ads... - Blindly farm for leads instead of developing and improving their lead generation strategies, and... - They simply aren’t persistent enough with their marketing. If something fails, they quickly tighten their grip on their wallet without ever trying another approach... It’s great to be passionate about your product or services, but when trying to gain new business, not being willing to test and invest in different advertising can quickly cripple your chances of being successful. So, what’s the solution? The first step, of course, is to.. Know your market... This is where you get to play detective and find out everything you can about who you’re targeting... The amount of information you’ll need will depend on your situation, but you’ll find a few resources to gather that info at the bottom of this article. A few common things you might want to know are: age, location, income, interests, hobbies, needs/wants/goals, current beliefs and disbeliefs (have they become jaded by previous companies lying?), etc... Know Your Platform Before you dive right in to rolling out your next campaign, take a bit to study the platform you’re using and see what features you can use to benefit you or make your life easier... If you’re renting a list, be sure to ask the company you’re working with where they got that list from. Test and Test Some More You’ve probably heard this many times already. If not, you probably will over time.. . Some people may tell you that it’s great to test so you know how much interest there is in your product or service. Truthfully, you should be able to know that ahead of time by doing the research we’ve talked about... The real benefit of testing is the fact that you can find what works best andâ€"as a resultâ€"increase your conversions. It’s not uncommon for just a few simple changes to yield massive results! Advertising Research Resources Below are a few great resources you can use to know more about your clients... 1.) Surveys (http://www.surveymonkey.com) Survey Monkey allows you to directly interact with your clients by asking them whatever you need to know. The site offers a free and paid version of its service. 2.) Forum within your niche (http://www.big-boards.com) Big-boards is an index of different forums and message boards, organized by category. Forums are great, because they are where your market â€hangs outâ€. You can easily use forums to find out what kind of questions they’re asking, what their biggest problems are and even the â€language†(lingo) they use! 3.) Answer Sites (http://answers.yahoo.com) Again, knowing what questions your market is asking can be very beneficial to your campaign... Not only will you know how to position your product, the questions themselves may give you a few good ideas for keywords, too. 4.) Your Own List! You could easily pair using surveys with mailing your own list... People love to give their opinion and know that opinion matters, so asking your existing clients questions is a great way to gain information AND build stronger relationships in the process... No matter what you choose to use, always be sure to plan ahead when running your campaigns. Doing so will save you a lot of wasted time and money!
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