Internet Advertising for the Beginner and Small Business

We are   going to clarify and put this subject into focus ina usable form for the small businessperson or "the averageguy".

The subject is broad and hundreds of books have been writtenon the topic. There¡¯s no way to digest them all. Collegetextbooks, "how to" books; books for professionals; booksfor large business advertising departments.

Let¡¯s start with a few fundamental facts:

Everyone who has any kind of product or service to sell mustadvertise. They must advertise constantly regardless of ifthey are new or have an established brand. You have manychoices of tools such as print media (subdivided of courseinto magazines, papers, etc.); public electronic media(radio, TV)... but as this is an Internet based article, weconsider: E-mail; Ezines, Classifieds, Safelists and Pop Upsjust to name a few. To be effective,  one needs to use afull mix of available resources. The small, and particularlybeginning business is assumed to have a very limited budget.

Have we covered the bases?  Probably.

Are these items factual? Yes. All one has to do is to lookaround and see what¡¯s happening to confirm the information.Giants such as Pepsi, Coca Cola, McDonalds and Wendys, beerbottlers.. all with established branded names continuallyadvertise and do so in all media.

On the Internet, the "gurus" also continuously advertise.Pick a name, do a search engine search and see the tools.

You must advertise to get people to read your message. It¡¯sno longer enough to build a great web page and it will doyour work.

Your job is to get people to that site. No one will buy fromyou if they don¡¯t hear or see your message. In fact, it hasto be seen several times.

Random, one shot exposures such as a visit from a PPC ad ora search will not do it. That is also one of the "cast inconcrete" bullet points that should be listed at thebeginning of this article.

The corollary to that is you must have REPEATED exposures ofyour message.

Let¡¯s look at some of your options and see if they meet thatcriteria:

PPC:  No Banners: No Classifieds: No Safelists: No FFA: No

But there are some "Yes" answers if it¡¯s done right.

These include Email and Ezines (repeated readerships). Emailhas limitations. Unless you have permission to do repeatemails, you are probably spamming and in fact, the recipientmay have your message "auto trashed".

But there¡¯s a way to do use these two tools.

What is the first objective of your advertising?

Think about that for a minute. We¡¯re going to take a line ofspace here for you to answer that.  You say , "Joe, theobjective is to get my reader to buy from me".

Close, but no cigar.  If¡¯ I¡¯d agree with that as the LONGTERM objective, How is it accomplished and what is the SHORTTERM objective?

Here¡¯s the Lesson of the Year... make that the decade, andmake it the lesson for both the novice and veteranadvertiser; the small business person and the largebusiness.

THE OBJECTIVE IS TO GET A NAME AND EMAIL ADDRESS ACCOMPANIEDBY PERMISSION TO CONTACT THE PERSON.

Let me repeat that:

THE OBJECTIVE IS TO GET A NAME AND EMAIL ADDRESS ACCOMPANIEDBY PERMISSION TO CONTACT THE PERSON.

Now when you do this you have the beginning of a list, andif you  talk with any Internet Guru, they will first allagree, and then tell you that they all have PERSONAL listsnumbering in the tens of thousands. Many have lists of over100,000 names and it is their most valuable asset. Theirbooks, their courses, their products can all be hijacked,duplicated, or whatever. Their list is  their wealth.

Some will say that from any advertisement they run, theywould far rather get an email and name than make animmediate sale (Stephan Ducharme, for example, in his freeaudio interview).

If this is then the agreed upon objective, the first taskand goal of the small businessman is to learn how to buildtheir list, or as an option, have access to the list of aproven successful business person who operates in the samemarketing field. That, by the way, at first seems nearlyimpossible... but using certain procedures available tovirtually anyone if you know where you look, you CAN accessand nearly duplicate that list and do it first legally, andsecondly at virtually no cost!

So, Mr. or Ms Small Business person: What is your FIRSTobjective in business? In fact almost before designing yourproduct or service, and second only after choosing yourmarket?

YOUR FIRST OBJECTIVE is to LEARN how to Build or Acquire aList. In short, to get to your future customer base.

Here¡¯s the meat of this article, and HOW TO DO IT... andyes, there is a catch 22 in a way. It takes advertising toget advertising!  Like it takes money to make money.

So the trick: To do it as cost effectively and asproductively as possible.

Think of it as fishing. You have to use some bait to catchfish. The fish you catch might become the bait for evenlarger fish. But you have to have some bait first.

You are going to "fish" this way and the "fish" you arelooking for are names and email addresses.

Your "Bait"  or "baited hook" is going to be an irresistiblefree offer.

There¡¯s no strings attached to this free offer except to getit, the person gives you a name and email address to get it!

So now we go into Phase II... We must define what an"irresistible offer" is. That¡¯s objective #1 here.  Then wemust decide where it is we are going to "fish" and how. Ifwe were fishing in "the real world" we¡¯d want to do it wherewe know there are fish, right.

Where are the fish located in your area of interest?

One great place is Ezines. As opposed to "the ocean atlarge" (think running classifieds, FFAs, etc) we might knowwhere there¡¯s a "good fishin¡¯ hole"... or sunken reef; etc.In fact, we know by type of "fishin¡¯ spot" if we can findtrout, muskies, sailfish, cod... etc.

The subject of an EZine group is your defined "fishin" hole.

But before we can go "fishin'", we need some equipment, andwe need how to use it.

Equipment here is the tool to collect leads and start theresponse. A good autoresponder is a must, and of course,knowing how to set it up is like knowing how to bait yourhook.

Let¡¯s recap in this primer: The primary objective of anyadvertising is to capture and build a targeted name list.

When you have the name list,  you can create multiple softsales campaigns with the contact it needs to lead to a saleaction.

You build the list by first doing targeted advertising whichdoes not sell anything but extends some kind of free offerthat offers the target market an item of true value andinterest in return for only requesting it; the requestrequires that they provide you with a name and email addressand at least an implied permission to respond to theirrequest.

If you have learned these three points,  you are well onyour way to getting to the head of the pack.

Your follow up lessons simply now become technique andlearning where the tools are. Be careful as you select thetool, you select one from a source who has the credibilityin using it and you are not just "buying into" someone¡¯snew, but unproved idea.  Various Internet searches will leadyou to the right sources.

Learn and prosper!