How Do I Get Visitors to My Site? Part 3. Traffic from Other Advertising Dr. Ralph F. Wilson Web Marketing Today - Oct 21, 2008

This week let's consider traffic from other forms of advertising. Good traffic is traffic that is interested in the products and services you have to offer.

Let's look at several of these briefly and I'll give you my take on each.

E-mail Newsletter Advertising

Perhaps as a newsletter publisher I'm biased, but I believe that one of the most cost-effective advertising approaches for small businesses is to find e-zines that are squarely targeted on your particular niche and advertise there. To find appropriate e-zines, search Google for a keyword for your niche along with the word "newsletter" or "e-zine." Also try these e-mail newsletter directories:

• BestEzines (www.bestezines.com)
• The Ezine Directory (www.ezine-dir.com)
• EzineHub (www.ezinehub.com)
• John Labovitz's E-Zine List (www.e-zine-list.com)

Then contact the publisher of each matching newsletter regarding advertising rates. Some will have unrealistic rates, others don't really take ads. But you're looking for the one with a targeted list and "reasonable" ad rates. Of course, what seems "reasonable" to you will depend entirely on the profit you earn on each sale. Implementing this strategy will take some work to find the right newsletters with responsive subscribers. But it may pay off big in getting targeted traffic to your site. Be sure to encode the URLs so you can track click-throughs and sales using your analytics program.

Solo E-mails

These same niche e-zine publishers may accept solo e-mail ads, that is, e-mails that consist entirely of an advertisement which is sent to the entire newsletter list. Don't confuse this with sending spam. Readers of such lists implicitly agree to receive some advertising e-mails in return for free newsletter content in their chosen area. Solo e-mail "drops" or "blasts" may seem expensive, but since the click-through rate is often significant, this is the advertising vehicle of choice for many savvy advertisers. If you're going to try this, consider employing a copywriter to write powerful ad copy that gets the click-throughs you need. More info.

Comparison Shopping Engines or Bots

Online merchants often have good results using comparison shopping engines or "bots" such as Shopping.com, PriceGrabber, NexTag, and Shopzilla. Some charge merchants on a cost per click determined by the category of products you are listing. Others have a bidding approach. Many merchants use shopping bots to advertise tangible products, especially commodities. More info.

Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are sweet for merchants. They pay a fixed commission only when a sale is made, a subscription is complete, or a lead is confirmed. The difficulty, however, is finding affiliates who (1) have targeted traffic to their site or a good e-zine list, and (2) who are willing to commit to featuring a link, button, or banner ad on appropriate places in their websites or newsletters. Perhaps 95% of affiliates bring zero traffic to the merchant, so you're looking for the 1%, the super affiliates. To attract them you need to offer commissions generous enough to lure them away from competing merchants' programs -- not an easy task. If you can recruit your own affiliates, you can purchase your own affiliate software for $100 or so. The other approach is an affiliate company that will expose your company's ads to its existing network of affiliates. Commission Junction (www.cj.com) does this for medium to large companies. More info.

Ad Agencies

Ad agencies help companies place ads on appropriate websites and newsletters. They are usually reimbursed by paying an "agency rate" when purchasing the advertising.  However, ad agencies only work for companies with a large enough advertising budget to make it worth their while.

Ad Networks

The poor man's approach is ad networks. These companies deliver banner ad impressions on a network of client websites. Ads are "targeted" loosely by industry. So long as the ad network has one or more appropriate sites among their publisher clients, your ads "might" show up on a website related to your niche. But ad network advertising tends to be generic and less targeted. I can't say this sounds very promising, but for products and services that don't fit in a narrow niche, you might try ad networks. More info.

This article is part of a 4-part series: (1) Traffic from Search Engines, (2) Traffic from Paid Search Ads, and (3) Traffic from Other Advertising, (4) Traffic from Former Visitors

Dr. Ralph Wilson is an Internet marketing pioneer, the author of a number of books including Planning Your Internet Marketing Strategy (Wiley, 2001). He speaks widely and serves as founding editor of Web Marketing Today. He has a passion for helping small businesses succeed on the Internet.