How Do I Know Which Advertising Technique Would Be Right for Me?

by Cami Hughes

Advertising Techniques

Questions to Ask

Author

This is the final post on a series about using advertising to answer the big question – is it time for a new web site?

Earlier posts: Week 1 – Week 2 – Week 3 – Week 4

If you’ve been waiting throughout this series of blog posts for The Big Reveal, I’m afraid I have good news and bad news. There is no “climax” to this story. There is no moment when I tell you how to find the final piece of conclusive data that snaps things together for once and for all. If only life were that simple. This is an intuitive process, not a logical one.

Here’s the good news. If you follow the steps that I’ve laid out for you, you’ll have your own Big Reveal. It will come in the form of a “Eureka!” moment. You will realize what you need to do – and it might happen in the middle of the night.

That said, here’s the final step in the process that I’ll be sharing with you here. If you read weeks 3 and 4, you may be considering implementing a PPC campaign or a Facebook advertising campaign. If you’re particularly driven and ambitious, you might have already started looking for someone to help you execute it. In week 4, I talked about blogging as a vehicle for drawing your perfect audience out of the woodwork. If you took action and started a blog, great. If not, chew on the rest of this post while you consider the possibilities moving forward.

An information product is just what it sounds like – a product that someone can buy, consisting of some form of information. The nice thing about information products is the fact that you can create them for free. The risk level is low, and it’s easy to try something else if your first experiment doesn’t work. You can self-publish a book using Lulu or CreateSpace – and now, you can even sell books for as little as $0.99. The possibilities are endless. Before getting started, though, remember our primary purpose – to test and gather data. Do you need a new web site? The process of creating and selling information products will give you some deep and useful insight into that question.

In other words, don’t think of this as a money-making endeavor. If you make money, great. But the point of selling an information product is to teach you who your audience is.

Rather than reiterate what I’ve already said before, I’d encourage you to read my earlier posts in this series if you haven’t already – particularly week 4. If the idea of writing a book to sell is intimidating, a blog might make for a better start. Another form of information product is a workshop. You can teach a 2-hour class on a subject that expresses your expertise – even if that class has nothing to do with your business. You can do that offline in a physical building, or online using something like a webinar. Like everything else I’ve talked about here, a class will show you the reality picture of who you attract to you naturally.

Caveat to all of this: be as authentic as humanly possible. If everything you create is driven by a desperate need to sell, you’ll fail. Take an honest look at your situation and ask yourself if you are desperate for the money.

In closing out this series, let me save you some time and simplify things. Your heart knows the answer. You have known the answer deep inside all along. I’m not saying this to be all mushy and kum-ba-ya. To put it bluntly, most people know exactly what they need to do, and don’t have the guts to do it. The process that I’ve shared with you over this series is intended to make that as painfully apparent as possible. If you follow it diligently, you’ll find your excuses disappearing. That may make you uncomfortable, and it might lead you to abandon the process.

The answer to the original question I posed in week 1, therefore, is probably a lot simpler than you think.

See you next week. Leave a comment here if this series was useful to you.

This series is intended to help you answer the burning question – “Is it time for a new web site?” If you haven’t read the earlier posts, I’ll include them here – but you can jump in right here.

Earlier posts: Week 1 – Week 2 – Week 3

This week, I’m going to talk about how to identify your perfect market by blogging. How does one go about doing that? First, let me stipulate up front that this approach will take 6 months to a year. If you don’t have that kind of time, read the Week 2 post. You can accelerate the curve to 90 days if you can spend some money on advertising. If you can’t do either and need the money now, it’s time to get a job.

That out of the way, let me address a couple of basics about blogging.

1. If you don’t understand the point of a blog, start reading blogs. I refuse to explain the point of blogging to anyone who doesn’t read blogs. If you set aside 30 minutes per week to read blogs, you’ll either start to get the point or decide that blogging is clearly not for you. Get an RSS reader. If you run out of stuff to read before 30 minutes are up, go out and find some more blogs. There are plenty.
2. Blogs aren’t just for writers. You can create a video blog or a photo blog. Check out Max Chandler’s visual blog as a good example of original content. Whatever medium you choose, a blog must authentically express who you are.
3. Blogs aren’t for advertising. I can’t stress this enough – partly because you’re going to find a lot of blog posts with titles like “5 Reasons Why You Should Hire a [insert name of profession here].” Just because you see someone else doing it doesn’t make it a good idea. Blogs are terrible for advertising.

What exactly are we doing here, and how is this going to help you sell more plumbing supplies? For the next six months, it isn’t. In fact, it might never. What you’re looking to do is begin mastering the art of attracting like-minded individuals by expressing your passion. Create a blog filled with the ideas that inspire you the  most. Sooner or later, those ideas will inspire someone else. How will you know when this happens? The easier you make it for people to respond to you, the sooner you’ll get a response. One technique that I’ve tried before is something I call “the Easter Egg” technique. I wrote a newsletter for a client where we buried a line that quietly mentioned an opportunity for a free dessert for the first person who mentioned the newsletter in the store. There are plenty of other ways – the key is to be creative.

Sooner or later, someone will begin to respond. It might come in the form of an offline response – such as “I saw your blog post the other day…” Write down where the responses are coming from, and pay attention to what seems to be attracting a response.

This may seem to be straying a bit from our original topic 3 weeks ago, but I promise you that it’s not. This will help you to figure out who your market is – if in a slow and roundabout way. You might find yourself attracting the wrong kind of people for your business. If that happens, consider that you might be in the wrong business altogether.

Next week, I’ll be wrapping up the series with a discussion of information products. Hint: if you blog and stick with it, selling information products will be a natural fit.