Targeting Your Message

by Daniel Janal

• Targeting your message: It's as important for a Web site as for any other kind of marketing.
• Reaching targeted markets: Mailing lists and e-zines are the place to start.
• Advantages: There's a direct "cause and effect" when you target your ads because you're reaching qualified leads.
• Timing: "If you advertise in an e-zine, you know when readers will get your ad."
• What pubs work best? Read the list for a few weeks. Make sure the content is up to snuff. Would you read it?
• Finding out the true cost of an ad: Don't rely on CPM (cost per thousand); figure out your ROI (return on investment).

Targeting your message is the key to effective advertising. Every marketer knows this. But it seems that when people post their Web sites, they forget this important dictum. They advertise anywhere they can for a cheap price—regardless of whether it is a good fit.

That might be why the effectiveness of banner advertising on Web sites aimed at unfocused markets is diminishing. Critics say consumers are treating banners like billboards along the highway—the billboards are there, but no one sees them. When people do see banners, less than 2 percent of the people click through, which pales in comparison to earlier times when click-through rates of 5 to 6 percent were common. Even worse, advertisers are saying people who do read the ads aren't buying their products. Clearly, banner advertising on random Web sites is on the way out.

Notice the operative words—Web sites. Banners can still work. However, these banners must be placed in targeted publications that clearly reach highly focused groups of consumers and business audiences.

Reaching targeted markets

Mailing lists and e-zines are two of the best new media in which to advertise to reach your target market. Let's define these terms.

Mailing lists: Mailing lists are periodicals that address a given subject, such as marketing or stamp collecting. The content usually includes e-mail messages from subscribers who ask and answer questions from other subscribers. One of the most popular, I-Sales, is published daily and reaches tens of thousands of people who discuss Internet marketing issues. These mailing lists are sent via e-mail to people who have asked to subscribe, usually for free. Mailing lists should not be confused with spam or lists of e-mail addresses that are sold by shady operators of get-rich-quick schemes.

e-zines: The other advertising vehicles are e-zines, or magazines and newsletters sent via e-mail to voluntary subscribers. These periodicals are written by a company and contain thoughtful articles on a given topic. Unlike lists, these publications usually don't include the Q&A from subscribers. The primary focus is to learn from the masters. eFuse.com's free FuseLetter is an example of this—and if you haven't already subscribed to it, you should, right now, to do so, click here.

Some e-mail newsletters are sent as ASCII files (ASCII means "plain text"), which can be read by any e-mail program. These periodicals don't include art, so colorful banners filled with different sized fonts can't be printed. Instead, the advertisements appear as regular text.

Other newsletters are written in HTML (the language of Web pages) and contain artwork and can even include animated banners. However, older browsers and e-mail programs can't read these rich-text documents. Instead of seeing beautiful pages that look like Web pages, they see the HTML coding, which is impossible to decipher at a glance. As time goes by, more and more people will upgrade their e-mail programs to include this HTML feature because it is a great way of communicating! Ads in either type of e-zine or mailing list can contain hot links to your Web site so interested consumers can read more about your product or service.

There are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of newsletters and e-zines on topics such as Internet marketing or entertainment, health, or pets. You can find a large group of mailing lists at www.yahoo.com and type in "mailing lists" or "e-zines" or "newsletters." While here is no one central directory of e-zines or mailing lists that accept advertising, there is a list of lists .

Advantages

There are many advantages to advertising in an e-zine or mailing list, according to Larry Chase, publisher of Web Digest for Marketers, www.wdfm.com, one of the oldest e-zines on the 'Net. (Chase is also the author of the eFuse.com article on the basics of taking ads on your Web site.)

"There is a direct cause and effect," he says. "You can see your sales go up or not."

One key advantage is that you are reaching a targeted audience.

"The people who are reading are more than likely to be qualified leads as the list is likely to be topical and the people on the list have made a conscious decision to join," he says. "Those people know they are on the list and didn't just stumble onto a Web page from Alta Vista and wonder what the Web site was all about. You are more apt to reach a targeted audience."

Another advantage is that your production costs for creating the ad are next to nothing if you choose to advertise in an ASCII-based newsletter, which prints only normal text, not pictures.

"There are no production costs. It is all ASCII so your production costs are zero," he says. "Your only production cost is your time."

Chase also thinks ASCII newsletters are better read than HTML versions because the former are faster to download. "Why import the world wide wait to e-mail? You might as well put 'hate me' in the subject header."

Timing

Ads in e-zines can be timed for your promotions.

"If you advertise in a zine, you know when the readers are going to get your ad. If you advertise in on a Web site, you know they will see it sometime during the course of the month but you don't know when," he says. "With an e-zine, you know your ad will appear on a certain date, so you can get a better handle on the response."

Just like a print publication, people forward e-mails to their colleagues and friends, so you can reach additional numbers of people, way beyond the number printed on the rate card.

"The pass along rate for an e-zine is much greater than for a Web page. It is easier to forward an e-mail document than a Web page. How many people know how to forward a Web page? Not many. Everyone knows how to forward e-mail," he says.

Chase doesn't charge extra for the pass along. "I sell by primary impressions. The fact they pass it along is gravy. Of course, I tell the advertiser that so they understand advertising is a good deal and the pass along makes it an even better deal."

The cost of e-banner ads is comparable to banner ads, $30 to $60 CPM (cost per thousand).

Publishers on the Web use the CPM model for advertising; it is also used by print magazine publishers. Essentially, this means you, as the advertiser, are buying so many thousands of impressions for your ad. If the advertising rate is $20 CPM, it means you are paying $20 to reach 1,000 readers of that publication. If the publication has 10,000 readers, you would pay $20 times 10 (for 10,000 readers) or $200. A free CPM calculator is available by clicking here.

According to Forbes magazine, most Web sites have an excess number of ad spaces available, so don't accept the first offer. You can save a considerable amount of money by negotiating.

What pubs work best?

How do you decide which publications will work best for you?

Chase advises clever on-line marketers to research the publications before they spend their limited advertising dollars.

"You have to make sure they are worthy of your advertising," Chase says. "Read the list for a few weeks. Make sure the content is up to snuff. Would you read it?"

Then ask the publisher for the number of subscribers and other demographic material. But be warned, there aren't any third-party services that verify these statistics, so you have to take the Web publisher's figures on good faith.

"It is a trust thing," Chase says. "People take advertisements in WDFM (Web Digest for Marketers) on faith because they figure I have a brand name to protect. They figure I am going to be pretty honest about it."

But circulation figures can tell only a small part of the story. The real story is how well the ad works with that audience. Of course, the true test of a marketing campaign is not how many impressions you achieved, but how much activity those impressions generated.

Return on investment

"People look at the back end. They look at conversions. They look at how many people took action," Chase says. "I can say I have a million people on my list, but if they run an ad and no one goes to their Web site or takes them up on their offer, then it doesn't matter if I have a billion people on my list. They are not going to come back and advertise. Most advertisers are interested in final results. They are looking for direct marketing units of measure to judge the effectiveness of their money spent."

To figure out the true cost of the ad, don't rely on the CPM. Look at your return on investment, ROI, instead. Chase advises marketers to look at how much each visit cost or how much each sale cost. For example, if you spent $100 on an ad and 1,000 people visited the site, the cost for attracting each visitor would be 1 cent. If 100 people bought something, the cost of attracting buyers would be $1. With those figures in hand, you can begin to measure your return on investment.

If your marketing plan calls for spending money on advertising, do yourself a favor and choose a targeted e-zine or mailing list. They are fast, cheap, and better directed than Web sites.

About the Author

Daniel Janal is the author of Online Marketing Handbook. A professional speaker who conducts Internet marketing seminars all over the globe, Janal was on the publicity team that launched America Online. He can be reached at dan@janal.com or visit his Web site at www.janal.com.

Illustration: Ingo Fast's Technology at www.artville.com