Now let’s look at the categories.
1. Paid Advertising
The first category is paid advertising. The three primary places for this are Google, Facebook and Bing. These aren’t the only places to advertise. Depending on my product and price point, I might also advertise on LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
A while back I was thinking about marketing and wondering where I can find an existing audience for my product. Then I thought of Twitter. Why? Because you can pirate market there! You can search Twitter for people who are already marketing to your type of audience and target their accounts.
As an example, let’s use the “Easier” product I am developing. “Easier” is my answer to Amazon’s AWS (S3) service.
I log into Twitter and search on Amazon S3. I find that there are 1.8 million people following them for that product. So, on Twitter, I can target and promote “Easier” to an existing audience of 1.8 million people!
I also search for cloud storage companies that offer a similar service but more expensive than my “Easier” product. I find companies like Backblaze etc. and I also target market their
audiences. Pinterest is another place, depending on my product, I might look at marketing on.
As I mentioned above, I use a Pirate Strategy when I market here. In other words, I find someone with a product similar to mine—someone who has already done the advertising and built a following for a product similar to mine. I then promote to this already made audience.
I have two very basic marketing strategies.
The Pirate Strategy is my first marketing strategy on all of the platforms in this “paid” category.
You may wonder if this is a legal or moral strategy. Yes, it is. It’s a strategy that’s used by marketers throughout the industry. I use it on my competitors, and they use it on each other and on me.
My second strategy is to only advertise where I know exactly where the ads will appear.
The reason for this strategy is because, especially on Google, they make display ads sound really good. Unfortunately, most of the time, you have no idea where these ads will appear.
Don’t get me wrong, display ads are good but if you let Google chose where these ads will appear, you are likely going to get screwed in the process.
It’s similar on Facebook. They have a network you can advertise on, but I turn this feature off because I don’t have control of where these ads will appear.
Bing is also similar. You can advertise very inexpensively on their network but, once again, you have no idea where those ads will appear.
All of these paid platforms have a feature where you can advertise on an extended version of their system, but it’s not on their website and because of that you have no idea where the ad will appear. Don’t use that feature…you’ll get screwed if you do.
I need to say that again—you will get screwed if you use these features for sales. On the other hand, they could work very well for list building.
Let’s look at paid ads. What type of paid ads should you use? With Google, it’s very basic, use Standard Keyword Ads.
It’s very straight forward how this works. Someone goes to Google and does a search by typing in keywords for whatever it is they are looking for. If the keywords are appropriate for your products, your ad will show.
These Standard Keyword Ads have the highest clickthrough and conversion rates for advertising. Oddly enough, if you do them correctly, they can be one of the cheaper ways to advertise.
My second choice of ad for Google is YouTube Banner Ads, with one caveat—I choose where they are displayed. Once again, the concept is simple. People search on something on YouTube, they find a video that someone has created regarding that topic; they watch the video; they see my banner ad and click on it.
Google Lead Ads are also good to use because they are based on keywords and we know where they will appear. If someone sees our ad while searching on Google and clicks on it, a little box will pop up asking for their name and email address. Once they enter it, they will be taken to wherever we want them taken.
In this case Google is generating a lead for us so we don’t send them to an opt-in page. Instead, we send them directly to our sales page.
These three—Standard Keyword Ads, YouTube Banner Ads and Google Lead Ads are the best for Google advertising. I guess you could also use Gmail ads because you are able to target keywords with Gmail ads.
These Google ads are easy to use, and you can control placement and cost. Just about the only way to screw them up is by using the wrong keywords, wrong videos and/or having an ad that just plain sucks.
You could also use Google, Google pre-roll, post-roll or mid- roll ads but they are complicated so if you’re just getting started, don’t go there. It’s easy to mess them up, so I won’t list them here.
Moving on to Facebook, I recommend standard photo ads and standard video ads. Let me clarify—I DON’T mean a video ad. I mean you take the standard photo ad and replace photo with a video. Of course, we’ll play pirate and target people with existing audiences.
I won’t do video ads, at least not in the beginning, but I will use Facebook Lead Ads.
Important Note: When I advertise on Facebook I typically stick to only advertising in the newsfeed because that’s where I’ll get the best response.
With all these ads I’m making sure I’m in control. I never leave it to Google, Facebook etc. to determine what I’m doing with my ads or where they are placed. I want absolute control!
Bing
With Bing I just use their standard ads. Bing is very similar to Google but simpler to use because it does not have a lot of options.
LinkedIn, in my experience, is more costly and I have never had good results with it. I think LinkedIn would work great if you were advertising a job or a position in a company.
If I did use LinkedIn, I would use their inbox ads. This type of ad lets me choose my audience and write a short message which LinkedIn puts in their inbox. I think this is a great concept even though I’ve never had much luck with it.
I would not use any of the other types of ads that LinkedIn has. They are too tiny and out of the way to be effective.
With Twitter I would target someone who has the followers I want and then just use the basic ad to their audience. I would try both image and video ads.
I’m not a big Pinterest advertiser, but I think you could try it ONLY if your market exists there and you can target it. It’s definitely worth a try if you can determine who and where your target audience is on Pinterest and also determine what they would search on.
If you decide to try it, create an image that would attract your desired audience. That image would link directly to whatever it is you are promoting.
2. Method
That takes care of the “Paid” Category. The second category we need to consider is, “what are we promoting?” I’m not just talking about the product; I’m also talking about the method. When I say method, I’m referring to things such as sales letter, webinar etc. The method has a big impact on your promotion, so you need to spend time thinking about it.
Where you advertise will depend on where you’re sending them.
Are you sending prospects to a written sales letter, a video sales letter, a webinar, etc. In some cases, you may want to include mobile devices in your advertising and in other cases you may not want to include them.
3. Free Advertising
The next category is Free Advertising. I’m sure you know that I’m not a big fan of free advertising, but it does have its place if you know what you’re doing, so I’ll list free advertising as the third category.
One of the ways I might try free advertising is by guest posting on blogs. I write an article that has my information at the end (in the author box) and see if I can get a blogger to post the article on their blog.
I guess Affiliate Marketing could be considered free advertising because they promote your product, and you don’t pay them unless they generate a sale.
Interviews are another free option which I will talk more about in category number five.
There are not many good options for free advertising. I’m not going to post to a bunch of boards or spam a bunch of Facebook groups so that doesn’t leave many options other than guest posting on blogs and using affiliates to market for you.
4. Social Media
I’ll put social media as the 4th category. I’m reluctant to even list it here because I don’t think, social media is a real form of advertising. I get the fact that people are following me and some may buy but, like my email list, I can’t depend on it. Posts and tagging on my posts will work in the short-term but will die down after a while.
Now, if you use social media platforms to do paid advertising to people who are not following you, you have a legitimate category of advertising.
5. Publicity
What other types of advertising can we do? Publicity fits here. So, let’s list publicity as my 5th category. And under “publicity we can put interviews. I believe that podcast interviews are one of the best things you can use to promote any product. With
podcasts, you can get in front of a very targeted market. And interviews are actually another form of free advertising.
The more times you are interviewed, the more your market will know and trust you. I rarely turn down an interview. If I have the time, I will do it. Now one thing I will not do is promote the interview to my list because a lot of people use interviews to grow their list. I’m not about to use my list to help someone else grow their list. If they’re a legitimate business that interviews people, I’ll do it.
I also list press releases in the publicity section. I want to be clear about the fact that press releases are NOT free.
In order to be effective, you need to have at least three or four press releases scheduled, for example, one week apart. This builds up the interest. If you do a good press release you can generate significant traffic.
You can get on syndicated press releases. In the U.S., for example, television networks like NBC have multiple news websites that you might get your press releases on.
If written correctly, your press releases may even get on Google news or Yahoo news.
Once you get your press release in one news site, you have a better chance of getting it, or the next one, in other news sites.
Using press release is a process—
each one builds upon the other.
It’s also important to note that you need to go through a good press release service in order to get listed.
Those are the five categories that I’ll use to launch my product. It’s definitely 360° Marketing!
OF NOTE: Of course, even though I don’t list it as a marketing category, understand that I will start off by sending an email, offering the product to my list. One other thing I might do is put an ad on some of my other websites. Of course, that depends on the product I’m marketing and the purpose of my other websites. This article is based on the fact that you cannot count on your current list to buy every product or to grow your business. You always have to be out there, bringing new people into your circle.
The complete training that this article is based on can be found in your Marketing University Member’s area for Silver, Gold, Platinum and Titanium members. Log in and do a search on “Marketing 360 Strategy”.
