Business advertising

What is the single most important part of your solo ad?
In Part 2, I talked about the 7 essential questions to ask before posting an ad in any ezine. In Part 3, I want to talk about maximizing how and where your ads are performing.
About ezine list size and pricing... The truth is, just because a list is large doesn’t mean it should be expensive. Just because it’s small doesn’t mean it should be cheap. Find quality, find your target market, be selective and go for it.
1000-2000 subscribers does not mean it’s a bad list. It could be just getting going with no waiting list, usually if it is new. Often those smaller lists can have really high quality response.
Determine your cost per lead. If your cost per lead is low, continue with that ezine even if sales don’t come in right away. Some people need time. You may have heard the saying that people need to see an ad 7 times before they do anything about it. Your long-term strategy is building your list and sales.
When you find one that works, place an ad 1 to 2 times per month. Test it out, but don’t do it every week, or it might get displayed out. Your audience might get numb. If you’re not getting good results in a good newsletter, look at your ad copy and the headline.
When you find an ad, go with that ad for a while. However, do change it up a little bit from time to time. If your list sees the exact same ad over and over again, again, they can get numb. If you change the body, change the subject line, it’s like they never saw it before. Just be sure track your changes. When response dips, then change it.
Of course, you need to track all your ads. Either set up different capture pages or different URLs that redirect to your website, but have some way of tracking which ezine ad generates which lead.
When doing a solo ad, the most important is going to be subject line. If it is not motivating enough to stop and open email, it’s like flushing money away. Just like when I'm reading the newspaper, I scan headlines until something catches my eye, then I read the article. If no one is enticed to open your headline, your ad will never be read.
How do you write a good subject line? There are many techniques for this. The technique I prefer the most is the Power of Unfinished thought – leaving things incomplete. (Have you noticed?) Try writing your subject line as a question, or leave it so that someone has to open your email to finish the thought or question. This is extremely powerful. No matter what technique you go with in your subject line, write 100 of them and pick the best one. This may seem very tedious and pointless, but it is worth the time. Sometimes even changing just one word in your headline/subject line can increase response rate by 2 or 3 times.
However, you can study all the best sales letters and get a feel for the style, flow, and let it soak into you. Read ads from Mark Joyner, Joe Vitale, Yanik Silver,, and Cory Rudl. These guys are masters. If you subscribe to the newsletters these guys write, it’s like having a personal library of some of the best copywriting examples out there!
When it comes to ezine advertising, you get out what you put in. If you spend the time to dig in, you will find a goldmine when you find the right ezines. It takes some work to find the good ones. Not a lot of people are taking advantage of it. Plus, there are new ezines with different interests popping up every day. You can find tons that work for you.