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Make A Killing With Classified Ads
By: Dave Bromley

The trouble with a great number of marketers is that they are blinkered in their approach. This is especially true of Internet marketers. They consider all off line advertising old fashioned and non productive. Don’t you believe it, I have found one of the most cost effective advertising mediums for my niche sites are offline classified advertisements.

Classified ads are just what they are called – classified – so the only people likely to read your ads are those likely to be interested in the general subject.

As in any other form of advertising it is important to get the best return for your dollar by targeting your ad. Choose magazines likely to have a lot of readers interested in your ad. This may involve a trip to your local news store to track down magazines that are aimed at your niche. Once you find suitable magazines you need to check that they actually do carry classified advertisements and check out the rate per word.

Your classified advertisement should only have one purpose and that is to get the reader to your web site. You are not trying to sell them anything; you are not even trying to give them anything you purely want them to go to their computers and click on your web site. That is where the selling should begin.

A classified advertisement should consist of 3 elements, the headline, the sub line and your website url. You will normally be paying by the word with a minimum of 12 to 20 words allowed for a set fee and then all additional words are charged by the word. So it pays to keep your copy as tight as possible. Don’t over do it though just to save a dollars. Remember you need to get your message across if you are to persuade people are to go to your web site.

As with any headline it has got to be attention grabbing and ideally should be in bold. Some magazines allow for so many of the first words to be bold while others charge extra for this. It is worth paying the extra to make you ad stand out. The sub line should offer a benefit or an incentive for the reader to go to your web site. For instance if you were selling a book about fishing your ad might look something like this:

Learn the secrets of a champion fisherman Discover how you can win the prize money.

It was also discovered that there was something else that was even more important for the effectiveness of banner ads. This has to do with the relevance of the advertising.

Despite a false start in the early days, banner advertising has matured and is now firmly established in the internet marketing world.

In its’ early days, it was assumed that the World Wide Web was an improvement on the Television and therefore many mistook it for an advertising medium. Several billion dollars later, they were proved wrong. The Internet is in fact interactive information medium that is more of an improvement on the telephone than anything else. It is a place where people hate to be advertised to just the way most folks loathe those telephone solicitations. In fact the less something looks like an ad the better the response it seems to generate. Hence the huge success Google Adsense contextual ads have continued to enjoy.

However it was also discovered that there was something else that was even more important for the effectiveness of ads. This is the relevance of the advertising. If somebody is searching for some certain information and comes across advertisements that relate to what they are looking for then chances of them clicking at the banner ad are increased dramatically. More importantly the likelihood of them ending up making a purchase is also increased dramatically.

Still banner ads have their very important use. Mostly they can be used very effectively to enhance the image of a web based business on the net. Utilizing banner ads as a website promotion tool will generate sales especially when a new business starts to get exposed online to a huge audience.

Contrary to what some webmasters think, no amount of full color flashy graphics can replace the importance of banner ads being placed where they are most relevant.

That is precisely how banner ads work best. When they are carefully targeted so online audiences will find them during their highly relevant search for information.

Tests and research have also proved that when banner advertisements are made to merge with the look of a web site and are made to appear as much as possible like the rest of the content and background on the site, then the response dramatically improves.

These are some key rules on banner advertisements that will make them much more profitable for the user. Internet advertising with banner ads has their own unique qualities that will boost web sales.