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Creating a Great Ezine AD

By Lori Olson

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 31Jul2009 Word count: 811 Viewed: 326 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Let's start by discussing a few basics. Basically, emagazines or ezines are online newsletters which are sent to the list of online subscribers who are interested in the goods, services or information provided by a given company. Anyone can create an ezine; which can be in plain text or html. The value an ezine has to advertisers is the number of subscribers who open and read the ezine. The more highly targeted the subscriber list is, the greater the size of the list and the greater the open rate, the more expensive it will be to place an ad.

What is the power of ezines as they are more commonly called? They enable an advertiser to reach a highly target audience on a monthly, bimonthly or quarterly basis at a much lower cost than a print magazine (even though the electronic version may have the same content and design). A good ezine will inform and educate its subscribers who will look forward to reading it. A well done ezine will provide value to its readers while favorably branding messages about the company who is generating the ezine. The favorable recognition that the ezine receives is advantageous for ezine advertising. An implied endorsement exists when you are able to place your ads in the ezine (after all if you the ezine disapproved of you they wouldn't place your ad).

Besides implied endorsement, consider the other benefits of ezine advertising. * Your ad can (and should) have a hyperlink where the reader can click through to your landing page or website. * Your ad has the potential for high shelf life. If an ezine has high quality information, it will be saved by the reader and possibly shared with others (potential for becoming somewhat viral). It is easier to file ezines than to store print media which are harder to search. * The cost of ezine advertising is considerably less than print advertising. Within any ezine there is a range of placement and type of ad options which can further reduce costs. * It is easier to administer than a Pay Per Click Campaign which requires considerable research for the best keywords in terms of cost and conversion. *

What do you need to do to start running great ezine ads? First you need to do a little research to find ezines that are worth advertising in. You can do this by doing a Google search but this can be a little tedious and may not turn up the statistics you need on readership, circulation and cost that you need to make a decision. The Directory of Ezines costs a bit for the onetime cost to subscribe but is well worth it because it is packed with all the information needed to make meaningful decisions.

Next you need to consider the type of ad that you want to place. Solo ads are the most costly. These are stand alone ads that are put out by the ezine. Banner and html ads are placed in various locations in the ezine (position and size will determine cost). Text ads are the cheapest and will vary in costs placed on number of words and placement.

Regardless of the type of ad that you pick, you need to make sure that the ad is formatted correctly. Ads that are well formatted are easy to read by making use of the white space around the text. The headlines should be all in caps to stand out. Solo ads are large enough to have bulleted points to make your benefits stand out and get attention. Make sure that you use anchor text links instead of a sloppy looking standard URL link. All your ads need to have a clear call to action immediately after the emotional points in your ads.

Tracking of your ads is another consideration. Use tracking links in all of your ezine ads. This is the only way to know if the ezine you have chosen is working for you. You will be able to determine click through rates and the conversion rate from those clicks. You will be able to determine what needs to be adjusted (the ezine and ad placement selected, your ad, and/or your landing page) when you split test your ads.

The areas that all ads should have (and which can be tweaked with testing) include the headline (the most important part of the ad), the claim, the benefits and the call to action. Other things to consider when testing your ads are the day of the week that the ezine is delivered, the season, the ezine itself, and the format and style that you use.

When you take these simple but necessary steps in to consideration, you will be pleased to see how easy creating an effective ezine ad really is and start realizing a great ROI with an ongoing ezine advertising campaign.

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