Imagine you’re preparing for launch and just completed version one of your new product. You’ve greased the wheels with targeted some keywords with SEO, a few bloggers and created a bit of Link Bait. Maybe this time is your lucky day because your co-founder will ask you “What are we going to do with the $400 we have stashed away for our advertising?”. In this post, you learn more about the core of what you need to know about cheap startup advertising as quickly as possible.
Advertising Strategies
The advertising traffic half-life is zero. This means the traffic stops when you stop shelling out cash. According to common conversion rates of around 1-2% you’re paying for about 98 out of every 100 people to walk away and never come back to your site. If you want the great strategy to fight this inherent wastefulness of advertising, focus on these two key strategies.
Strategy one: Get Permission
Try to offer something in exchange for an email address of the visitor. You can offer a free report, a free trial, or maybe a free book. Increase your conversion rate over time by gaining the means and permission to contact that customer. The Email list has great power.
Strategy two: Try Advertising to Test
Try advertising such as a testing tool rather than a long-term stream of customers. Keep in mind, just a few startups can spend money to turn to advertise into a marketing activity with positive ROI. Advertising is a volatile marketing medium, even if you figure it out. Use advertising for the ability to build a slew of visitors very fast and to be turned off just as quickly. This kind of traffic source makes it good for testing of user behaviour and trying some tools like Crazyegg instead of relying on ad traffic as an ongoing stream. You can determine that men from 35-45 convert at a rate of around 15% lower than women of the same age with properly tracked conversions and an ad on Facebook. When you’re still trying to figure out the ideal market for your application, this is valuable information. For example, by using AdWords you can learn which keywords convert for you, and which don’t. You can save you piles of cash and many months of SEO effort if you know the keywords that really convert for your business, as opposed to the ones that you think will convert.
Advertising Options
1. Niche Advertising
There are lots of options for general advertising and many niche opportunities. According to the niche that you’re catering to you should be able to find a blog, forum, magazine or website in which to spend some money. Keep in mind that niche sites are cheaper to advertise and they drive more targeted traffic, which causes a huge difference in your conversion rate. You need more than $300 in your ad budget if you’re not targeting a niche because you want your followers to be the “whole world”. Generally, you will know the sites to target if you are marketing to a niche. Try searching on Google and contact people in the niche to understand where they hang out online. Two famous niche ad networks that I know:
If you have small budgets like about $300-400 range this platform works for you. This platform just accepts Image ads.
This ad network is in the process of branching into many other niches. For a design-oriented website, this image-only ad network is the primary source of traffic. Advertising is purchased on a monthly basis from individual advertisers or by impression, meaning each offers different pricing. Your minimum buys in this ad network can be very cheap – in the $10-$20/month range.
2. Google AdWords
You can use text or image in this ad network and there are some limitations for text:
- 25-character deadline
- 35-character display URL
This ad network was great for startups a few years ago and 5 and 10 cent clicks were common.
But these days, the price of click for advertising increased and large businesses don’t blink an eye about spending $5 to produce a single visitor to their website. You need a $ 500-lifetime customer value to break even with a 1% conversion rate. For most startups who are scraping by on about 0.5% conversion rates, this is more than a stretch. Remember, now cheap clicks are over. For instance, a company spent about the $1-2 per click to advertise their invoicing software has become a negative ROI for me at $4-5 per click. But you need to know that there is still a place in Google AdWords and that place is the content network. Most People think that Google AdWords is just the ads that appear to the right of the search results. But there are some ads that appear in every AdSense block you see around the web. As you know, this type is less targeted, higher volume, and typically much cheaper to advertise on, than the search results. When we don’t have enough time how to place ads on the content network, the best method is to use Conversion Optimizer that is a cost-per-action tool.
3. Facebook
If you want to advertise on Facebook, you need a text with the required image.
You need to know some limitation:
- Image size = 110×80
- Number of headline character = 25
- Body characters = 135
This platform is still suitable for startups with its ability to deliver about 10-15 cent clicks under the right conditions. Remember, you will pay around 75-90 cents per click if you approach Facebook advertising incorrectly. The ability to demonstrate your ads to exactly who you want to see it based on information in a user’s profile is a great value. You can simply advertise based on the gender, location, age, relationship status and a number of other fixed parameters. Also, you have thousands of interests and occupations that you can target using keywords. High click-through rate (CTR) is the key to low-cost Facebook clicks.
Combination of a powerful image, an engaging headline, and laser-focused targeting is the key to a high CTR.
I recommend using the following method with Facebook ads:
- Write a headline that targets your demographic information.
Example: if you are selling clothes online to the specific country, produce ten different versions of the ad.
Also use the qualifying “interests” keyword: cloths. Now trying a formula like “Need cloths in [city name]?” to make each ad headline address its group specifically.
- Start the ads with an acceptable budget of, say, around $5-10 per ad per day.
- Review the ads after 12-24 hours.
Some costs per click about 10-15 cents and will have high CTR.
Others click in the 80-90 cent range and will have low CTR.
- Try to pause the ads with higher cost and increase the budget for low-cost ads.
- You will receive extremely low-cost, targeted traffic for a few days.
But when you’ve selected a small group of audience, they will start to tune out the ad rather fast. At this time your CTR will drop and your cost will climb. Try to pause the ad, and start over with new images or new headlines and new cities.
3. Reddit
You can use text with an optional image to advertising your market.
This platform uses an interesting method for its ad pricing:
advertisers offer a certain amount per day and all of the money goes into one big pot. Therefore, each advertiser based on the percentage of funds they contributed receives their share of the impressions. As you see, this is a simple system, but about what you’re going to get for your money there’s a bit of uncertainty. This ad network has the potential to supply some very cheap clicks around 3 cents. Ads on Reddit are so simple and contains just two visible components. Remember, try using eye-catching image and a great title. If you need people to click your ad, so try to great and suitable image and headline.
