Insider Advertising Report

Chapter 2: Why Advertising Doesn't Work

Advertising is only a means to increase the exposure of your product/service.

In internet marketing, advertising is only a means to drive traffic to your website.

There are several ways to drive traffic. Frankly, advertising is the WORST!

To understand why, let's compare advertising with other means of traffic generations:

1. Advertising vs Search Engine Traffic

People come to the Search Engine with a need. They do a search and find your website. They believe that the Search Engine will deliver the result they are looking for, thus, they believe that your website has what they want.

Because of that belief, prospects will stick around on your website, make a few clicks probably, trying to find the information which they believe exist.

Advertising doesn't have this luxury.

In advertising, you cannot expect prospects to stick around on your website. You have less than 5 seconds to capture their interest. If you fail to do that, they'll leave.

That's why in advertising, it is vital to advertise a page that can IMMEDIATELY tell people what is in it for THEM. If your advertising page fails to do that, your advertising effort will be wasted.

I have advertisers, especially corporate advertisers, who like to advertise their professionally designed homepages, which have no headline, no call for action and hardly any sales pitch.

Guess what, visitors will wonder what this website is all about. Before they even think of the answer, they close the window.

Another disadvantage of advertising is you may reach out to people who do not have the need for your product at that point of time.

You may have purchased very targeted traffic. Your website may be presented to prospects who is interested in your product. But they may not have an immediate need for the product you're offering.

In such case, you'll have to think of other ways to promote your product. I'll cover this in Chapter 12 > How To Advertise A Product That Has No Immediate Needs.

2. Advertising vs Word Of Mouth

Another effective way to bring traffic is word of mouth. This includes email marketing, forum marketing, blog marketing and social media marketing.

Here is the interesting thing about Word Of Mouth > If Product X is advertised to you, you'll be doubtful. But if someone says Product X is good, you will tend to believe in him, especially if he is someone you trust.

That's why affiliates can sell better than the product owner.

That's why testimonials sell better than any sales pitch.

In advertising, there is no trust between advertiser and prospects.

People usually look at an ad as a sales pitch.

"You are trying to sell me."

That is the mentality of a prospect when he/she looks at an ad.

The characteristics of your prospects from ads

The prospects are usually defensive and skeptical when they look at an advertisement. That means it is harder to sell to them.

When it comes to advertising, you have to think of your prospects as someone who is very selfish. They are not interested in you, your product or your offer. They are ONLY interested in themselves.

They are ONLY interested in "What's in it for ME?"

You also have to assume that they are busy and lazy. They have no time to figure out what your website is all about or what you are trying to sell.

Most of them will NOT read the full content of your website.

They'll only scan through the headline.

If the headline captures their attention, they may scan through the subheadlines, testimonials and/or screenshots.

Otherwise, they'll leave.

Now you see why advertising is the WORST form of traffic generation?

If so, why bother to advertise?

1) Minimal resources required

If you have no list, no JV partner and no network, advertising can bring instant traffic to your website.

For example, in 2006, I spent about $10k to advertise my first online business.

Through advertising, I got about 5000 members in a month, which grew into 200k members after a few years.

That first business had brought me some fame. By the time I started my second business, LeadsLeap.com, I already had a huge list to start with, and was able to bring in JV partners.

(I share more about my story in our Daily Email newsletter. If you are a LeadsLeap member, you would have received it.)

2) For reputation

Despite all the 'bad things' I've said about your prospects, one benefit of advertising is that your prospects see you as someone who is serious about your offer, especially if you are paying for the ad.

The fact that you are willing to pay to advertise gives them the confidence that you are serious about your business and they can trust you. It also gives them the confidence that your product is up-to-date and valid.

3) For its leveraging capability

The most important benefit of advertising is leverage.

In advertising, you can advertise a page that is NOT written by you. Your advertised page can say "Here is how I make $300 a day working from home", but the word "I" refers to the author of the sales page, not you! This is what I mean by leverage.

If you are a newbie in internet marketing, you have neither earning proof nor testimonial. How are you going to convince people to buy your recommendation if you in the first place have not made a single cent?

There must be a start somewhere and the start is to advertise in the capacity of another person.

Is this ethical? You may ask.

Well, you are not faking any testimonial nor earning proof. As long as what you write is true, I don't see any ethical issue here.

Anyway, your prospects don't even know who is advertising.

They may assume that the author of the sales page is the one who advertises, which is true in that context. The only difference is you are paying for the ad and making money from it.

I've seen this method work for too many beginners and it will work for you.

After you've started making money, you can create your own landing page with your own earning proof. Before that, you need to leverage.

This is an important strategy and I'll discuss that again and again in the later chapters. Don't worry if you don't get the full picture now.

Why is it a MUST to master advertising?

1) It is easy and sustainable.

Although advertising is probably the worst form of traffic generation, it is also the easiest and most sustainable form.

You don't have to rely on other people, like the case of affiliate marketing. You also don't have to worry about search engines updating their algorithm.

For those who don't understand the nature of advertising and characteristics of their prospects, they will realize that advertising is as good as throwing money into the drain.

But if you know how to overcome the limitations and disadvantages of advertising, advertising can be your secret weapon.

And I'm going to show you how to do that.

2) It is scalable.

A renowned marketer once said, the difference between five figure income and six figure income is advertising.

It is quite typical for a budding website to spend 80% of their earnings on advertising. As long as your ads are generating positive return, scaling your business is as easy as increasing your advertising budget.

Of course it's easier said than done. Whenever you venture into a new advertising media, there will be a learning curve. But the fundamentals of advertising will never change. It is the fundamentals that I really want to share with you in this report.

3) It is duplicable.

If you master the art of advertising, you can easily teach other people the same method and they can duplicate your success easily.

This is especially important to those who are in the MLM industry.

Recap on the characteristics of your prospects from ads

Before ending this chapter, I want to summarize the characteristics of the prospects through advertising.

I have discussed them above, but I thought it will be clearer if I list them down below:

1. They are selfish. They are not interested in you or your offer. They are ONLY interested in "What's in it for ME?"
2. They are defensive. They think that you are trying to sell to them and they tell themselves don't be sold.
3. They are skeptical. They don't trust you. Everything appears to be a scam to them.
4. They are busy. They don't read every word on your website. Most of them just read the headline.
5. They are lazy. If things don't appear easy enough, they'll leave.
6. They don't need your product/service. Even if you manage to overcome the 5 issues above and gain their attention and trust, it is still possible that they may not need your product/service at the time when they see your ad.

Keep these characteristics in mind when you design your landing page (i.e. the page that you use to advertise). Make sure that your landing page has ways to overcome these challenges.

In the later chapters, I'll show you examples of what other advertisers have done to successfully win the heart of their prospects.

For now, let's explore another fundamental question - Why No Sales?