Great copywriting is one thing.
But, what do you do with the ad after you`ve finished it?

For a lot of us it`s go to the first ad co-operative we can find and place our ad in several different ezines at once and hope for the best. But, is that a productive way to advertise?

I don`t believe it is.

I remember my first BB Gun. I was eleven years old and my father had bought it for my birthday. You can imagine how excited I was. Now I was one of the guys. My friends all had BB Guns. They all had great, and at times very explicit, tales of squirrel hunting. I could have my own great stories now!

Know what my first story was? How my father took it away from me the day after he gave it to me. See, my father was a pretty good shot. He has been hunting all his life, was in the Marines, and tried to keep his shooting skills with target practice. That first day he took me in the back yard, put up a paper target, and started to show me the correct stance, how to breathe and aim, how to put slight pressure on the trigger, relax my body, and shoot.

It was great. I hit the target, even the center a few times, more than I missed and I could just see those squirrels falling when I got to hit the woods with my friends.

But, I wasn`t a good listener. My father gave a very stern warning. `Make sure you know what you`re aiming at. And never point your rifle at something if you`re not going to shoot.`

The next day I went out in the backyard for some more target practice and, being a boy, I quickly started shooting other things. One being the side of the house.

It was an accident, but I failed to listen to my father`s warning. I aimed at something on the side of the house, never really intending to shoot, forgot the safety was off, and put a small hole through the living room window. Whoops.

Needless to say, I lost my BB Gun for the rest of the year. And it`s a lesson I never forgot.

Advertising Is All About Selective Targeting

Targeting. Don`t fire unless you know what you`re shooting at. Don`t aim at anything unless you intend to shoot.

Words to live by for gun safety and productive advertising.

One of the biggest mistakes I find people doing is trying to `force feed` their ads onto anybody and everybody. Every product has an audience and there is an audience for every product.

You need to be selective in your advertising. Advertising is not a carpet bombing campaign. It`s all about precision.

So, how do we find that audience?

I remember the first time my three year old daughter, Kaitlynn, ordered ice cream herself. She strode very confidently up to the Dairy Bar, looked the attendant in the eye and said, `I want a chocolate ice cream in a bowl, with a spoon, and one napkin please.`

She knew exactly what she wanted and would not settle for less.

Advertising in ezines takes that same kind of confidence. You do not go to just any ezine and place an ad. Even if it is to over 200,000 subscribers in several different ezines. You need to know two things

Who needs your product?

What ezine, or website, has that audience?
By going to a `co-op` website and submitting your ad to several different ezines at once you`ll probably get some visits, but you severly limit the amount of targeted visitors that will buy from you.

She sacrificed other flavors for what she really wanted.

Or, in other words, the desired result (wanting chocolate instead of strawberry) was a lot better than settling for a less desirable result.

It looks real good when you see that with one single stroke your ad will be seen in front of a few hundred thousand subscribers through several different ezines. But, looks are deceiving.

Most of those subscribers use fake email addresses, don`t read the ads, or could care less about your product in the first place. The result is less than desirable.

But, if you take your product, or service, and know who needs it, you can achieve incredible results with one ezine that has only a few thousand subscribers.

A client of mine, let`s call her Betty, was completely hooked in `more subscribers is better` and would not let me put together a focused ezine advertising strategy for her product. Until I took matters into my own hand. I told Betty I wanted to show her exactly what she was missing.

The site she wanted advertised was a business opportunity for stay at home moms. I went and searched out ezines that catered to this particular niche.

I bought ad space in two ezines with a total subscriber count of 24,000. Betty went to her usual co-op site and placed her ad with 175,000 combined subscribers.

The results? After three months of waiting (some of the ezines in the co-op were backed up with ads for a few months) Betty`s `co-op` netted her 625 visits and 25 sign ups for her opportunity. The results of the two ezines I submitted her ad to (that were ran within in a week because of direct contact with the publisher) were a little different.

Out of 24,000 subscribers, the ad pulled 5,520 visits with 280 sign ups. That`s a 23% response from an ad that ran only once.

Selective targeting can only have one result. Increased response.

You need to sacrifice the big numbers for the right targeted market for your ad.

She also put some time into thinking about what she wanted.

My daughter likes several different kinds of ice cream. She had to think about what she wanted. It wasn`t a spur of the moment decision. I could hear her in the back seat going over her options. Strawberry, vanilla, chocolate, black raspberry, and a few others. She was going back and forth until she finally made up her mind.

Picking an ezine, or website, to put your ad in takes time. It can`t be done in a matter of minutes or a quick search in your favorite search engine. Time and research.

Look for the ezine that best fits your market.

Do the articles fit in with your product?

Are there any competing ads in the ezine?

How many ads are in each issue?

How many solo ads are sent out each week?
Look into each ezine and each website. Your advertising is too important to not aim before pulling the trigger.

It`s all about being picky

Don`t settle just for any ezine. Know where you`re putting your ad.

Be picky.

Remember, that your ads are your tools for visitors, subscribers, name recognition, repeat exposure to `on the fence` visitors, and profits. Do you really want to put your ad in front of people who don`t want your product?

Take the time to find our target audience and work only with those ezines and websites and you`ll see a drastic improvement in your response rates and conversion rates. In other words, you`ll make a lot more money.