How advertising works

That's what I did in May, for the whole month. I promoted something, I got hundreds of referrals. Granted, it wasn't about something that sells for $100 a copy. It was free to join. Still, other members were not as successful promoting, even though I shared what I did to get referrals.

What made the difference? Well, for one, I believed in what I was doing, that the program was good for everyone. I won't get into details here, because I want you to grasp the significance of what I did. I kept repeating the message.

Now, what does that mean? Take note, I consider that what I did was not spamming. Some might disagree. Let me know in your comments to this article.

Let me first say what I DID NOT do:

• I didn't talk about it in private messages to people I didn't know.
• To those I did talk about the program, I didn't send a link, I waited till they asked for it.
• I didn't promote it in comments on other members' articles or RevPages.

In short, I didn't use spam techniques.

Here's what I did:

• I wrote a good number of articles, group discussions, even a RevPage about it.
• I advertised it on an ad network, it got me the most sign ups.
• I kept adding comments in 2 or 3 articles that were about how many referrals I had. All the new comments added information, i.e. how many new referrals since the last comment. Doing that brought back the article in the network feed of the members who are in contact with me at APSense.
• I wrote informative articles about that program's industry, because I felt many members didn't know about the intricacies of success in that sort of program.

Now, about adding comments, if you choose to write "come join" or "this is exciting", people won't take you seriously.

I can tell you that during that month, that industry was a buzzword at APSense. A good number of RevPages and articles started appearing about that site and other similar sites.

Of course, there's the question of finding the right number of times to repeat it. You can test and tweak on that. It tooke me 2 weeks to find how to write the text ad correctly on the ad network, or to find out which banner worked best.

Look at McDonalds. Let's say they stop repeating the message. They stop advertising altogether. You might think, "everybody knows about them, they won't ever be about of business."

Think again. They spend billions in advertising. If they were to stop, sure, they would be around for some time. But competition would take over quickly. For a simple reason: attention span. We are bombarded by tons of messages every hour, from TV, the Internet, the ads in public bathrooms, radio stations playing in stores, big ads in the back of buses, and so on and so forth... And the difference with news like the Japan nuclear crisis, for example, is that advertising targets our basic needs, so we never get tired of hearing the message, and since it lasts only 30 seconds or less, we rarely bother to turn off the TV, or the radio speakers, or we tolerate that ad because we want to that latest video from Lady Gaga on YouTube.

Forget my whole article, just remember:



P.S.: For more information on my current business projects and activities, click on my signature.