Hi Donna,

I won your project jump start a few months ago and I just wanted to write you a big THANK YOU! The press kit has been a great help and was pretty easy for me to modify with a little guidance from a friend. The cash prize towards online advertising got me a great spot on a local blog and helped me build relationships, and street cred with other local artists and vendors that far outlived the advertising slot.

You really did help me jump start!

Thank you so much!

Emily Horton

Obviously, I’m thrilled to hear that my little idea of a mini-stimulus plan has actually done what it was designed to do – for at least one of the recipients. Of course, I’d love to hear from other recipients as well, but even if only one got the jumpstart they needed this year, then I’m tickled pink about it.

Thanks for letting me know, Emily. Much appreciated!

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Post tags: advertising slot, Emily Horton, online advertising
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Luckily for us, online advertising is generally a lot more affordable than offline advertising is. Still, it pays to be as frugal as we possibly can, so I wanted to give a few thoughts on making the most of our advertising budgets (no matter how meager they may be).

Of course, text ads are one of the first things that come to mind when discussing online advertising, and I’m not going to throw you any surprises here. Just as you would expect, I would recommend starting out with a Google Adwords account, and testing the waters with a small budget. I do recommend that you read as much as you can about the process however, so that you don’t accidentally shoot yourself in the foot and overspend (sometimes significantly) without even realizing it.

Next, spend some time creating some banner ads (or having them created if you aren’t graphically inclined). I recommend creating a minimum of 4 ad sizes, but 9 sizes is ideal. You can see all the standard IAB recommend ad unit sizes here, but my recommendations are as follows:

Four Sizes To Always Have Available

• 125×125
• 468×60
• 160×600
• 728×90

Five Additional Ad Sizes If Possible

• 120×240
• 120×600
• 300×250
• 180×250
• 336×250

Sites will very likely have ad spots available in one of the above sizes, so if you have ads already created and ready to go for any of those sizes, it will be easy to get your ad up and running quickly.

The next thing I would consider is having 2 or 3 variations of ads in each of those sizes. This will allow you to test each ad so that you know which works better. I recommend reading an interview that the Wildfire Marketing Group did, in which they explain when and how often to run the same ads versus testing different ads.

Once you have all of your ad banners created, your next task is finding available spots to place them. My favorite place to advertise is on blogs. Many blogs are set up to run 125×125 ad blocks, so if you have that size handy, it will be easy to arrange. You can either approach bloggers directly via email or Twitter, and arrange for an ad spot, or you can go through one of the many networks (such as buysellads.com) to find them. Most blogs will display ads for a month term at a fixed price (which is usually fairly low).

Finally, run your ads, run your tests, and track the results. Once you have some initial stats to look at, you can plan for the long term.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: advertising budgets, Google, offline advertising, online advertising, Twitter, WildFire Marketing Group
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.