Eight tips on how to sell advertising on your blog

I wrote a post about the mechanics of selling advertising on our travel blog some time ago. People were interested in how it all went, and the answer is very well, after two failed email campaigns persuaded me to start actually visiting clients. I thought I’d put together a quick set of tips, based on my experience. I should say this is based on getting local advertising from the area you live in. I guess some niches may not work for this, but many will. After all, a click is a click.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Keep your offer simple

When you devise your advertising offer don’t fall into the trap of offering too many choices. I stick with two wherever I can – it provides the perfect alternative close to a sale. I offer a comprehensive package of an advert and links, or a simple “classified” style advert with contact details.

Add value

The beauty of a blog is that there are so many pages – why not use them? At the end of the day the advertiser is buying links to their own site in most cases, so why not make your package more interesting in that respect? As well as the usual small graphic advert, why not include 5 text links in relevant pages? And even a one page write up on the business?

Promote your brand locally

Get your brand out locally so that people see it around. How about sponsoring an event in return for some free advertising? Or making sure your business cards are left everywhere? Neither of these ideas will bring you floods of people calling to book some space, but if they’ve heard of your site when you contact them, you have a head start!

Call them and then go and see them

You’re like me, aren’t you? You’re an internet person, so you’re going to email the information about your offer to potential clients. Sorry, but it won’t work. I know, I tried it more than once. Call them, book an appointment and go to see them face to face. I promise you, the results will be astonishing compared to email.

Research the client

Use your web prowess to find out as much as you can about your client before approaching them. Are they on Twitter? Facebook? What do people say about them? Do they have a blog? Would they benefit from you promoting their blog or main site? How are they ranking for likely search terms? How often are those terms used?

Don’t charge for design

Let’s face it, nine times out of ten, you can take a graphic off their own website, but even if you have to design something from scratch, with modern software, it will only take 15 minutes. It’s another barrier to a “Yes” out of the way.

Don’t have minimum contract lengths

It just sounds so much more confident when you say “We don’t have a minimum contract, when you want to come off, we take you off and stop charging you.” People love that.

Avoid direct competitors

Most business owners have an inbuilt dislike of their direct competitors. Telling them that they will be the only car dealer on your site may push them to go with you, if only to keep out the one down the road.

Give feedback

Make sure you can email page views and clicks to your clients every month, and add some good anecdotal stuff as well: “Do you realize that you’re now ranking number one in Google for Italian Restaurants in Budapest through our site?” You’ll often rank better than their own site, because of the SEO benefits of a blog.

What have I missed?

Just before you check out some other posts, jump up to the top of the page and use the form on the top right to join the Mike’s Life community – there’s some excellent stuff coming out for members over the next few weeks, and I don’t want you to miss out. Please join us now.

Back? OK. here’s some other stuff:

1/ A blogger’s dream

2/ How do you sell an affiliate product?

3/ How I doubled subscriptions to my email list