Selling advertising space

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meln

meln

The Purple Tentacle
Jul 2, 2006
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Sweden
www.seodomains.org
Recently (3 weeks ago) I launched a community for the town I live in, and it's already gone up to 700 registered members and it currently shows 50k pageviews a day. Problem is, even after playing around with Adsense (placement, colors etc), the CTR is really, really lousy. Like 0.01% :mad:

So I'm thinking about switching to selling banner space to local companies, and so I was wondering if anyone here has experience doing just that?

What's the best way to approach these companies? Mail, telephone, personal visit? Since the site's dominated by teens, I figure clubs, cafés, gyms, record stores and others should be interested.

I'm thinking maybe I could offer them a package for a certain number of impressions, for a fixed amount. How's the general attitude among small companies to advertise online? Seeing that most of them probably don't even have a website, a CPC model probably won't make much sense.

Last question: is there some sort of industry standard for rates, or should I charge whatever I think is reasonable?

Yeah I know, I probably went a little crazy with the questions :) I'm just really anxious to get started so I want everything to be figured out and ready to go.
 


Since it is a small town, potentially the personal touch might work. Just depends. If you have the time and resources it might be a good idea to put together an ad folder together that you can either mail out or give perspective advertisers when you visit them. Include information about the sites, hyped up numbers, projection, information about the customer base etc.

Some people offer discounts or percevied discounts (ie double your price and then offer half off to the early advertisers), others don't want to cheapen or discount their ad rates and suggest not to do that.

Do you have any friends with a local business or friend of a friend? If you could get someone on board with a real sweetheart deal you could use that to show that others are interested and make them consider doing it as well. Nobody wants to be the first one.
 
I would see what they are advertising on now (ie newspaper, billboard, yellow page etc...) and see how much that costs. Then do like aeiouy said above and price so that you are competitive to the above methods. Make sure that you highlight that you are getting 50K targetted people to look at their ad. You could even do something like, tv ad= $500 newspaper= $200 50k potential customers= priceless. Don't get to technical and confuse them.
 
I sell adspace privately on www.zoopedup.com

Type out a word doc that you can mail to possible advertisers

In the doc explain

- who you are and what your site is about
- your websites stats
- advertising options
- case study - how dynamic online advertising is and explain how its better than getting flyers printed for their business OR advertising in print media

This is what I use as a simple case study:

If you where to get some 1000 flyers made and had to pay someone to hand them out it would costs you more than our advertising option. Exposure on Zoopedup.com will be a lot more affective than a 1000 flyers! (Everyday you will get thousands of people viewing your ad over and over.) The exposure your company receives won’t be limited as to where the flyers get handed out but nationally and even internationally....and on top of that a flyer can’t make someone quickly access your companies website as to where advertising on zoopedup they are already online and just one click away to accessing your website/information.
Click to expand...

Normally my "advertise with us" doc looks like this

Website intro, (state that your website has quality content so their ads will appear on a worthy media)
Why should I advertise on *websitename*,
Awards and media coverage we have received,
print screen of possible banner areas on your site,
then lastly the ad rates

If they choose to advertise more than a month at a time give them discount. Entice them to sign up for 3-6 months with much better rates.

hope this helps..
 
Wow, great responses guys!

I'll probably do exactly what you said z00pedup. I'm adding to your rep points :cool:

As far as choosing advertisers goes, has anyone had success selling to companies that don't have an online presence at all, or just some lame static website that never gets updated? Seems they would probably be quite hesitant to advertising online. They are however in a majority when it comes to possible advertisers. Can they be persuaded with some good selling tactics?

SohaibT: Yeah we've had some CPA banners up, resulting in a handful och clicks and no actions. So no luck there I'm afraid. So that's why I'd much rather charge by impression.
 
If they are not online now, you need to show why they need to advertise with you. Show how they can advertise for less with you, get more exposure with you or more targetted exposure with you. You just need to show them what the benefits are.
 
Yeah I'll probably just have to work hard on my selling skills.

sebastya: I'm not really sure actually. I guess word spreads really quickly about this kind of site. Everyone tells their friends, who tells their friends and so on.
 
I don't know shit about Swedish, but I know a Gallerier when I see it. Definitely a few hotties in there...
 
I think there is decent cash in doing local stuff and I have done a bit of in the past. Keep in mind, thought, that business owners are used to buying traditional print advertising so keep it simple for them. This can actually work out well for you too.

Design your site so that there are some ad blocks. Make 2 or 3 different sizes. Don't overcrowd them, but have them rotate - se each slot could have 5-10 ads rotating through. Then go sell it to merchants. Sell the space on a weekly or monthly basis and give a discount if they advertise for a certain amount of time - just like you are a newspaper or something. But, don't overprice your ads at first. Instead try to get a lot of them sold and get people signed up for ongoing advertising agreements.

A good advertising kit will help out big time in this area. Spend a little time and money and make sure it is designed well and in color.

Talk about your traffic, etc. sell them on the benefits. But don't promise them any particular page views for their ad. This could turn into a nightmare for you.

If they don't want their add to rotate, charge them 4-5 times the non-rotating prices.

Another idea - hire an intern or part-timer (preferably an attractive girl) and pay them a commission to go out and do the footwork for you.
 
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