If you advertise in any way, you face the problem of qualifying your visitors.
Qualifying just means ensuring that someone who clicks on your advertisement is most likely to do what you want them to at your site. That might be subscribe to your RSS feed, buy a product, sign up for a service, etc.
So, how do you qualify visitors? There are two main components: the content of your advertisement, and the location of the advertisement.
Content
Content is one way you can qualify visitors. The basic way you qualify through content is to prevent people from clicking on your advertisement. That’s right, you want to prevent people from clicking on the advertisement.
Or rather, you want to prevent unqualified people from clicking on it. This is especially critical when you’re paying for clicks.
For example, let’s say that your product costs $20, and you also offer a free report.
You can advertise the free report, and will likely get a lot of clicks because people are always willing to get something for free. But a low percentage of those people who arrived at your site expecting something free will be willing to pay $20 for a product, too.
Or you can advertise the product, and the price. Plain as day, “Blah blah blah, only $20”. Now when someone clicks on that advertisement, they know it leads to a product and the product will cost $20. And they still clicked. They’re more likely to buy than someone who came through expecting something free.
That’s what qualifying means. It’s more like having an exclusive club, rather than inviting everyone into your store.
Location
Another key way to qualify is where you advertise. If you have an expensive luxury product, putting a billboard up on a logging road isn’t going to get you many sales. On the other hand, if you have a product that will improve the safety and efficiency of loggers, that’s the best place to put it.
Many people think that the best place to advertise is the place that will get the most viewers. In reality, the best place to advertise is the place that has the highest percentage of qualified viewers.
For example, let’s say that you want to advertise Yuwie, which is a way to make money without any investment by participating in a social networking site. You have a couple of qualifications that are important with Yuwie. One is that they are interested in making money without any investment, and the other is that they like to participate in a social networking site.
You could qualify visitors for the first by advertising on Clix Sense, a site that pays people to view ads. Clix Sense members are making money without any investment, so would be qualified for Yuwie.
You could qualify visitors for the second by advertising on other social networking sites, like MySpace.
The tone of the advertisement changes for each location. In the case of Clix Sense, you want to emphasize how the members can make more money through Yuwie, and doing things that are more fun than simply viewing advertisements. In the case of MySpace, you want to emphasize that they can get paid for doing what they’re already doing for free.
But the location automatically takes care of one qualification.
By combining ad content with location, you can help to ensure that everyone who visits your site is most likely to actually do what you want them to do. This works with paid advertisements, and with other means of promotion (such as leaving comments on other blogs to promote your own).
Reducing the number of people who click on your ads by qualifying them will improve your conversion rate and reduce your advertising costs.
How do you qualify your visitors now?