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In this edition of Web Enlightenment we'll be talking about the goal of advertising and a rather shocking "admission" from a person I admire.

This newsletter focuses on giving you practical, interesting insights into how to successfully use technology as a tool to improve the way you do business. Bridging the gap between knowledge and understanding that all entrepreneurs have will help you make money online.

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All the best,

The Goal of Advertising
...not to make the sale?

As many of you know I am a big fan of Guerilla Marketing and the father of it, Jay Levinson. He's even had some pretty nice stuff to say about me on occasion. When I received his Guerilla Marketing Weekly Intelligence Tip last week I was really excited to see it. You can sign up for his newsletter by clicking here. Here is part of what he had to say....

"Today, the goal of much advertising is not to make the sale but to direct people to websites."
-Jay Conrad Levinson

Wow - I have to admit that for many years I have promoted traditional advertising as basically just a way to push people to the web, which I always knew was a bit cheeky but a real eventual destination.

But this is something new - this is a broad based acknowledgement that traditional advertising has fundamentally changed. We see the same thing from PR professionals and from financial strategists but the overarching message can be summarized easily - you can't put the genie back in the bottle.

So instead of yet another article on how traditional advertising gets less and less effective while costing more and more each year I thought you - my dear readers - would be interested in something different. How do you make people visit a website with traditional media?

The first common tactic you should be aware of is called a "carrot", literally an incentive. My Client Day's Jewelers is doing this on their homepage now, they are giving a $27 coupon (with no strings attached) to their customers. They are using radio ads to push people to the site.

A common twist to "carrots" is to go digital, to provide something electronic so it has no costs for you. My friend Michael Katz of Blue Penguin Development uses one of these when selling his book, "It Sure Beats Working". Any free report type resource can be used in this way.

Another way to push people to sites is to ask them to visit for the "conclusion" or "additional material" , this is a tactic most effectively utilized by that awful TV program American Idol with their behind the scenes type footage. (for the few of you that don't know I am a raving fan of the show, and I also like velveeta cheese...both have a similar cultural value).

I have used print ads in the past to encourage people to sign up for this newsletter - not exactly the best efficacy but acceptable since I was trading consulting for the ads. As you might imagine I track things rather carefully, my wife Amy says it is in fact ludicrously anal but I prefer to call it carefully.

The important thing to be aware of is that people need a reason - a compelling reason - to visit your site. It must go beyond the boring old "visit us online" invite and give them a push, a real reason why they should fire up the web browser and come see you.

Once you've done that the other big key to online push is appropriate tracking, this is most commonly done with pointer domain names. (but there are other methods) A pointer domain name is just an additional domain name that leads to your website, here is one of my favorite old examples.

http://www.Coke.com
http://www.Coca-Cola.com
http://www.CocaCola.com

All of these "sites" are in fact the exact same, you can have as many domain names as you want for your website. If you use a pointer domain in your traditional advertisement (and only in that advertisement) it is a very easy way to get a count of how many people responded to your ad and in fact visited your site.

So bottom line there are many experts saying you should feel free to abandon traditional media - and I can't exactly disagree. When you use a piece of traditional media, we all still do, please be sure to push people to your web site with an appropriate incentive while using solid tracking methods.

Speaking of speaking...
Places to be if you want to get enlightened

Tuesday September 16th at 8AM in Augusta, ME

Profitability Principals of the Web Seminar
We'll cover Trends, Basic Math, Quality vs Circulation, Spending Wisely, Measurement, and Live Website Reviews. As always every question will be answered.

This event is being sponsored by my Strategic Partners over at Marshall Interactive. Tickets are $100 and of course yours truly thinks that is a bargain. As a reader of this newsletter I can get you a seat at no charge, just hit reply and let me know you are interested.