bang for buck advertising

[george]

hi guys. i have about $300-$500 extra dollars and i think i might spend that on advertising. this will be my first time advertising, and i don't have much money so this is very important for me to do right...

the software is a parental control/access control program for windows. what is the best way to advertise?

1) download.com silver listing? -- doesn't look good, nothing special
2) download.com pay per download? -- doesn't seem worth it
3) google adwords? -- maybe, however my search engine rankings are pretty good so i don't know if it's worth it either
4) snapfiles.com?
5) tucows.com?
6) what else is out there?

like i said, i need to make this really worthwhile, i am interested in your recommendations and advertising success/failure stories.

thanks guys!

[SyneRyder]

You might be better off advertising somewhere closer to your target market. Think of parents who would be concerned with controlling their children's access to the computer, what sort of websites or magazines are they likely to read? Perhaps you can find some low cost ways of advertising there. I'd focus on an online campaign before print ads, I haven't heard of any success from print ads. (If you do go for a print ad, make sure you read Tested Advertising Methods by Caples / Hahn first!!)

I have a feeling that many people in your target market won't be too computer savvy, and so they may not be as likely to know about places like download.com. However Overture and Google Adwords may be a way to reach them, they're more likely to go searching. Try advertising on related keywords that you might not be ranked so well for - scan your weblogs for ideas. The book mentioned above may help you write Adwords headlines too.

Whatever you decide, good luck with it, and don't take my advice too literally - I haven't had much luck with advertising myself :)

[george]

thanks! yea i was thinking of advertising on some website for parents...

what about those press release services, are they worth it? i've heard major success stories but i don't know if that was just hype.

thanks everyone

[Tom Cain]

Hi,

I was going to suggest pay-per-click for your budget, but not now that I've checked. The phrase "parental control software" was searched for ~2800 times in August according to Overture. However, the top 5 bids for that phrase are all over $2.00, with AOL at number one with a $2.66 bid. This bid level would eat your budget up quickly with little or no results.

As mentioned above, buying an ad on a parent-targeted web site might help. Look around to compare traffic and costs. You could spend your entire budget in one week at a high-traffic site.

Print advertising is not the way to go, you don't have the budget for it to make any impact.

You could try contacting parent-targeted magazines to see if they rent an opt-in email list of their subscribers. Many only rent snail-mail lists for fear of spam liability, but you might find one that will rent email addresses. Once you have the list, it will cost you little or nothing to email to it.

Another solution could be to get an article or sidebar about your software published in a parent-targeted magazine. These usually work great when you can get them. It is possible with your budget to find a PR person that can help you with this. They would write a press release, or sometimes the article itself, and submit to magazines. Submission doesn't mean it will get printed, and it helps a lot if the PR person knows someone at the publication.

I hope this helps. :)

[george]

thanks for the tips. this is what i have come up with so far...

text advertisement in opera, 500 clicks, $200.00
press release service - about $100

so this brings my total to about $300 which is my desired budget right now. do you think these are wise choices?

opera: i am a little reluctant, but it seems better than spending the money advertising on download sites. plus they charge you for a click, not impression, so i think i will get only interested users coming to my site.

press release: i am thinking about dpdirectory.com... what do you guys recommend?

thanks for your help, you guys are great!

[Sirrus]

thanks for the tips. this is what i have come up with so far...

text advertisement in opera, 500 clicks, $200.00
press release service - about $100



500 clicks for $200...I dont know how that...

[george]

500 clicks for $200...I dont know how that...

i know it sounds like a rip off but this is my rational:

the ad is displayed as text, so it is not too attracting unless you are looking right at it. and someone looking right at it is going to read it. if they are interested in a product like that they will click on the link. i am charged for a click, not an impression, so therefore i am being charged only when the user is interested enough to click the link and interrupt their web browsing. so if i get 500 interested potential customers, that is pretty good.... or is this rational bogus? :)

i can get a 500,000 banner ad impression for $350. the problem is i wont be able to afford the clicks so it will just be an image, no links. and a lot of people will be viewing the ad, which is good and bad:

good: i will get lots of attention
bad: i will waste my impressions because most people will probably not be interested in the product yet they will be shown the ad anyway
bad: no link, however, i can display the URL on the ad, so I guess no click is not that bad...

what do you guys think? maybe there is another opera-type advertising out there?

thanks!

[george]

ok i've decided to go with google adwords... any suggestions or comments before i do it?

i am going to do it today so please if you have any info let me know!

thanks.

[Hans]

Google adwords are a real hell if you just start out using them. I would really recommend reading the do's and dont's before starting.

[Tom Cain]

I suggest you put a daily budget cap on AdWords so that the costs don't get away from you. I once set up Overture for a non-software client that requested generic terms, a high per-click rate, and no cap on spending. A few days later we stopped it with click costs into four figures and zero sales...

I also suggest you use the conversion tracking option. This way you will see how many, if any, of your clicks converted into sales. This is good information in deciding if AdWords is working for you.

You may also want to use Overture at the same time, I use both:
www.overture.com

[Curiosoft]

How is Overture working for you?

I'm thinking of signing up, but I don't like the minumum 20 dollar requirement. I also don't like the 10-cent minimum click option.


Later,
Curiosoft

[Tom Cain]

Overture actually works better for me than Google AdWords. I also have most of my listings at 5 cents with their grandfather clause, since I signed up before they went to the 10-cent minimum.

I think the key to both is to use the conversion tracking feature. If you are converting at a rate that makes a profit, it doesn't matter how high the costs are. And if you are converting at a loss, it doesn't matter how low the costs are.

[tretmike]

Hi George,


press release: i am thinking about dpdirectory.com... what do you guys recommend?

You may check our press release distribution service - SoftPressRelease.com (http://www.SoftPressRelease.com/)

On our site you will find full information about our service as well as full statistics of our computer publication list.

You are welcome!