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How advertorials help to get more customers
Ever wondered how to get more customers and sales online?
As a magazine owner, I’ve been searching and experimenting with modern online marketing methods to find out what works best.
An advertorial turns out to be one of the best, if not the best, pieces of content that you could publish to market your business, products, or services online.
This article is an example of an advertorial. It’s actually an advertorial teaching you about advertorials!
Before we get into advertorial details, let’s review the basic principles of modern online marketing.
We are trying to do three (difficult) things:
- Creating attention
- Keeping attention
- Converting attention (into money)
Creating attention is often done by posting something that makes prospects aware of what we have to offer.
This can be in the form of a social media post, an email or an advert.
If you have a website with lots of traffic, it can simply be an article or a blog post.
Once we’ve gotten your attention, we need to keep that attention.
To keep attention, we need engagement.
Likes, shares, clicks, and opt-ins are examples of active engagement that can be measured.
Conversion happens when a sale is made.
This can be via a sales call, sales pages, a webinar, or even by getting them into your office, workshop, or store.
These three components, awareness, engagement and conversion have been introduced as linear functions, but they are interdependent.
They work together as a system, where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
An advertorial is a great bridge to link these parts together and has many advantages over other content.
But before we get into the advantages, let’s first review what an advertorial is, so that we are on the same page.
While there are many versions of an advertorial, I don’t like, actually I hate, click-bait ads that trick us into clicking just to increase their numbers.
Many advertisers go this route as it works when you have a big budget to reach large volumes of people.
With large volumes, only a small conversion percentage is needed to be successful.
We are not able to reach millions of people as smaller businesses. We need to focus on getting better prospects upfront.
Better prospects mean better customers.
Better prospects are friendly and cooperative.
They know what they want.
And they are willing to pay for a solution.
If you attract better prospects, you will find that you only need a small pocket of people to be successful.
A few thousand, or even a few hundred, of the right prospects, can revolutionise a business.
To get better prospects, you need to provide value to those who are keen and willing to solve their problem.
A good advertorial will eliminate people who are not good candidates and attract those who are.
A good advertorial adds value to the reader.
A good advertorial educates them on something that’s important to them.
But, it doesn’t have to be complex.
It could simply be a clear description of your product or service that highlights or showcases its features and benefits.
As long as you are being honest, customers won’t have a problem. Just don’t try to trick them with quick fixes and get rich quick schemes.
Anybody who has ever been involved in a real business knows it’s not that easy.
Else we will all have 6-pack abs and be sitting on sun-filled, palm-lined beaches sipping Pina Coladas (or our beverage of choice).
There is a proven structure that we can use for an advertorial though. It can be used as a framework to guide your thinking. It’s not a template, as no two advertorials will be the same.You will still have to put in some effort.
The Who, What, Why, How Framework
The short version:
Tell them who you are, what you have, why they must get it and how they can get it.
Who
Simply tell them who you are.
Give a brief description of you or your business and perhaps a quick overview of your experience, expertise, credentials and why they should listen to you.
What
Describe what you’ve got.
Use neutral language that simply describes your product or service.
It should read like a news article.
It could even be a list of features.
The features could also be expanded on by adding the benefits of each feature.
An easy way to do this is to state the feature and then add “so that...” afterwards.
For e.g., “Our air conditioner has precise settings so that you can set the temperature to exactly how you like it”.
Just don’t make it a high-pressure sales pitch.
Why
Tell them why they must get what you have.
A simple way to do this is by using the PAS (problem, agitate, solution) Framework.
State the problem your product or service solves.
Agitate the problem by showing the implications of not solving the problem.
Provide the solution by showing them how your product or service (uniquely) solves the problem.
If you have a “secret sauce”, now is the time to reveal it.
How
Tell them how they can get it.
Or tell them what you want them to do next.
Be clear in your instructions even if it seems obvious.
That is why calls to action like “Click Here” and “Buy Now" are used.
Style
If you write your advertorial using a “news” style, Social Media Platforms and Google will reward you.
Both Facebook and Google, the two biggest traffic sources, don’t like super hyped and spammy content.
Give the platforms what they want and you will be fine.
They want content that adds value to their audiences, so they will punish you by throttling traffic to your content if they think that yours won’t add value.
Your account can even be banned.
Google is primarily a search engine where people go for solutions. Facebook is primarily a social network.
An advertorial is perfectly suited to deliver the right value for these engines.
Next Steps
Now that you know the value of advertorials and have an idea of how to create one, we are inviting you to publish an advertorial with us.
We have a multi-platform publishing infrastructure and have been publishing daily since 2019.
This has enabled us to build an engaged audience and reach thousands of cricket fans, players and officials.
We will publish your advertorial in our news feed and promote it via our social media platforms so that you get maximum reach.
Whether it’s brand awareness you want, or the promotion of products and services, an advertorial with us would deliver cost-effective results.
To get more information via email, simply click on the button below and enter your best email address.
We will be in touch to find out more about your business and how we can help you.
Plus, we will send you tips and updates on how to grow your customer base from time to time.
We promise to deliver value. We believe a customer is made long before money changes hands. And even if you don’t become a customer, we still promise to add value to your business.
And if we don’t live up to our promise, leaving is just one click away.
Faizel,
Co-Founder, Cricket Fanatics Magazine
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