In my previous article, "What is a Lead Worth?", I showed ways of determining how much you should pay for each lead you get to make sure you are profitable.  In that article, I decided that I could easily afford to pay up to $2 for every lead while making good profit.  My definition of a lead in this case was someone who bought online or joined my subscriber list.

Now, I am going to share with you my actual Internet advertising results after 30 days of testing of a number of different Internet advertising and marketing techniques.

How Did I Track My Internet Advertising?

I have carefully tracking my advertising and marketing techniques using 1ShoppingCart.  Another system you can use for tracking advertising is Ultimate Affiliate Manager. who have a one-time fee of $97 instead of a monthly charge.

What Did I Promote Through Internet Advertising?

To keep the test fair, I used the same ad in all the various Internet advertising systems.  It was an ad to promote my popular free e-book, "Promote Your Web Site for Free."  The ad and free e-book have proven to be very popular over a number of months, so I knew if an advertising source did poorly, it wasn't the quality of the ad or product offering.

Where Did I Advertise Online?

Here are the 5 Internet advertising and marketing techniques I tested:

1.  Instant Buzz:  A free Internet advertising system that lets you exchange ads with others through an Internet Explorer toolbar with no popups.  They also have a free community where you can connect with other members.

2.  Ryze Membership:  An online community with over 200,000 members.  I tracked signups from my activities within Ryze such as people visiting my member profile and my participation in various discussion groups

3.  Ryze Classified Ad:  A paid text ad within the 200,000+ member Ryze online community.

4.  Ecademy Membership:  An online community with over 44,000 members with a strong U.K and European membership base tracked the same way as Ryze Membership.

5.  Google Adwords:  Advertising on Google when people search for key word phrases relating to web site promotion and free e-books.

Actual Internet Advertising Results

Here are the results of these five campaigns.

These 5 campaigns generated a total of 79 leads.  In my previous article, "What is a Lead Worth?", I calculated that a lead is worth $10.36 in sales to me.  So these 79 leads would have a sales value to me of $818.44.

Let's look at how much these campaigns cost me.

So, for a cost of only $51.66, I generated $818.44 in sales.  Outstanding! 

Let's look at how much I paid for each lead.

So Which Internet Advertising Technique Here is Best?

All of them!  That's right, I should continue with ALL of these techniques because they are ALL under my target cost for acquiring leads of $2 per lead, so they are all profitable.  If I were to drop any of them, I would lose a good percentage of my leads. 

The surprise to me in this group was the success of the Ryze Classified Ad.  One of the lowest cost of lead generation along with the least amount of my time spent.

Internet Advertising Time Spent

Time is the other factor to take into account:  Here is the ranking from least to most time I spent on each Internet advertising campaign.

1.  Ryze Classified:  Only the time to set up the initial ad campaign and tracker, which was a few minutes.  Great results for a few minutes of my time and minimal money investment.

2.  Instant Buzz:  After the initial signup, I have been spending some time each month inviting new contacts into the system and I spend a little time helping out in the online communities.  No cost and minimal time investment and good results.

3.  Google Adwords:  After the initial setup, I spent some time monitoring and adjusting the ads once per week.  Minimal time investment but a little more cost.  This cost might be lower in other fields as I had to spend additional time finding low cost key words to advertise with as Internet marketing related key words are highly sought after.

4.  Ecademy:  I spend a modest amount of time each month and get a good return on my modest cash and time investment.

5.  Ryze Community:  I spend more time here because I moderate the Internet Marketing Tools forum.  Good return on my moderate time investment and modest cash investment.

Of course your results may vary as you will be offering different products and advertising messages, but BEFORE you start your Internet advertising campaigns, it is critical you know what a lead is worth to you and that you track how much your leads are costing you.

I offer a coaching service to help you learn to set up and track Internet marketing campaigns.  If your time is tight, I can also connect you with an E-Business Tutor-trained Internet Marketing Virtual Assistant who can set up your campaigns and tracking.

Garland Coulson, "The E-Business Tutor"
Download my FREE e-book, "Promote Your Web Site for Free"
Moderator, Internet Marketing Tools

Private Reply to Garland Coulson

As always, what wonderful information you share with the group. I am learning so much from you and a few others about how to set up, monitor, and run an advertising/marketing campaign. I have a question for you. If your business were more concentrated in a local environment (for example: in my business, in addition to contract programming and web design, which can have customers located anywhere, we also do business technology re-engineering and local (within a 25 mile radius of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex) on-site hardware repair and networking, which both require on-site visits and face to face meetings), how would you do an on-line campaign targeted at your core audience (local businesses and consumers)? or is this the point where you would shift from an on-line campaign to a radio/newspaper more traditional campaign? Thanks.

Private Reply to Russ Howard

Private Reply to Lamar Morgan 954-603-7901

Private Reply to Richard Gee

Private Reply to Wolf Halton

Hi Russ,

Like you, I have some things I offer that are local.  My local workshops are in Nanaimo, a town with about 77,000 people that also draws from surrounding communities.  And I still market online instead of in local papers and radio stations because I can track online success and dump non-performing advertising techniques.

Here are a few ways you can market locally using the Internet.:

1.  Go to local business networking groups and exchange business cards.  Have a newsletter/event schedule/specials email you send out regularly to this group.  This technique works wonderfully for me as my newsletters and course schedules do the work.

2.  Buy a Google Adwords campaign focusing on local keywords and/or just your local geographic area.  If you are going to do this, I STRONGLY recommend that you buy Perry Marshall's "Definitive Guide to Google Adwords."  Even though I am an experienced Internet marketer who has run many successful Adwords campaigns, Perry's book was a real eye opener.  Great tips and very well thought out steps to get a successful campaign set up.  This e-book will save you 100s or 1000s of dollars.

3.  A search in Ryze for Dallas finds over 1,000 people for you to connect with right here.

4.  LinkedIn would be a good way to find decision makers in larger organizations in your geographic area.  With 2.6 million members, there should be a few nearby!  :)  If you are not a member of the free LinkedIn system, let me know and I will invite you, giving you access to my network.

And most importantly, you MUST TRACK every technique using systems like Ultimate Affiliate Manager or 1ShoppingCart. 

Garland Coulson, "The E-Business Tutor"
Download my FREE e-book, "Promote Your Web Site for Free"
Moderator, Internet Marketing Tools

Private Reply to Garland Coulson

Hello Lamar,

If you look at the prior article I referenced, "What is a Lead Worth?", you would see that I have calculated the value of a lead so that I know how much to pay for my advertising.  This is where I estimated the sales from.

When someone finds me through one of my marketing techniques like Instant Buzz and signs up for a free e-book like "Questions to Ask Your Web Designer," the system knows this client came from Instant Buzz.  When they buy something later on, the sale is credited to that ad campaign.  So eventually, I will have real numbers of how much each campaign made and the ROI.

Of course, you have to be tracking your campaigns to do this using systems like Ultimate Affiliate Manager ($97 one time fee) or 1ShoppingCart. ($29 per month) 

Some people do clear cookies, so the numbers may end up a little understated.

Garland Coulson, "The E-Business Tutor"
Download my FREE e-book, "Promote Your Web Site for Free"
Moderator, Internet Marketing Tools

Private Reply to Garland Coulson

Private Reply to Rhonda Twitty

Hello Richard,

This is an excellent illustration of the power of newsletter marketing and tracking value of Constant Contact!  You got three clients out of a very small list.  You must have done a good job on making the newsletter content valuable to your readers and building in items to prompt them to call.

The next step would be to build a bigger list and keep sending a newsletter regularly.  Many of my clients are people who subscribed to my newsletters months or even years ago, and finally decide it is time to take control of their Internet marketing programs.

For people too busy to build their own newsletter in Constant Contact, I also have an Internet Marketing Virtual Assistant who can assist.

Garland Coulson, "The E-Business Tutor"
Download my FREE e-book, "Questions to Ask Your Web Designer"
Moderator, Internet Marketing Tools

Private Reply to Garland Coulson

Hello Rhonda,

I'm glad to hear you will be testing future advertising campaigns you do.  The testing is critical because MOST ADVERTISING DOESN'T WORK!  :)  And everyone is so quick to take our advertising dollars...

I dump most of the advertising I try.  I ONLY keep the ones that work. 

What campaign are you thinking of?  Perhaps we can brainstorm some ideas in this group and perhaps you can share your results with us.

Garland Coulson, "The E-Business Tutor"
Download my FREE e-book, "Questions to Ask Your Web Designer"
Moderator, Internet Marketing Tools

Private Reply to Garland Coulson