Top strategies to sell advertising space on a low- traffic websites in Nigeria

The idea of  selling online advertising  on a website or blog with low traffic seems a bit weird. After all, aren’t most advertisers interested in putting their product in front of the highest number of eyeballs possible?

Approaching them with piddly visitor numbers seems like a surefire way to end up in the deleted folder. Here are top strategies for selling online advertising space on low-traffic websites  in Nigeria.

But though it may feel like putting the cart before the horse, there are many great reasons and ways to sell online advertising space on low-traffic websites.

What you need to always keep in mind is that, while advertisers are drawn to high traffic numbers, they desire something else even more: high conversion rates.

There are plenty of success stories of websites that have limited traffic but sell a tons of advertising. These websites succeed because they do one thing well: they deliver the right type of customer to the right type of business.

What Can You Offer?

Now, before you begin to draft your first online advertising offer, take a page from the Greeks and “know thyself.” This means you have to  do research on your website first  so that you can pitch it effectively to potential advertisers. Here are some good ways to research your website and its audience.

CLICKY

Clicky  has the advantage of providing real-time analytics, unlike Google Analytics. Areas to look out for are:

• What do people look at when they visit my website?

• What are my most popular pages?

• What pages do people stay on the longest?

• What keywords do they use to find my website?

With this knowledge, you can develop a picture of what interests your visitors and what kinds of advertisers would pay for access to people with those types of interests.

Here are some other analytical tools:

• Piwik: Open-source analytics that you install on your server.

• Woopra: Real-time analytics. The free plan is limited to 30,000 page views per month.

• W3Counter: Free hosted website analytics.

SURVEY YOUR TRAFFIC

To probe even further into your visitors’ interests, put together a quick survey to find out what makes them tick. With a surveying service, you can quickly design a questionnaire that throws more light on where your online advertising focus should be.

To get the best results from your survey, make it simple and plain, and perhaps even give away a gift to make it worth the respondents’ time. People hardly ever fill out surveys without an incentive.

Survey services include the following:

• Survey Monkey

• PollDaddy

• Micropoll

• StrawPoll   (Twitter polling)

If you would rather not go through this direction, a simple request for feedback might work. Just put the word out that you are looking for input and then ask for comments.

BE AT ALERT!!!!

Yet another amazing way to find out what captivates your audience is to track what people say about you on social networking websites such as Twitter  and Facebook.

Twitter lets you track mentions of your website or a particular phrase in tweets. See which of your posts gets a lot of retweets or what people are saying about your website.

Searching for your domain name reveals articles that have been the most captivating to  your visitors.

Searching for Advertisers

Now that you have a good knowledge of your website’s traffic, it’s time to get out there and get advertisers. Is there a minimum number of visitors you should have before approaching advertisers?

While nothing is set in stone, 500 to 1000 unique daily visitors   is probably a good starting point. However, numbers below these can still be workable, especially if your audience is highly targeted.

Here are some places to find advertisers:

• What websites link to yours?
  One place to search for advertisers is in your own analytics. Look for websites that currently link to yours and that offer a service or product you could advertise.

• Who’s commenting?
  Visit your commenters’ websites to find any advertising or promotional opportunities.

• Let Google AdWords lead the way.
  If you run  Google AdWords, make note of which advertisements come up. After all, they are already spending money with Google, and Google is saying that your website is a good match for theirs. Approach them with an online advertising opportunity that would give them greater visibility than what Google AdWords can deliver.

• Research websites with similar content.
  Who is advertising on those websites? They would probably be interested in your website, too.

• What names pops up?
  After compiling your visitor’s interests, some businesses may immediately spring to mind. These businesses will likely go with your content. Make a list of them and contact them directly.

HOW TO APPROACH ADVERTISERS

Now that you know about your website’s visitors, you will want to plan an online advertising package to present to prospective advertisers. Here are a few things you may want to take account of:

• Demonstrate visitor interest.
  List the interests of your website’s visitors. Advertisers want to know that what they’re selling will appeal to your visitors.

• Disclose bounce rate, average time on site and page views.
  Advertisers will want to know how sticky your website is. If much of your traffic stays for only a few seconds, advertisers would want to know that. The longer your traffic sticks around, the higher the chance that advert will be seen and clicked.

• Showcase your monthly stats.
  Advertisers will want to know your website’s statistics over several months to see what kind of increase you have had and how many unique visitors you are getting per month. A steady climb in traffic shows great potential.

• Track outbound links.
  You certainly don’t want to overpromise the number of clicks an ad will receive. If you’ve been tracking outbound links with a service such as  Google Ad Manager, you will have pretty tangible numbers to work with when approaching advertisers (assuming, of course, that you have already run at least one test advertisement on your website).

• Keep it personal.
  Don’t send email advertisers with a cut-and-pasted pitch. Advertisers will more likely take action if they feel you have personally researched their product and matched it carefully to your website.

These statistics will be a great help when you are fully prepared to approach your first advertiser. Your goal is to show how you’ll be able to leverage your audience to deliver a  highly targeted customer  to them.

Once you able to achieve this effectively, you making your client/prospective client that you’ve got value even if your traffic is relatively low.

KEEP ADVERTISERS HAPPY

So, now you’ve been to close a deal with your first advertiser. Excellent work! But getting the advertiser is merely the first step. If you want to develop a long-term relationship with your advertisers, you’ll need to know how to  keep them happy:

• Give them the information they want.
  Conversation rates are king. To keep advertisers happy, deliver information on how their ads are doing. The good news is that most advert-management services have built-in reporting that sends advertisers updates on how their adverts are doing.

• Promote your website.
  Give your advertisers your best content and promotions. That may mean holding back some premium content while you get advertisers lined up, especially if you will be guest posting or foresee a huge spike in traffic. You want all of your ads positioned so that they can take advantage of that new traffic.

• Keep them informed.
  Introducing a new advert size? Writing a new series of articles? Give your current advertisers the first crack at these premium adverts spots.

• Run promotions.
  Advertisers love a deal. Sweeten the pot with occasional promotions. This is a great way to bring back former advertisers that have recently dropped out.

• Get feedback.
  Ask your advertisers outright what they think. They’ll appreciate that you care, and you will receive a heap of useful information that you can use to improve your advert strategy.

 Sell Ads Yourself Or Join A Network?

Handling your own online advertising or joining a large online advertising network each has its pros and cons. Some large networks may not give you the time of day if you don’t have enough traffic to begin with. Here are some ways to sell online advertising; you can mix and match methods to come up with your own solution.

SELL DIRECTLY

If you prefer the hands-on approach, then you’ll probably want to sell your online advertising spots directly to advertisers. Using one of the following programs will ease some of the stress that comes with selling directly:

• OpenX
  OpenX is an open-source online advertising server that is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

• OIO Publisher
  A WordPress and stand alone advert manager.

• Random / Rotating Ads
  Advert plug-in for WordPress

• Easy Ad-Manager
  A stand alone advert manger.

For more options and management tips, check out the article  Advert Management Plug-Ins And Tutorials For Your Website.

Remember, handling your own ad sales will net you the biggest slice of the profit, but it also requires the most work.

• Limit your offer
  No advertiser wants to see 10 different “Advertise Here” boxes on your website. Start small by offering one online advertising slot, and then increase as you sell them.

• Get the word out.
  Use social network websites such as Twitter to spread the news that you have online advertising spots available. You don’t want to spam your network, but an occasional reminder won’t hurt.

• Partner with websites with similar interests.
  If your traffic is too low to attract the kind of advertisers you’re interested in, why not partner with other websites that share your interest? Start your own mini-network, and then offer advertisers the opportunity to pay one price to advertise on multiple websites.

• Start a promotion.
  In the beginning, you may have to give away advert spots for nothing or next to nothing. So, offer a promotion to get advertisers in the door. If you’ve done your research and you deliver high-quality traffic, those advertisers will be much more willing to pay when the promotion runs out. Remember to track outbound traffic on these links because it contains valuable information that you can use when you contact your next advertiser.

 SELLING THROUGH ADVERT NETWORKS

Advert networks can put you in touch with many more advertisers, but they also take a large piece of your bottom line. Often this large piece will be insignificant, considering the network will allow you to sell more online advertising space. Here are a few good networks to try:

BuySellAds.com

Unless you live in a cave, you’ve probably already heard of BuySellAds.com. Though a relative newcomer to the online advertising scene, BuySellAds.com has achieved great market penetration. One caveat is that it focuses on websites for designers and developers. So, if your website falls beyond this category, you may want to try elsewhere.

Project Wonderful

Project Wonderful is a great place to start your online advertising campaign because its requirement to join is relatively low. The idea behind the website is to allow potential advertisers to bid on your ad spots. The more that advertisers want what you offer, the higher your daily online advertising rate.

While Project Wonderful promises to bring advertisers to you, you may find yourself sitting in the 0 naira per day budget range as you build traffic or until an advertiser decides to try you out.

Chitika
Chitika is a little different than other online advertising networks because it scans the search strings of people who are directed to your website and then saves up ads that match those search strings. Think of it like Google AdSense with a twist.

Whichever online advertising network you choose, make sure it pays per click (i.e. pays money for every click the advert gets) rather than using CPM (i.e. money for every thousand views your website gets).

Here are some additional ad networks:

• AdBrite
• Adify
• AdsDAQ
• ValueClick Media
• Google AdSense
• The Deck
• Yahoo! Publisher Network

Be Careful With Your Online Advertising

Not all advertisers will be a good fit for your website, and you may be forced to decide whether to run an online advertising that falls beyond your website’s objectives.

For example, you’ve probably seen hundreds of websites lately that advertise teeth whitening and weight loss services. While the revenue from such adverts is probably good, would the adverts be appropriate for your audience?

Ask yourself these questions before deciding to run an ad:

• Does this online advertising fit the content of my website?

• Would the online advertising offend or annoy my visitors?

• Would it distract visitors from the content?

• Would it call into question the integrity of my website?

Always remember that  any  advertisement that drives away traffic from your website, even if it pays wells, will ultimately damage rather than help.

You will hear loud and clear from your community if it thinks you have sold out for online advertising money. Don’t let it get to that point; set firm online advertising standards  ahead of time.

Review

Selling online advertising on a low-traffic website doesn’t have to be mission impossible. With the right research and pitch, you’re good to go on landing your first advertiser. Finding out what works for you and your website doesn’t mean picking one strategy and sticking with it.

Try multiple approaches, and track the results. Whether you prefer to sell your own online advertising spots, partner with other websites or join a network, mix and match methods to create a strategy that works for you. Advertising on your website is an ongoing organic process that takes research, patience and time.

Did you enjoy this article? We give away 98% of our digital marketing resources for FREE. Right now, I want to prove that to you, join our community right now for FREE access to our actionable digital marketing resources to help you increase your sales and customer base online faster. It is absolutely FREE.