10 Top Tips for Creating a Successful Advertising Program with Joomla!

Google’s AdSense program is the default choice for many publishers but it’s not always the best choice. Not only are publishers reliant on Google’s algorithms to deliver ads that suit their visitors, their designs to attract clicks and their inventory to find advertisers, but they’re also giving up 32 percent of the value of their website real estate. Google only shares 68 percent of the advertising sales price with its publishers.

The alternative is to build your own advertising program with Joomla.

It’s not as hard as you think — and it can be a great deal more lucrative than you imagine.

Here are 10 tips that will help you to create a successful advertising program with Joomla.

1. Create a WorkFlow

Your first step will be to create a workflow and a financial outline of the service your site will offer. You’ll need to know every step the advertiser might take and every scenario that could unfold as a result of taking that step.

The workflow should be built around a “perfect system,” the simplest route from reading about the offers to choosing a package, uploading the ads and purchasing the campaign. But it should also include the ways in which the advertiser could request technical help or pull down a report. You’ll want to be ready.

2. Plan the Sale

The workflow lets you plan the offer but sellers also need to know exactly what they’re offering. Before starting to offer advertising, you’ll need to know:

• The amount of advertising inventory you can comfortably handle;
• The number of impressions you can deliver for that inventory;
• How you can increase impressions for that inventory over set periods;
• And the average industry pricing for the models you’ll be using.

While it may be possible to increase inventory broadly, each expansion may carry extra costs involved in collecting the inventory and managing it.

3. Know How You’ll Manage the Program

In practice though, each advertiser may need an account rep to work with them

Ideally, an advertising program will be entirely hands-off. Advertisers will be able to choose a package and submit their ads, and you won’t need to do any more than approve the campaign and send a reminder when it’s up for renewal — and sometimes, not even that.

In practice though, each advertiser may need an account rep to work with them. You will need to be available to answer questions both before the sale and afterwards, and you’ll need to draw up a plan and a script to handle each of the most important aspects of the site/advertiser relationship.

You should know how you plan to manage marketing outreach, client contact, sales follow-up and even customer service surveys.

It’s not a lot of work but you should know what to expect.

4. Build Your Tech Support

Tech support shouldn’t just be an option for troubleshooting; it should be a sales point that reassures potential clients that they’ll never need to struggle. The support might consist of live chat, a FAQ section, a forum/knowledge base, direct support e-mail or a support ticket system.

The more types of help you can offer clients, the better, but bear in mind that each option will take a different amount of time and require a different level of investment.

5. Offer Targeting

The better you can target your ads, the more you can charge for them

The better you can target your ads, the more you can charge for them. Smart advertising programs can offer a choice of three different kinds of targeting:

Geo-Targeting

Geo-targeting allows advertisers to display ads based on the geographic area of the viewer. They help to ensure that their ads are local, their products are reachable and the ad appears in the reader’s language. So the owner of a pizza restaurant could be sure that his ads are only being seen in the areas to which he delivers, and a fashion designer could show her ads in French, Italian or English depending on where her buyers are viewing the page.

Geo-targeting should be a basic feature of the advertising program you offer.

Social Targeting 

Social targeting lets advertisers target their ads according to demographic data such as age, gender or education — or a mixture of that data. So a wedding planner could make sure that her ads were only seen by women aged 30-plus with college degrees.

Combine social targeting with geo-targeting and you’re already on your way to a powerful advertising program.

Keyword Targeting 

Keyword targeting returns ads based on the advertiser’s or the website admin’s chosen keywords. It’s a valuable, accurate way to make sure that ads are shown on appropriate pages. You’ll just need to make sure that your keyword metatags are set up properly.

6. Offer a Free Package

Letting your advertisers try your program before they commit can greatly increase your conversion rate. Advertisers want to see their return before they spend their cash. Limiting the number of impressions your advertisers receive, for example, will show them exactly what you can deliver without either of you having to give too much away.

However you choose to do it, let advertisers know about your free package. Encourage them to upload their banners and ads while they’re trying it out so that they can see exactly how it works and what they can get from it. The more engaged they are, the more likely they are to buy.

7. Don’t Hide Your Advertising Program on Your Site – Promote It!

Don’t Hide Your Advertising Program on Your Site – Promote It!

A common mistake made by publishers is to hide the advertising link in some out-of-the-way corner of the site, as though advertising were something to be ashamed of. It isn’t. Make your advertising opportunities clear.

Place a big “Advertise on this site” link above the fold and keep the “Advertise here” link in as many of your zones as possible.

8. Invest Time in Your “Overview Page”

The Overview page is where you get to sell your advertising program. Include graphs about your traffic, add testimonials, provide details about your demographics, and more.

Don’t be afraid to market your site. You built that data, now sell it!

9. Offer Promo Codes

Promo codes can be a very effective way to convince doubters to buy your advertising program

. Send a code in an email, announce it in your newsletter or share it on social media and watch your orders rocket.

That’s especially true when you limit the code to 72 hours and keep the code simple. Any more than eight characters and people start to mis-type it.

10. Take Recurring Payments

When a campaign ends, you don’t want to give the advertiser a chance to think again. If you’re using PayPal, you can set the campaign to renew automatically.

The advertisers keep their traffic, and you keep your revenue!

If all that sounds complicated, you can relax. Joomla users have a simple solution. iJoomla’s Ad Agency has all the features we’ve described here. From targeting to free trials and from promo codes to recurring payments, you’ll be in complete control of your advertising program.

You’ll also be able to:

• Use zones to place ads in any module position;
• Choose to display ads vertically or horizontally;
• Create packages based on CPM, CPC or time limits;
• Create inventory zones;
• And even rotate banners to increase clicks and views.

Take a look at Ad Agency and start taking all of your site’s advertising value.