Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

Have you considered a small campaign in Advertising Age? They have both a hardcopy weekly newspaper and an online/electronic version. Your target audience is probably reading one or the other.

Are you sure your Adwords campaign is well-targeted? Is the copy right? Are your landing pages message-matched with the ads? (If you'd like me to take a quick look at both, let me know via email. Use the email address in my profile. No cost or obligation.)

P.S. Your website does not indicate any benefit for someone in your target audience to read the content, no vivid image to register the subject matter, and calls-to-action above the fold that are easy to miss. If your Adwords copy and landing pages have similar problems, perhaps that's why the Adwords campaign isn't delivering great results.

Is the problem that people are not clicking on the ads, or that they don't convert after they have clicked? Do you have a high bounce rate? It's important to identify the right problem before we try to solve it.

Is your problem that you're not get visitors or not getting visitors to sign up? If it's the latter, it may simply be because that your sign up link is well-hidden (it took me awhile, even though I knew it must be somewhere).

You are still avoiding a clear focus on the BENEFIT for your target audience. Will it make them rich, sexy or thin? Will it get them promoted? Will it make them the envy of their friends? Will their families love them more? WHY would someone be better off if they get your newsletter? Not clear at all.

Also, the 24-times-a-year feature is a two-edged sword. Some folks might resist anything that requires so much of their time on an ongoing basis. Another reason to focus on the BENEFIT, not on features. (Is there something magic about 24? Since it's free, the cost per issue is no more or less than if you had 12 per year or 52 per year.)

It's critically important to offer a must-have BENEFIT -- in your ad and as the headline on your landing page. Without that compelling benefit, your ad and your website are just a lot of words.

What keywords are you bidding on? The keywords and the ad copy must match. And sending people to the same landing page for all ads/keywords is clearly not the best approach.

I suggest you pick up a copy of Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords, by Perry Marshall and Bryan Todd ( https://amzn.to/L89mpf ). It will help you understand Google Adwords much better.

Backing up the two comments above, it is crucial to understand the medium you are using. The display network is to my mind still the best option for you, only you need to be even cannier than with Adwords.

If your advertisement for adwords is anything to go by - you are under-using this immensely powerful channel.

I would suggest in response to what Mr. Goodman has said about the frequency of your newsletters - ask your audience! See if they want 24 issues - 12, 6 or 500! See which gets the best results in an Adwords campaign. That will tell you what we marketers cannot tell you - what your market thinks. Our skills are not about your market, our skills are in telling - showing - you who your market is and how they think. On each occasion we will do this differently and use different techniques as are demanded by the situation. The results will be what you need.

If you read Perry Marshall's book through, implement everything he says, your adwords campaigns will be good. You can also use Howie Jacobson's "Google Adwords for Dummies" which is equally good at laying down the law.

The hardest part of Adwords is to ask the questions your audience is asking, not to answer them. People don't search online because they have the answer: they search online because they do not.

Adwords is great for those who are searching for what you have. Not everybody even knows about what you are selling - and the display network is the most powerful tool at getting people to be aware of what you have before they even know they need it. The problem is that getting the display network right is no easy matter. When you get it right, you will get 500 signups a week.

One thought about pricing. FREE isn't necessarily the best price. The price you set is a reflection of what you think the product is worth. And it also raises red flags in many folks' minds. "Free things are worth what you pay for them." "There must be a catch?"

Remember that your target audience is already interested in advertising to the Hispanic market. They're prepared to spend money to reach that audience. What you are offering should be worth a lot more to them than whatever you're charging -- even if it's $500/year. If it isn't worth that much, then they probably shouldn't subscribe to the newsletter in the first place -- free or not.

This is why it's so important to establish a BENEFIT before you get into the price (free or otherwise). As it is, it seems that you are offering something that has no benefit, so you're giving it away free ... and nobody is taking it (perhaps because they don't know why they might want it).

FREE isn't a reason to "buy" something; it's a statement about what the seller thinks it's worth.