Tim Bossie.com

When advertising your business online you have several decisions to make. Each decision is a costly one in terms of time, effort, and money. However, not all decisions are easy to make nor are they cut and dried.

What may work for one website may be completely wrong for another website. The target audience for one type of product might not be so responsive to another product in the same niche. For the most part advertising is in the presentation. But, what do you present? What “face”, so to speak, do you put on your advertising? Do you start with yourself or your website? Decisions. Decision. Questions. Questions.

To answer this question we must keep in mind that there are always more than one “right” answer to many of the questions within online marketing. But, one thing does remain constant. The what or who in your advertising is what is going to determine the response.

I’ve felt for a long time that in order to create a solid foundation for ongoing advertising success you must first brand your name instead of your website. I feel that people can go anywhere to find anything they want, but if they know that you can deliver strong, consistent, relevant, and engaging information they will visit your website, and more probable… all your websites.

Advertising is about building a foundation

Living in the northern part of the U.S. does present itself with it’s share of unique adaptations. One of those is in building a new house. The most important part of the house here in the north is the foundation. Without a foundation, built below the frost line, your new house will be worthless after the first winter. The forces happening with the freezing and thawing out of the ground is too much for a house without a foundation.

Your advertising is much the same way. You have to have a foundation. In the realm of marketing that foundation is called a “brand”. In a recent question I asked of people following me on Twitter, I got some great responses. One of those responses by Stacie Bennett of The No Hype Zone touched on branding. In it she said;

Depends on what you are wanting to brand. Are you trying to brand ‘your name’ or ‘your site’? For me it would depend on situation

Branding is the foundation your build your business on. To do that, in my opinion, is to advertise yourself through your blog, articles, and conversations in other social media or forums. Even if you’re buying ad space in ezines, or using PPC, the most effective form of advertising is with an emphasis on you.

Another one of the people following me, Life Coach Kristen Beireis, had this to say;

I wouldn’t call it advertising yourself, but let people get to know YOU and the website will follow. Just b sure to include a link

When you put yourself first you are accomplishing several things at once.

First, giving people a chance to know you. When people get to know you, even if it’s just your online persona, they begin to feel comfortable with you. That means they will visit your site more often. That means they begin to spend their money with you.

Second, you begin to become an authority. It’s amazing how many people just want to approach online marketing as a ‘hit and run’ maneuvor. They jump into a niche, make some money from Adsense, and jump back out. No foundation. No longevity. No relationship building.

By putting the emphasis on yourself in your advertising you become the authority. The reason that is important is because as time goes on and you begin to put together more products and/or services people already know you can deliver.

Third, the opportunities for rapid expansion are readily available. The end goal for any person marketing anything online is to earn a living. However, the second greatest goal should be to be long lasting. One of the ways to do that is to broaden your authority through rapid expansion. What I mean by that is you are asked to take part in podcast interviews, webinars, guest blogging, and even offline mediums such as radio and television.

With this you can rapidly expand your audience. More people who are hearing you, reading you, and even seeing you means more of a foundation for your website. More traffic. More repeat, and dedicated, visitors. More sales.

Fourth, you begin to develop friendships that are more than just win/win. For me this is the most important. I love my work. I love helping others succeed with their online marketing and advertising. But, I especially love the friendships that are built when you go deeper than just the win/win of product/customer. I love it when I can talk with people I’ve met online, done for work, and have helped them with their business. This only happened through me advertising myself.

“Do you mean I advertise myself, personally?”

While talking with a client a few weeks ago about what it means to build his advertising around her, she asked me that question. The best way to answer that is with an example.

I was working on an ad campaign for a business opportunity that was way over saturated. But, the client was adamant about advertising it even after I suggested that they might want to look at something else instead. “Nope. I spent too much money on this already. I’m not giving up.” Ok.

Instead of advertising the website or opportunity I made the majority of the advertising material personal in nature. I made it focus on the landing page (which is what everyone should do instead of sending traffic to the merchant) and what my client could do for them. No mention of how much money to be made. No mention of the merchant’s website. Just how the person reading the ad will benefit from visiting the my client’s site. Worked great and since then he has been able to sell other products to the same people. In the immortal words of Hannibal Smith of the Hit Series “The A-Team” — “I love it when a plan comes together.”

Which do you advertise? You or your website.

I choose the “you”. Or more specifically what you can offer. Your expertise. Then build from there.

Thoughts? Opinions? I’d love to hear them.

Check tomorrow for the “how” of advertising yourself. Or better yet, subscribe to the RSS feed (it’s up in the right hand corner) and you’ll be notified when it’s ready.

Side Note: I want to thank those who took the time to reply to my tweeted question. I appreciate the value you add to Twitter and what you teach me in your links and 140 character thoughts. Looking forward to more.