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Advice for what to add to my advertising

by Brian Lucas
11 replies
Hello all. Completely new here, came across this site and am curious if I can get some help here.

In August I launched an online piano course. Some advertising on places like backpage.com and a Google Adwords campaign got me about 1,000 visits a month. I'm getting pretty good sales numbers, so I'm interested to try and get in front of more people. My Alexa ranking, if you think that is important is about 3.6 million. My ad budget is about a few hundred per month. I'm just a one man shop trying to do it all alone.

Does anyone have some advice as to what other low cost advertising options there are that I may have overlooked? I've submitted to a bunch of directories, but that seems to be taking forever to get listed.

(Looks like I can't give you the site to check out because I haven't posted enough yet.) I don't know how much I'll be able to contribute (music forums are easier for me to post in), but I'll try to be helpful.

Thanks! Look forward to looking around here and reading more.

-Brian
#add #advertising #advice
  • Profile picture of the author KingOfContentMarketing
    Publicity baby! Take something unique about your course and get the word out! Press releases, elephants, airplane rides! OK, I got a little carried away there but send out press releases online and in your own town's press.
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    Marketing is not a battle of products. It is a battle of perceptions.
    - Jack Trout
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  • Profile picture of the author WebPen
    When you say low cost, do you mean free? Or you're willing to do paid advertising?

    You could try Google Adwords- they're finicky, but great quality traffic if you market to the right keywords/websites (for the display function).

    Facebook might work too- target people who are interested in piano, or any kind of music. You can also target a certain region or age, college educated, etc.
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    • Profile picture of the author MattVit
      Originally Posted by Justin Stowe View Post

      You could try Google Adwords- they're finicky, but great quality traffic if you market to the right keywords/websites (for the display function).
      Originally Posted by Brian Lucas View Post

      In August I launched an online piano course. Some advertising on places like backpage.com and a Google Adwords campaign got me about 1,000 visits a month. I'm getting pretty good sales numbers, so I'm interested to try and get in front of more people. My Alexa ranking, if you think that is important is about 3.6 million. My ad budget is about a few hundred per month. I'm just a one man shop trying to do it all alone.
      Think you missed that Justin


      Could you give some more details on what the course is? That'd help provide direct advice. ie, if it's an eBook course, you could put it on the Clickbank marketplace, etc - need more details.
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      • Profile picture of the author Raimundas M
        Try Youtube, it always works.

        Create a Youtube channel, make it look professional, add your logo, change theme and etc.

        And start creating short videos regulary (or you can cut a small piece from your full course) and upload it to Youtube.

        It takes time, but you can always outsource if you want.
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  • Profile picture of the author Brian Lucas
    Thanks for the replies. I did a free release at PRLog as recommended in another thread. Some of the others are pricey (PR Web for instance). Is it really worth $200-300 for a release? Do they really get you more publicity than say $300 of Google adwords (which for me would be 500-700 clicks.

    I'm willing to pay, but I want to be smart about spending the money I have budgeted. I did a trial ad with Facbook and got little to no response, even targeting people who liked the piano page. backpage.com was by far the most effective per cost, mainly because the cost was cheap, not because it got me tons of page views. Just looking for more avenues.

    Thanks again for the advice. I'll look more into PR opportunities.
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  • Profile picture of the author Top Dog Marketer
    You could easily triple your traffic if you start contacting piano blogs, forums, etc...

    Don't waste time making comments and starting threads. If you want to scale faster just email the owners of those sites, get them on the phone (this is a must), and then close traffic deals.

    Throw a banner up on their site. I don't like to pay more than $1CPM when I use this method. However, most blogs/sites in your niche will probably just want a flat fee.

    Offer them $50 flat for a month for a single banner. You'll be surprised how many people will say yes, because most likely they either dont know how to properly monetize their site or they are running adsense and are making nickels and dimes.

    Good luck!
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    I'm the "Top Dog" when it comes to marketing.

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    • Profile picture of the author Wild
      Offer free piano lessons to the children of the publisher of the local paper.
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  • Profile picture of the author jerry25
    Video advertising and mobile text messaging are both great avenues for advertising. With the text messaging, you can really drill down to the demographics that fit your business.
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  • Profile picture of the author biggcapp
    Dude,

    Are you kidding me? You product is perfect for clickbank. You can have 1000 of "us" selling your stuff online, then you can sit back and concentrate on what you do best...play the piano.

    here is a link about the guy who created truth about abs.....it's a step by step of what he did to make $11 million last year. That's net, his gross was $20-$25 million

    How I built a $1MM/month lifestyle business and how I buy 5MM visitors/month

    Good luck
    Capp
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    Starting My Own - The LifeStyle of an Internet Marketer
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  • Profile picture of the author JCorp
    Try FB ads, set up a fanpage, look for your niche forums and start posting their and possible do some advertising on those forums, and look for blogs in your niche and post comments and possibly do some advertising their as well...
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  • Profile picture of the author Brian Lucas
    Thank you all for the advice to this marketing newbie. Gives me some food for thought.

    The video service I use, Sparkeo, has an affiliate program. I've seen other piano Clickbank programs get a bad name on forums because of affiliate sales and the weird links they create. I'm very aware of branding this early on and don't want to get a bad name. Thoughts?

    The course is 8 online, pay-as-you-go streaming videos, with master class videos being developed. Since each video is separate, I think that would make affiliate sales difficult as well, since I guess I could only offer a commission on the first video. Have others found affiliate programs beneficial, for both sides? If so, how much would you have to make per sale to make it worth advertising it? Definitely not opposed to the idea.

    Already doing the blog thing, which is getting some results. Tried the FB ad to fans of "piano" with not much success. The visitors that were coming were bouncing at a much higher rate than Google, with average time spend considerably lower.

    My promo video is on YouTube (as well as my home page). But I'm probably not using that as well as I could be.

    Thanks again for helping me out. The options are sometimes overwhelming.
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