Marketing and Advertising On ActiveRain - How To Create and Setup Ads
Your ActiveRain BLOG is not necessarily the best place to be marketing and advertising your goods or services to other ActiveRain members. Promoting and marketing yourself is great but is there a more effective and efficient way than using your Blog to do it? Maybe, but you'll never know if you don't try it or know about it right?
One of my favorite quotes from Ardell DellaLoggia, another member here on ActiveRain: "Blogging is the show, not the commercial. If you make it into a commercial, then your readers will go get a sandwich, like they do when a commercial comes on T.V."
Advertising on ActiveRain is easy and you can set it up yourself using the built-in Advertising feature.
Step By Step Instructions:
1. Login to ActiveRain then click on the 
link located in the upper right corner of your screen.
2. On the left side of your MY HOME page, you'll see the link to "Advertise with AR" just click it~
3. To create a New Ad Campaign click the
link to begin.
The following screen will appear.
4. All you need to do now is add the proper URL or WEB address for your Ad and then a 125x125 image for your ad. Your image can be custom created using whatever graphics application you prefer, I use picnik.com to create some quick, easy, and free graphics with effects. If your credit card information is not on file, you'll need to enter that as well.
5. Once you're satisfied with your settings, click the button 
and you're DONE!
Be sure you don't refresh your Browser screen or hit the back button at this point.
This entire process takes less than 2 minutes not including the time it may take to create your graphic and to find your credit card. I've spent more time in the past just trying to find my wallet and keys. lol~
Your Ad will now appear on many of the millions of pages located through-out the AR Community.
The question you might have now is "how effective is this and will it work for me?" There are plenty of other people using this on ActiveRain, just click on any of the Ad campaigns you see on future pages while you're browsing around. Contact these companies or individuals to see if it's working for them?
I'm sure they'll have no problem with you contacting them, and I'm certain they won't have a problem telling you if this is working for them or not.... I mean, why would they be continuing to do it if it wasn't? You can also try it yourself for 30 days then drop it like a bad habit if it doesn't work for you. Marketing and Advertising is changing the "face" of the WEB, are you getting the most from the "faces" seeing your ads?
"Learn More. Get More. Do More. Be More."
Thanks for some great info and for reminding me to "make it the show." Sometimes is easy to become distracted and make it a commercial.
Thanks Brad - I had no idea of the cost for the ads ...
Nice analogy from Ardelle. Perhaps all of our marketing should consider the approach.
I was wondering what the cost of an ad was. Timely post. Thanks, Brad.
Kathy
There are other forms of advertising available on AR too, the newsletter, the feature board spot etc. but this is one that I see some of our members not taking advantage of, at least until now. :-)
and if your ad isn't doing much on your blog it certainly doesn't belong in a comment on another member's post... Glenn left his own post to get a sandwich during the commercials.
Comment spamming members is probably the worst thing you can do here to win friends and influence people. The cost may end up much higher than paying for an ad to sell your book, sell leads, sell SEO, sell websites...
Re "spamming members is probably the worst thing you can do here to win friends and influence people"... exactly!
Active Rain ads are great for certain products and they have mixed results to be truthful. I know there are two camps on the promoting on your blogs. I believe that as long as you are providing great content in between your promotions, they are actually the most effective way to get new clients and prospects. Your blog is also the best way to build your own list. Most of the agents that hire us for coaching and take our SEO classes have connected with us through the content I write but also every time I post a promotional piece on my blog I get new clients, every time, someone either emails me or calls me to get on board. I have only lost less than a handful of readers, I can count those on one hand. Again, it is all about how you pay it forward and then ask for the sale.
When I am looking for a product or service to buy I actually search the blog posts about the products and ignore the ads on the side bar. Katerina
I agree with Katerina I search AR posts for what i need.
very interesting...
a different take on AR and what it is and does
thanks
vjmc
Shame some VA's were not using this, I did not have time to read all their blogs to find some-one I felt was a good fit! Perhaps the cost for them was too much. I am sure Wordpress get a lot from their Agent press theme, it has some cool features and I found it here.
Brad, I also love Ardell's analogy: "Blogging is the show, not the commercial. If you make it into a commercial, then your readers will go get a sandwich, like they do when a commercial comes on T.V."
Leilani
Brad, for the right person or vendor it is another piece of the puzzle they should be putting together.
Hi Brad. It obviously works for some businesses.
Okay Brad! Let's do it. It should be live now.
If I was a vendor I think I'd stay with the $39/month 'all you can blog' choice. Done the right way, it can generate much better relationships and more traffic than a tile ad.
I think that the ads probably work best for those who provide a service to real estate agents--like short sale negotiation services. Hey... maybe I should place an ad.
Brad...Where I live and do business my market is $75,000-125,000.00...Could you do a post on the lesser costs for advertising on AR?...$299 (300.00 actually) would get me a month long front cover on my local Real Estate mag...Thanks for the post though...It did make me think about it...Enjoy the day.
Clear as can be--thanks Brad. Would be nice to have some stats on how successful these ads are--but probably impossible to gage.
Thanks for the explanation Brad. I always wondered about this.
I think I will hold on to my money. Maybe go to disneyland or something. as the bloggers state..its more vendor driven that Realtor from this view. Thanks for a great day of seeing your blogs.
Love,
Lynne Pope
www.teamatthebeach.com
My thought is that if over 2,000,000+ unique visitors are hitting AR monthly, then having any kind of ad, marketing, or advertising on some of those pages would only apply to those individuals you see benefiting from them already now.
I agree that most vendors are the ones that see marketing and advertising on AR as a great tool, but thinking outside the box, would a lender or agent or title company... even home inspector or stager not benefit from additional exposure on all those pages that consumers see too?
This advertising feature and marketing option is clearly not for every member, especially if your budget does not justify the ROI, but from the many requests I was seeing come into the ticket box on a daily basis, I felt a tutorial post was in order, at least for all those folks asking.
Thanks for all the great feedback and comments, you guys are always on it! :-)
wow - there is an Active Rain tool bar for browsers?! Cool!
I remember that quote from Ardell Brad and I laugh every time I see it!
Thank you Brad...a couple of questions.
Is there a resource on AR that provides traffic counts and demographic inform? How many impressions are included in a "share"? Is there data on CTRs for various product/service ads run in the past available?
John - there is a stats section on impressions located within the link when you setup your ads. You can also check with Bob Stewart to see if there are any other stats available regarding CTRs run previously. I'm not sure what stats I don't have access to that may be accessible by the corporate office.
Just FYI... I ran a sample ad as a test awhile back and had 1000's of impressions with multiple contacts and traffic generated and converted from the ad. For me personally, it worked out great.
I did see this morning that there are some Real Estate Companies also taking advantage of the ad space as well.
Here's one who has also incorporated the FaceBook Social Media as part of the ad:
Thank you for sharing the information. I am going to give this some thought and bookmark your post.
I like the quote "Blogging is the show, not the commercial"!
Great take on this avenue plus priceless information on the how to.
Thanks for this thorough post.
I have often wondered how effective the ad campaigns are Brad. There is a huge audience here at AR if you have a great product to offer!
It's showtime! Our posts ahould be gala events, you are so right and we should view our posts through the reader's eyes.
Thanks for the ad information-good to know!
I tried advertising on the activerain ads a couple months ago and was a bit disappointed with the results. I got much fewer clicks than I anticipated getting and no sales for the product that I had up. Partly I am sure that is a result that it was during the time that activerain was going through the server change issue and was intermittently inaccessible for part of the time my ad was running, but still I did not get the results I was hoping.
Sorry to be negative about it, but I did not feel it was worth it for me based on my experience with that ad.
Hopefully others who try it have better luck with it.
Robert - it's great to have your honest feedback, it's important so AR staff can figure out how to make this more efficient and more effective for those using it. Thanks for being honest and candid, I value that more than you know. :-)
I am now a Tweaker....Or is that a Tweeter
Hey Earl - that's great, CONGRATS!!
Just be careful, those who get addicted to tweeting can easily become tweakers! lol :-)
I am still firmly on the fence, Brad, when it comes to marketing on Active Rain... but I will keep my ear to the ground for more information...
Chris - if you ever need their help or assistance with this stuff, just contact advertising@activerain.com, they can explain more details on all the ad and marketing ops available to members.
I'm just getting started with the blogging but I'm open to trying this in the future. Where could I find more information about the newsletter option you mentioned?
Hey Doug - you can contact Bob Stewart at ActiveRain and he can hook you up. You'll find his contact info on the "about" link located at the bottom of any ActiveRain page. Welcome to ActiveRain, I'm sure you'll find a lot of great info here and build some awesome relationships if you put in the effort. Enjoy! :-)
HI Brad,
Thanks for putting this together. I'm learning a little at a time about AR. I like your analogy of commerical versus show. I guess I just don't know who we would be advertising to? Our fellow agents or prospective clients??
Suzanne - your target audience and perspective clients. Of course advertising that you take and pay referrals isn't a bad idea either??? :-)