So you’re looking to generate leads and build your list. Regardless of whether you’re a network marketer of an affiliate marketer, running solo ads will expedite your list building process. And ‘yes’ – in the online marketing space, your goal is to build a list of highly responsive leads that you have rapport with. In this article, I’ll cover why solo ads are a good idea, some tips to running a successful ad and a few personal tips that will take your marketing and list building to another level.

First and foremost, let me cover why solo ads make sense and what they actually are. As I mentioned earlier, having a list is critical in the online marketing space. When you have a relationship with people on your list, you can share offers with them. Offers can be anything from affiliate products to actual network marketing opportunities. While I’m not saying that you shouldn’t market offline, I am telling you that online marketing and having a list can create a tremendous amount of leverage for you.

For example, if you had a list of 1,000 people in your database and you shared an offer that only garnered you a 1% ration of success, you would have 10 people take you up on your offer and buy or join whatever it is you’re promoting. To put that in perspective, let me give you an network marketing-specific example using those same numbers (1% of 1,000 leads).

Let’s say you put together some good email copy and sent that email to your list. And let’s say you had to follow up that email with another one just to follow up on your initial offer, you would personally sponsor 10 people in 24-48 hours and all you did was send out some emails.

Now, how much work and how much time would you spend meeting with people one-on-one in Starbucks to personally sponsor 10 people if you were strictly offline? Keep, in mind that you’ll spend a good amount of time meeting with people that say ‘no’. Realistically, you may have to meet with and do 20-30 one-on-one meetings to bring on 10 new people into your business.

Can you see the potential to leverage your time and efforts? Obviously, I’m not telling you to disregard effective offline techniques and meetings. However, you can significantly make your life easier if you embrace online marketing and list building.

Now, before I get off track, let me tie this all together for you and go into why solo ads are effective.

If you’re brand new to online marketing, chances are you have a tiny list or don’t have one at all. Before you throw your hands up in frustration, all is not lost. If you don’t have a list of your own yet, why not just email someone else’s list? That’s exactly what a solo ad allows you to do. You pay someone to share your offer (affiliate product, business opportunity, etc.) with a list of buyers and prospects that they have already built. Pretty cool, huh?

Now, why do they call it a “solo” ad?

Because your offer will go out in an email without anyone else’s offer. Solo ad providers will often run 3-5 offers in one email to their list. This is to let people who are on a really tight budget still get their offer promoted. Unfortunately, when your offer is lumped together with 2-4 other offers, it dramatically affects your conversion rate. Solo ads ensure that your offer is the only one people will see, which is significantly better than if your offer was grouped with others.

With all that said, let me give you 6 tips to making your solo ad marketing more effective.

Solo Ad Tip #1. Run Solo Ads With Relevant Providers

By far, this is the most critical part of running a successful ad. There are literally hundreds of places to run solo ads. They key is to find providers that are specific to the niche you’re trying to target. For example, if you’re targeting people for a network marketing offer, you’re not going to run an ad with a provider whose list is primarily made up of pet owners.

Now, if you are marketing an affiliate product that would be good for pet owners, then you may want to target a list composed of pet owners. But you certainly would not promote a network marketing opportunity to them. My point is that you need a niche-specific solo ad provider. If you miss this point, not only will you get horrendous results but you’ll just be wasting your money.

Solo Ad Tip #2. Contact The Provider Before Ordering A Solo Ad

Common sense tells you that you should only give your money to someone who is responsive and actually gets back to you if you contact them. Before I run a solo ad, I always contact the provider just to see how fast they get back to me, or if they even get back to me at all. If I don’t any response whatsoever, I do not run an ad with that specific provider because I know the customer service will be horrible. Another important thing that contacting the provider allows you to do is ask them if there are other people running similar offers, and how responsive is their list to the kind of offers that look like yours.

Solo Ad Tip #3. Create Good Ad Copy

Good copy writing can make or break your marketing results. It’s important that you write a compelling offer that people will want to click. That does not mean you have to create a hype-filled “spammy” ad. In fact, doing that will yield you minimal results since people get that all day long and will just want to ignore your offer. You need to create ad copy that tells people what they will get and how they will benefit by looking at your ad or clicking the links in your ad. While having good copy in the actual body of your solo ad is important, the biggest component of your solo ad is the subject line. Without a good subject line, people won’t click your ad to even get to the actual body of the ad. Keep this in mind, when you’re putting your solo ad together.

Solo Ad Tip #4. Make Sure You Are Capturing All The Leads

Make sure that when people click through your ad, they end up on a lead capture page. Do not send them to a page that doesn’t allow you to capture their email information. Doing so will take away your ability to follow up and build your list. With that said, I highly suggest that you have your Aweber account integrated with your capture page so you can capture, own and store all your leads. Missing this point will nullify what you’re trying to do in the first place… which is build your list.

Solo Ad Tip #5. Monetize Your List

Keep in mind that emailing someone else’s list is not a magic formula that will guarantee that people buy or join. If you’re running a good ad with good copy with a relevant provider, you will get results. But since you’re paying for running the ad, it’s critical that you monetize all the leads that you get from the ad. This just makes business sense. Personally, after my initial offer and follow up, I promote 2-3 other affiliate offers to those leads that they may want to take me up on. Often times, the profits I make from the ‘follow up’ offers more than pay for the actual ad. Utilizing this methodology has allowed me to consistently run solo ads and stay profitable. Ultimately, even if the leads don’t take you up on any affiliate offers, you can always “back end” them into your primary network marketing business.

Solo Ad Tip #6. Test Small, Track Your Stats And Scale Up

With any solo ad provider, you want to test small the first time you order a solo ad with them. Don’t go overboard and dump an obscene amount of money on a solo ad without knowing if it even converts well. Run a small solo ad first and track your stats so you know if it’s a good provider to run with. Once you see that the provider is worth running with, then and only then, should you scale up and run bigger ads with them. With that said, when you test a small ad and the results are “below average”, that doesn’t necessarily mean that your offer isn’t good or the provider isn’t good. You may want to run a small test using a different subject line or tweaking the body of the ad. This is just one example of why you should be aware of keeping track with your stats.

So there you have it. Personally, I’ve been able to significantly increase my lead flow using solo ads. In fact, I’ve been able to automate a portion of my “lead flow” because I’ve been able to run monthly solo ad orders in a systematic way that enables me to stay profitable.

Of course that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t blog daily, create videos and create articles. But since solo ads are more of a ‘set-it-and-forget-it’ form of marketing, it should not take up any of your time so you’ll still be able to do those other forms of marketing. Keep these tips in mind the next time you run an ad and you’ll get great results.