Stop Wasting Time and Money on Solo Ad Campaigns

I've been in the marketing industry for over a decade and have seen firsthand what can happen when solo ad campaigns are not used properly.  A number of years ago, I was a solo ad vendor, and for a time it was good, then the market changed.  The industry became full of scams and dodgy solo ad providers.  And spoiled it for so many.

So much time, energy, and money is wasted on these poorly planned campaigns that it's no wonder why companies shy away from them. In this blog post I'm going to talk about some of the common mistakes marketers make with solo ads campaigns and how you can turn things around.

Solo Ads are the name given when you used someone else's email list for advertising or promoting your product.  Is it part of email marketing, you pay someone to do email marketing for you, and to send you a certain number of unique clicks. You would usually give the solo ad vendor, who is also a marketer and list owner,  a tracking link that points to your funnel.  You could also optionally supply the content for an email to be used to drive traffic (known as a swipe). 

You would pay per unique click received, not per subscriber to your list.

This means that your funnel needs to gradually warm up the visitor to first being:

• aware of their problem
• interested in the problem and its solution
• desire the solution as they believe it will fix their problem
• ready to take action and buy.
  

What happens is either you or the solo ad seller will create the swipe, or email, and then the seller will send it to their list.  The point of you creating the email is that you have the opportunity to create a specific email that has the potential to create more highly targeted traffic.  The solo ad seller is more likely to create a generic swipe, unless you ask them to create something to generate targeted solo ads and create highly targeted traffic toward your offer or product.

A quality solo ad vendor will typically more expensive than lower quality ones.  By quality I mean the number of optins per 100 visits being higher and/or the number of purchases per 100 visits being higher.

These solo ads vendors charge more quite simply because buyers are willing to pay more to get the results.

And the flip-side of that statement is that cheaper solo ad vendors generally are cheaper because people are willing to pay less for the results that they can get for the buyer.

It may be that you get a discount for a first order, or they are running a campaign, or because you purchase a lot of clicks, but generally better results command higher prices.

The solo ad industry is full of good providers, and in there that are a number of exceptional solo ad providers.  These are obviously the guys and gals that you are looking to connect with.

There are also people who don't last long in the industry, who send fake clicks and bot traffic.  You'll find these out really quickly.  Most bot traffic won't act like a human, and so are quite easy to trick, and weed out. 

You can make your tracking links do that for you with the tracking software.  If you see in your stats that there is a lot of bad traffic, you can contact them, and ask why.  I have had legitimate solo ad vendors have this happen to them, and they send bad traffic to me.  In this case, they will refund you right away.

So you need to make sure that new vendors to you use a payment system when you can get your money back.  For that to work, at minimum you need to pay via a credit card, or paypal, and can prove that the traffic was bad (meaning tracking software that can detect fake clicks and bot traffic). 

For solo ad traffic to be effective, it must have a high conversion rate compared to other solo ad providers.  That high quality traffic must not be worn out or smashed with offers.  There are many providers who get their traffic from other solo ad providers.  If many of the subscribers from one solo ads vendor is tired, then the conversion rate will be lower, and repeat sales will be less likely.

A really good solo ad vendor will pump fresh traffic into their list from sources other than another solo ad seller list.  This doesn't guarantee that new subscribers are fresh, but there's a lot more chance of that.  Traffic from the sellers often comes from Facebook ads, or Google Ads, and the seller will deal with each case differently to create the desired result for their customers.

These solo vendors then need to build a relationship with the subscribers, to get them warm, and ready to buy.  At this point, this is when those new subscribers will be ready to be sold as clicks.

At the point where the subscribers are warm, they are aware of what affiliate marketing, make money online, or whatever offers are, and know enough to be at the point of finding out what solutions are available to their problem, so that they can purchase.

If a subscriber is tired, or too new and not aware, then that subscriber will not convert.  It takes a reasonable amount of time and effort to keep a solo ad vendors list fresh, full of buyers and enthusiastic.

The solo ad seller will have a list specific to a niche, such as make money online, health, weight loss or whatever.  Make sure that you check the solo ad seller that they target the correct niche.

A lead funnel or sales funnel typically includes the following:

• Optin Page / Landing Page / Squeeze Page - This consists of a headline calling out a problem or alluding to or promising a solution.  This page will usually capture the email of the visitor possibly along with other details.
  
• Confirmation Page - When confirmed or double optin is used, the confirmation page is used to instruct the visitor what they need to do to confirm.  Not required by for single optin.
  
• Thank you / Bridge Page - This thanks the subscriber for  the optin, and can additionally include some marketing to promote one or more offers.  A bridge page is used to warm up the visitor, to move them from awareness of the problem / solution through to making them desire your solution, and hopefully buy.  This page will have a button and/or link with an affiliate link to the offer that you are advertising.
  
• Offer or Sales Page - This directly markets the solution to the subscriber, who if correctly warmed up, will be aware of what solution is required, so marketing to the visitor should now be a case of showing the benefits of the solution, to match those that the visitor believes they want.
  

If each of these pages relates to the previous and the next and tells a story to the visitor that makes sense, builds trust, and gets them excited about solving their problems, it is likely to generate money.

But if that journey does not flow from start to end, then it is unlikely to make money and the return on your advertising spend will be reduce, or worse still zero.

This doesn't mean that the solo ads seller is a scam, it might just mean that you need to gradually improve your funnel, one page at a time, until your can see better results in your stats.

There are many variables at play.  If you have regularly got a fairly consistent optin rate from your traffic, then it is reasonable to expect those results to be roughly comparable.

The solo ad campaign and its related lead generation funnel can fail in a few places:

• Quality of solo ad traffic
• The wrong sort of traffic (e.g. subscribers might be beginners going to an offer for advanced marketers)
  
• Any page loads slowly or fails to load properly
• Any page is not believable
• Optin page message is not what visitors are interested in
• Optin page headline does not create enough curiosity or interest
• Optin page is the same as others, or has been seen by the visitor before
• Bridge page does not warm the subscriber up to the offer
• Bridge page is boring and does not create more curiosity and excitement
• Sales page does not convince the subscriber that this is the solution (the wrong offer)
  
• Sales page is not written in a way that it makes the visitor trust them and buy
• The price is not right (too expensive or possibly too cheap)

This means that the funnel that you are using to capture leads may fail in a number of these areas, and every with the high quality traffic, will only get a 20% opt-in rate, and no sales.

As a solo ad buyer it is your responsibility to ensure that the funnel and offer is right for the solo sellers traffic.  It is the solo sellers responsibility to ensure that emails that result in targeted traffic of the quality expected by you as a buyer.

There are many places to buy solo ad traffic, but as a beginner there are a few that I recommend that you start with.  The reason being that these are platforms for multiple solo ad sellers, who need to ensure the quality of each of the solo ad seller, to keep their business running.

This gives you a third party to go to when you are unsure.

Here are the places that I would recommend:

• Udimi Solo Ads (You will receive a $5 discount)
• TrafficForMe (They regularly have discounts for 50 cent clicks which are worth having)

Solo ads can be a very quick way to build a list that you can market to.  It is the most solid way online to make consistent money.  There are good and bad solo ad sellers, so you need to do your research and look for a seller that has a track record of generating sales, a good reputation, and has been around long enough for people to notice and give feedback if they don't get the results that you'd paid to receive.  Solo ads are very effective method for list building and making money.

A solo ad seller that is charging less that 30 cents per click.  I would leave alone.

You'll be looking for sellers with a higher amount of sales per order.  This is ultimately what you want your subscribers to do.  For Udimi solo ads, this is the number of orders that got sales as a percentage.

Ultimately although, the only way to know how well traffic performs for your funnel, it to test it.

Be smart, don't buy a large amount of clicks from the solo ads seller until you know that they deliver quality traffic.

There are a ton of different funnel building software solutions out there that you can send your solo ads traffic to.

If you want more information on the best website builders, that includes information about funnel building software - click here.

Creating a funnel is not particularly difficult, but it requires another article to discuss what to do.  You can also take a look at Dotcom Secrets below, which I have read many times over.

A good funnel, can lead to a life very different from your current life.  Imagine for a minute that you have a funnel and for every dollar you put into it, you get 3 or 4 dollars out.  You'd feed dollars into that sucks every day of the week.  This is very achievable, but to get to that point takes mastery of the subject.  You are but one funnel away from the life you desire.  Take this challenge and never look back.

One of the best books I have read on how to build that various different funnel that you can build is shown below.  I actually bought the box set with this book in it.

The box set contains everything you might need to know about funnels.

And the book is completely FREE.

They are all the information you need to get started.

Click the image below to get the book, and the box set if you like.  You won't regret it.