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James Palmer
James Palmer
Freelance Copywriter
Flowery Branch, Georgia
Articles » Marketing & Sales »
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How to Promote Your Landing Page or Sales Letter When You Don't Have a List

You've got a great online sales letter, but no customers. Copywriter James Palmer shows you how to generate sales when your product is the new kid on the block.

Written Jul 22, 2008, read 419 times since then.

 

You’ve got a killer information product matched to a hungry target audience ready and willing to buy it. You’ve got your website up with a landing page and a sales letter, and you’re ready to rock and roll. But there’s just one thing missing.

Your list! If you’re a new kid on the Internet marketing block, you’ll still need a targeted list of interested prospects, or you’ll never make a dime. That great product and website will never sell in a vacuum. 
 
The good thing is, no list, no problem! Here’s 5 great ways to promote your product without a list.
 
1. Post ads in niche publications
 
If you’re going after a large enough target market, there are plenty of print and online publications that cater to it. If you’re selling dog training videos, for example, there are plenty of print dog magazines, and there are probably a few electronic zines as well. Subscribe to them and ask the site owner what his or her ad rates are. E-zines are good marketing avenues for the budget conscious, as the cost for an ad is often much cheaper than print magazines. Some e-zines will even have ad-writing tips and resources to help you, since the better your ad does, the more ad space they can sell! Write an ad and let it run for a few months.
 
2. Get Endorsements
 
Some e-zine publishers don’t run ads, but endorse products they personally believe in. For those folks, send them a copy of your product and let them review it. If they like it, they’ll tell their readers about it, and you’ll get free advertising! 
 
3. Pay Per Click Ads
 
Thanks to Google AdWords, pay per click ads are the newest rage in marketing your products. You can set up an AdWords account in 15 minutes and show your product to the world. It can be tricky and complex to learn—and you can go broke if you don’t know what you’re doing--but there are plenty of resources available. Check out the books AdWords for Dummies by Howie Jacobson and Perry Marshall’s Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords.
 
4. Signature Marketing
 
This one takes a little time, but if you stick with it for a while, it will pay off for you. There are thousands of online forums, each of which caters to a specific interest. If you’ve selected a large enough target market, there’s probably at least one online forum where your target market goes to chat. 
 
Just sign up as a forum member and spend a few days reading the posts. In your signature file, put your name, a quick offer such as “Sign up for my FREE report”, and include a link to your site. When someone asks a question relating to your product, answer it. Don’t try to sell them or otherwise direct them to your site. Your signature will do that.  The more people visit that forum topic, the more people will see your site link in your signature file, and the more they will visit and maybe even buy!
 
5. Clickbank
 
Clickbank.com is a huge online market place for ebooks and other information products. People register their products with the site, and then offer affiliate commissions to people who advertise these products to their lists. An affiliate commission is just a percentage of each sale. With a good product, you can have hundreds, even thousands of people selling for you, your own personal sales force doing all your work for you!
 
One final tip: Don’t go straight for the sale. In the long run, building a list will be more important and profitable for you, especially when you don’t have a list to begin with. Create a squeeze page that offers a free report in exchange for visitors’ names and email addresses. That way, even if they don’t buy right now, you can sell to them later, and offer future products to them.
 
And there it is, 5 great ways to generate buzz for your brand new information product when you don’t have a list. Now get out there and start selling!
 

Learn more about the author, James Palmer.

Comment on this article

  • EROCA ZEVIAR
    Posted by EROCA ZEVIAR, OTTAWA, Ontario Canada | Jul 22, 2008

    if you don't have a lot of start up $ maybe Hi Rise ads would be a good small way to start.

  • Tia Peterson
    Posted by Tia Peterson, Erie, Pennsylvania | Jul 22, 2008

    Thanks, James - this is a really great topic and I'm glad you wrote about it. It can be really difficult to get that sales page into visibility without "a list."

    Another method is to team-promote. If you can partner with another person who shares your target audience, you can reach an agreement where you promote on their site or blog (or email list) in exchange for the same.

    This method has worked really well for me.

  • Sean Harry
    Posted by Sean Harry, Portland, Oregon | Jul 23, 2008

    Thanks James. Do you have some other tips on using Adwords? I did a trial run but got nowhere. Perhaps my key words weren't the right words, or ??? Any tips for finding the right words to attract my customers?

    Sean Harry www.orcms.com

  • James Palmer
    Posted by James Palmer, Flowery Branch, Georgia | Jul 23, 2008

    Hi Sean,

    That's a great question. AdWords can be pretty complicated. Did you test different versions of your ads? As for determining the best keywords, there are a few keyword tools you can use.

    www.lexfn.com is a great site for finding synonyms for your keywords, which will help you find negative keywords. Negative keywords are words you deploy when you don't want someone who types in a particular word to see your ad. For example, if you're selling baseball bats, you don't want your ad to appear for searches on the flying mammal kind of bat.

    Google has a nice keyword tool that shows you the average searches for each word and other info here: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

    This tool shows you the top 100 searches for your keyword and the number of searches each term received: http://loweryourbidprice.com/freekeywords/

    Other paid keyword tools include:

    www.keyworddiscovery.com www.wordtracker.com www.keycompete.com

    There's even a free keyword tool you already have: your server log. It keeps track of the words people are already using to find your site.

    Another tip is to use common misspellings of your keywords, transposed letters, even variations like 'email', 'e-mail', and 'e mail'. You'll get a relatively large number of clicks at a lower price because hardly anyone else thinks to bid on these.

    Good luck!

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Article tags

  • copywriting
  • marketing
  • online marketing
  • internet marketing
  • sales letters
  • sales letter
  • sales letter writing
  • online sales letter
  • online sales letters

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