Advertising this blog.

My next task is to begin the marketing campaign to attract subscribers to this blog. What complicates this is that I have no list of email subscribers to promote to. Plus, the recent GDPR and PECR legislation in the UK relating to electronic marketing. In the United States and Canda there is the CAN-SPAM Act. Legislation that has teeth. Further, I have no wish to cause reputational damage to myself, bad press, or annoyance to potential customers.

So, I must be careful and ensure any marketing complies with the legislation. It seems there are three lines of approach that remain open to me…

I can send unsolicited paper mail to people. If they have not subscribed themselves to their local equivalent of the Mail Preference Service (MPS). Considering the budgets for mass mailing, that is not a viable starting point considering the costs of stationery, print, and postage. Not to mention my disdain for turning trees into paper, let alone junk mail. Nor the sinking feeling I get when junk mail arrives through my letter box, as it regularly does.

The second approach. Is to send messages to people that have implicitly opted-in to receive messages from me. Such as Facebook friends on the page I want to promote. This could have some promise, but we will also have seen and read about how our posts only ever seem to go to the same group of friends not all contact, but still worth a try.

The third and final approach would be to send bulk un-targeted advertising, which it seems is outside the legislation. It seems if you watch a TV program or buy a magazine; you are not being targeted specifically by the adverts in that media. As far as the legislation is concerned, that makes you a fair target. Why it is ok to send ten million people adverts they don’t want is acceptable? Whereas sending one hundred targeted advertisements to a specifically engaged audience is not acceptable. This remains a mystery to me. One I suspect that has more to do with large commercial budgets within the ad industry.

What I am trying to achieve is to drive new readers and subscribers to this blog. People that want to read the articles posted here, who are happy to subscribe to let them know about new articles on the blog. That is my aim. How am I going to contact this potential audience considering the legislation? A good question. Given I can't even ring you up to ask your permission if I can send you an email, but I can post paper through your letter box without permission. This is more problematic as I want to contact you as private citizen members of the public, not as an employee of the company you work for.

With the above, I find myself at a point where my options seem constrained, especially with a limited, read nonexistent budget. During this run up to the festive period I am going to revisit once again Facebook advertising with a view to get people to subscribe to this blog. Hopefully, this will yield better results than the last time. I will find out on my quest for blog subscribers that will be interested in information about my books. If you receive one of my ads on Facebook, please do not get upset. I have not targeted you specifically.

 

Ben.