SEO and Internet Marketing News

Vital Information:

Start-up Investment:

$200 (1st months advertising expense) $400 – $1700 (computer or laptop)

Break-even time: 2 months

Estimate of Annual Revenue and Profit: Revenue $40,000-150,000

Typical Fees: Commissions range from 5% – 20%

Advertising: Direct Mail, Classified ads in trade journals, customer referral incentives Web Site

Greatest Expense: Telephone Bill

The Possibilities of Owning a Home Based Advertising Consulting Business are Immeasurable

Why? Think about it…how many businesses, large and small, can’t use greater exposure for their products or services?

Why not create a Home Based Business that satisfies the needs of other businesses?

An Advertising Sales Representative, Home Business can be quite lucrative.

Here are two examples of how you might approach this Home Business Opportunity:

Your job as an Advertising Sales Representative is to locate “Quality Trade publications” as well as Classified ad locations which targets the customer of the Company you are advertising for.

It’s best to begin with one niche and then expand into another.

Let’s assume that your specialty is in the area of pets. You just love animals. You read magazines; you attend various pet shows…

If you don’t have an area of specialty, you’ll need to research an area of interest.

You’ll need to contact various publications related to your advertisor’s product or service which provide advertising space. Inform the advertising departments of these publications that you intend to run ongoing advertisements for numerous companies.

Since your advertisements will run on an ongoing basis, you’ve increased the value of the publication to its reader, in that you’ve assisted the publication in exposing its readers to additional resources.

Since you are providing a substantial value to the Publications readers’ and thus the publication itself, request a preferred advertisor’s discount.

Ensure that you are made aware of each publications demographics. You’ll want to know the size of the circulation, average age of its readers, average income…as much information as possible. Record this information on index cards or database for easy access.

On the other end of your business, you’ll focus on contacting various stores and other pet related organizations–in this case, pet stores and organizations. You’ll offer these businesses an opportunity to utilize your advertising services.

Explain to your potential advertiser that you’ll publish their company’s advertisement in specified number of highly targeted publications.

Of course, you’ll inform the business owner that that his or her business can benefit by using your services since your company is able to provide highly targeted advertising at a fraction of normal advertising costs.

You can also offer a “preferred customer discount” which is only offered to customers who run ongoing advertisements.

Research quality, targeted publications and then contact each to request a 1.5 – 5 inch ad. Place 3 – 7 advertisements from 3-7 different advertisor’s into this one advertisement spaces. Of course, you’ll need to call your organization something like: “Love Your Pet-Coop.”

What have you accomplished?

You’ve provided for your advertisers, great exposure in quality publications. You’ve added credibility to your advertisers since there are multiple companies listed.

You’ve increased the value of the publication in that you’ve provided additional resources for its readers.

For the cost of one advertisement, you’ve listed several.

You’ve earned a percentage of the advertisement costs.

Benefits to owning a Home Based Advertising Business

Flexible schedule

Your office is wherever you are

Low overhead

Steady income

Continual growth

Tax benefits

A different approach to owning an Advertising Sales Business

Group promotional coupons from several types of related organizations… Using the above example…a pet store and a pet supply store.

Purchase quality mailing lists of individuals and groups who purchase items related to pets.

Place all of the promotional coupons along with your business card into an envelope and then mail the envelope to the individuals and groups on the purchased list.

Alternatively, you can create a coupon card that lists multiple businesses. Consider using a paper folding service provided by Kinko’s, Office Depot… to fold your sheet into 3 segments. Using a folding service will provide a crisp, professional look.

Folding the page into 3 segments allows you to mail the pieces without need for envelopes.

As an alternative to using 8 x 11.5 sheets, some Advertising Sales Representatives use standard post card sized ad sheets. One benefit to this approach is decreased mailing costs. Another benefit, if you’re just starting out, is that you can easily fill the space of a post card.

Tips for running your Home Based Advertising Sales Business:

Always include your own advertisements when advertising for your customer.

Ensure that you advertise in quality publications

Ensure that you purchase quality mailing lists

Ensure that you ask your customers for referrals to related businesses.

If you use the 3 segmented, full page method, consider folding your sheet with the ads listed on The outside. This allows the customer to see immediately, that your offer is of interest to them.

Pay attention to deadlines Make frequent inquiries with your advertisers regarding whether or not their customers are using their coupons and why.

Operating an advertising Sales business can be quite lucrative and is limited only by your creativity and fortitude.

It certainly pays to have professional help when it comes to running advertising campaigns, but with some tips and good creatives, you should be able to run your own advertising campaigns effectively.

Running Your Own Advertising Campaigns

Follow this step-by-step guide to running your own advertising campaign to ensure success:

1. Conduct a Market Research

Identify your target market as mentioned in the article Choosing Websites to Place Ads. Conduct a thorough research on where you will find your preferred customers. See where your competitors are advertising.

A simple way to see where your competitors have incoming links from is to go to [http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/] and type in your website address and 3 of your competitor’s URL’s. You will see a chart showing comparisons between your link popularity and yours. Click on each Search Engine name to see all the inbound links of the 4 websites (including yours).

For offline advertising, identify local and budget publications that reach your target market. Your goal should be to reach the people who are most likely to respond to what you offer.

2. Decide Upon Your Advertising Budget

It is important to decide beforehand how much money you want to spend on a particular advertising campaign so that you do not end up wasting your precious bucks. Deciding how much to spend depends upon your financial ability and the size of your business.

3. Plan Your Campaign

Plan your campaign in advance. For planning an effective campaign, you will need to mix-and-match various forms of advertising. An example of how to break down your budget into various forms of advertising is shown below:

Total Budget – $1000

Online Advertising

Press Release – $100

Website Advertising – $100

Pay-Per-Click Advertising – $100

Ezine Advertising – $90

Sponsored/Text Links on Websites – $70

Classified Ads – $40

Offline Advertising

Promotional Items – $200

Print Shopping Guides – $50

Classifieds – $100

Flyers – $150

4. Prepare Excellent Advertising Material

Before you start implementing your planned campaign, aim yourself with adequate and quality advertising material. For online advertising, prepare good quality graphic banners in various sizes and compelling text ads of varying word-lengths. Write or get professionally written, an interesting press release. Your ad creatives and text ads are extremely important to your campaign. DO NOT risk designing them yourself unless you are extremely good at doing it. Saving a few dollars here may cost you your entire advertising campaign! Leave this job to the professionals.

For offline advertising, have adequate printed material on hand. This will include form mailers, brochures, flyers, signboards etc.

5. Begin Your Campaign

Send out your press release. I recommend PRWeb. This is not the place to try saving a few dollars so avoid sending only a ‘free’ press release as it will get you nowhere. Go in for their paid press release distribution programs. The extra $50 will be worth a lot more!

Book ad spots on various websites and in Ezines and Newsletters. Buy clicks on relevant keywords from ‘Pay-per-click Search Engines’. Place text ads/classifieds/directory listings etc. in various websites, directories and indexes.

For Offline Advertising, start distributing brochures and mailers, send out mailers etc.

6. Track Results and Work on Your Campaign

Once your advertising campaign gets started, you will need to track the results of each form of advertising. Allow 3 to 6 months time for advertising forms which are performing well to judge their performance accurately. If some means of advertising do not work at all or bring in results that are not at all cost-effective, discontinue them. See which text ads, banners and keywords (in pay-per-click) bring best results and use them again. Try using different keywords and monitor the results.

You must daily track all your ads actively and keep tweaking the ads to get the best performance out of them. Some banners, texts and keywords will perform very well while others won’t. Only through effective tracking will you be able to make your campaign a success.

Hiring an Agency

If you have an advertising budget of $25,000 and more, you should consider hiring an Advertising Agency to work for you. Advertising agencies have experienced staff for writing ad copies, designing compelling graphic ads etc. and they will place your ads on relevant websites and ezines and also provide you with ad tracking stats, thus making work easier for you.

I get calls every week from lawyers saying they’re not getting calls anymore from yellow page advertising. Having done quite well in the past, they’re afraid to discontinue the advertising. They want to know what’s going on and what to do.

Apparently, lawyers are not the only ones. In his article “Quit wasting money on Yellow Page advertising” by Peter Fernandez, D.C., a yellow page, print advertising and practice management consultant for chiropractors, Dr. Fernandez answers the question, “Why has advertising in the Yellow Pages changed from one of the best ways to advertise to one of the worst in just a few years?” (See 1, below)

This article will attempt to explain where all the calls went. I believe lawyers began advertising in the Yellow Pages much earlier than on TV because of the cost; most lawyers were reluctant to become pioneers of TV advertising; and lawyers were pursued by yellow page salespeople, but not by TV salespeople. Since 1976 through the mid-1980s, the Yellow Pages and classified newspaper ads were virtually the only place a potential client could find a lawyer advertising. Consequently, lawyers advertising in the Yellow Pages did not have much competition and had very good results.

Many more lawyers flocked to the Yellow Pages which then became very crowded. In the last few years, and after a few pioneers, many of the lawyers advertising in the Yellow Pages discovered what every other business has long known, that TV is by far both the most effective and cost-effective media. According to TNS Media Intelligence/CMR, from January 2004 through September 2004 lawyers have spent $287.3 million on TV compared with only $71.3 million on print media, $11.4 million on radio and $4.1 million on Internet advertising. According to research done by the Television Bureau of Advertising, the public’s perception of television gets the votes for Most Authoritative and Most Exciting. Both influential and persuasive, TV wins over other media, in both categories, by a wide margin among Adults 18+. TV scores 81.8% in the Most Influential category, with newspapers a distant second at 8.5%. TV scores 66.8% Most Persuasive with newspapers, again a distant second at 14.2%.

Just as buying something wholesale or in large quantities, your cost per person reached from advertising is reduced when you buy media that reaches more people. Broadcast TV reaches many times more people than a county-wide yellow page book and therefore costs much less per person reached. In the New York DMA (broadcast TV market), there are 29 counties reached by TV. If there was only one yellow page book in each county, you would have to advertise in 29 yellow page books to reach the same geographic area as TV. Unfortunately, there are several yellow page books in each county. Smaller community yellow page books produce even less of a return on investment because they reach even fewer people. Many lawyers have found out that for the cost of a full-page advertisement in just two county-wide yellow page books, you can advertise on TV with a respectable budget and reach the population of an entire DMA.

Today, due to the large number of lawyers advertising on TV, potential clients are being diverted away from yellow page books. Additionally, in the field of personal injury, the problem is compounded. Seriously injured people are usually in bed in a hospital or at home watching TV. Lawyers advertising on TV reach potential accident clients long before they can even
get to yellow page books.

When lawyers first began advertising, there was only one yellow page book. Now there are commonly three, four or even five county-wide yellow page books and several village, community or neighborhood yellow page books as well. Some advertisers have even lost their position in the Yellow Pages because they signed a contract with another yellow page book not realizing it was a different book and they couldn’t afford two books. Because a consumer will typically keep one yellow page book and throw out the others, the question an advertiser faces is which yellow page book to advertise in or to advertise in all of them. Will your advertisement be in a yellow page book that’s thrown in the garbage? I keep only one book and it stays in the closet, rarely used. Today, I use the Internet instead of a yellow page book.

While there was once only one Yellow Page book in town receiving 100% of yellow page advertising revenue, they are now losing a large share of that revenue to several competing yellow page books, but their operating costs remain fixed. All of the yellow page book companies must print and distribute the same number of books. Unless all advertisers advertise in all three yellow page books, the publishing companies have to increase advertising fees thereby increasing the cost of reaching a yellow page consumer. In an effort to increase revenue, yellow page books have even begun creating new real estate to sell including advertising on the covers, spine, tabbed pages and even Post-it Notes style ads. These high visibility advertisements also divert yellow page consumers from regular full-page advertisements.

Simply stated, there was once only one yellow page book in town; it was cheaper to advertise in the book; there were fewer lawyers advertising in the book; there were few lawyers advertising on TV; the Internet was not what it is today; and there were far more people using the Yellow Pages than there are today.

So what’s a lawyer to do with yellow page advertising? If you’re one of the three or four largest advertisers in your market with an advertising budget large enough for a substantial TV advertising campaign including billboards and radio, you may want to consider advertising in all of the yellow page books. If you’re not one of the largest advertisers in your market, my suggestion is to discontinue advertising in yellow page books and to spend your money on TV. If you have a 1-800 vanity telephone number available and extra money in the budget, you should also advertise on billboards and radio.

1 http://www.worldchiropracticalliance.org/tcj/1997/feb/feb1997fernandez.htm

Philip L. Franckel, Esq., publishes articles on Lawyer Advertising at http://www.Lawyer-Advertising-Blog.com and manages http://www.HURT911.org Mr. Franckel is an advertising consultant and previously worked with Illustra Films Worldwide, a television production company, producing TV commercials for Diet Coke, Bayer Aspirin, Fuji Film and others.

Author: Philip Franckel
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Digital Camera Information

You have managed to get your website to that magical point where you have established popularity, traffic, loyalty and a community of fans. Your site contains a wealth of information, resources and services that you provide free because that’s just the kind of person you are. You may not have intended to make money from your site but now that you have an audience you realise that it’s possible, or perhaps you have to start thinking about generating income because your costs to manage the site have increased and it’s starting to hurt.

You have been diligent over the years to build up your community and wonder how to go about making some revenue by leveraging this audience (as the marketers would say, you want to monetise your site). Maybe you have some big dreams and plan to one day generate advertising income from your new web project. This is a very common plan for online business given people tend to expect information and services to be free. Advertising may be one of the only revenue generation strategies available to you.

How much traffic do I have to have to make money?

In my experience once you have about 500-1000 unique visitors per day to your site *at least* before you can start to make real money. You can make chimps change from day one from your 50 hits, but this article is targeted at those that have a larger audience, or perhaps are constructing a business plan (either real or in your head) and would like to know how to go about monetising your website. If you get more then 1000 unique visitors a day chances are you already make money from your site (if not you should be!) but my points are still relevant.

As per usual I will illustrate my article using real world examples from what I did to make money. Over about five years I managed a hobby site that started off as a very local site focusing on people in my area that played the game Magic: The Gathering. I wrote reports and did news coverage for the game. Later I expanded the site to Australia and eventually opened it to the world although it remained mostly Australian with a good chunk of Asians and New Zealanders.

Banner programs

At around the time I was getting 500 unique visitors a day I decided to start playing with advertising methods. This was before the advent of Google Adsense (more on this later) but there were many banner programs available that paid either on cost per click (CPC) or per impression basis. An impression is a banner being displayed to a user once, a click is someone clicking the banner and visiting the site being advertised.

These networks act as a middle man between business that want to advertise and people like me that have an audience and want to make some money by displaying banners. Unfortunately these programs display banners that often don’t match your audience. I tried a few but it was a short lived experiment that made me a few dollars if that.

I recommend you avoid any banner programs. If you are confused about what I am talking about regarding banner programs do a search for Burst Media to get a grasp of how they work. For small sites they just don’t make much money. For large sites there are much better ways to make money. There are people out there that make good money from these programs (I’m sure the program owners do!) but in my experience a little effort to find the right type of advertising can yield much better results.

I decided the best way to make money was to really leverage the demographics of my audience. I had a fairly focused niche, card game playing young males. I started by emailing all the local and international card game shops and asked if they were interested in exposure to my market. Instantly I had responses but I had to come up with a pricing structure first.

How much should you charge?

By this time my site was getting close to 1000 unique visitors per day, with about 300,000 impressions per month. I had done my research and I knew that advertising on websites was usually via the standard 468×60 banner so I would start with that. I also knew that many companies charged by what is called CPM or cost per 1000 impressions. Back then this was by far the most commonly used scale for pricing of web advertising and you could expect to earn anywhere from $0.10 to $10.00 CPM. I never liked this method of advertising because it didn’t guarantee any visitors. Charging by click-throughs is a far better method, but didn’t become mainstream until later. I decided that in order to keep my advertisers I had to offer value so I went for a blanket approach. I started charging a flat rate of $30 per month to have a banner on my site which offered as many impressions that my traffic could provide. I signed up my first few advertisers at this rate.

Banner management software

In order to “rotate” different banners across my site I needed some special software that would dynamically place banners. This allowed me to have more than one advertiser banner in a single location so I could optimise my adspace and make sure my audience didn’t get too bored from seeing the same banner over and over again.

Let me save you some time, phpAdsNew [http://phpadsnew.com/two] is the best banner management software out there. It’s under an open source license and has all the features you could ever wish for at a price you can’t beat, it’s free. If you don’t believe me and absolutely have to try searching elsewhere try searching the PHP Resource Index.

There is a learning curve with phpAdsNew and you do have to install it on your own server. If you are like me and you do things like this yourself most of the time you shouldn’t have too much trouble. Otherwise you might try contacting your favourite ITGeek and get them to give you a hand.

Statistics are important

The best feature with phpAdsNew is that it allows you to provide a unique user login for your advertisers to check their banner statistics in real time. This means at any point in time they can learn how many impressions and clicks there banners are receiving from your site.

Before you start searching for advertisers you should be very familiar with the statistics of your site. Do you know how many unique visitors you get? How many hits you get? How many impressions? Do you even know what the differences are between these? Try this stats terminology primer on for size if you don’t.

Most web servers come with a statistics package. Ask your web host if you don’t know. The most common are Awstats and Webalizer which often are preinstalled on many hosting packages. Become familiar with these packages so you can accurately assess your site traffic.

Increasing ad revenue

I now had the foundations laid and was serving the ads of my first few advertisers. From the point onwards I went to work attracting more advertisers by directly emailing North American online card stores and other related sites. I kept an Excel file to track which websites I had emailed and their responses so I could follow up in a timely manner.

I created new banner positions and started initiatives like a newsletter to generate more revenue. I created monthly packages that combined newsletter advertising and different banner positions and offered them at $500 per quarter. I increased the top prime banner position fee to $50 and started offering a tower banner position for $50 as well. Eventually I had to limit the number of banners I could take in the prime positions to avoid dilution. I had a guarantee in place that offered at least 30,000 impressions per month (averaging 40,000-60,000) to advertisers so that they always received a good equivalent CPM rate. I even had some advertisers purchase the rights to “own” a position for a certain period to make sure no other advertisers banners would be displayed.

Eventually I reached a point where I was averaging $500 per month and peaked at $1000 in one month. Some advertisers came and went quickly but many stayed loyal and in fact still advertise today though I sold the site a long time ago. The niche for the site was so focused that it became the pre-eminent site for Australia in it’s marketplace and consequently some Australian advertisers simply stuck their banners up as a branding exercise. They knew that the exposure from the site would help to align their business as one of the pre-eminent retailers or event organisers for the game. Some advertisers stopped caring about click through stats and kept advertising purely for the branding exposure.

Google adsense

At some point Google Adsense popped up and I was in with other early adopters to try it out. My results were okay. The money wasn’t nearly as good as the established relationships with advertisers I had, however the ads being displayed were a lot more targeted than banner networks. I eventually stopped using Adsense because I could better monetise the adspace with my traditional advertisers. However that was before Google went to work providing such a variety of banner sizes and display options. Nowadays Google Adsense is a viable income source for many websites so I definitely suggest you look into it as a possible option for generating revenue but remember it’s not the only means and you can earn more if you get busy chasing targeted advertisers.

Ongoing maintenance

I wouldn’t call web advertising income passive, but it sure is close. The systems I had in place handled everything automatically. While I did have to manually create advertiser accounts, pursue advertisers and control billing, once the systems were in place, in particular phpAdsNew, I didn’t have to do much. Of course depending on your website often the maintenance of your community is were the labour is involved, but chances are if you started the site you either enjoy it or have plans in place to eventually remove yourself from the maintenance role. In the end I sold off my site but if it wasn’t for the advertiser revenue my asset would not have been valued nearly as highly as the final sale price. Investing in advertising is like investing in any asset, the time and labour you put in today will lead to benefits in the future.

By Yaro Starak

http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com

Do you want to profit from your own successful home based Internet business?

Learn from Yaro Starak, a young entrepreneur from Australia. He works part time from home on several web based business that generate between $2,000 and $8,000 per month. Get your free articles and audio now – visit his Internet Business Blog.

Author: Yaro Starak
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Electrical Pressure Cooker Online

Working in research and development for a large infomercial company, I had many opportunities to do large advertising campaigns with lots of different online advertising agencies and Internet marketing companies. I would literally go online for days researching companies and the types of advertising they offered to find just the right ones to meet the needs of our company.

We spent thousands of dollars before we were able to come up with accurate measures of which campaigns were actually converting prospects into customers. But after much testing, I came to an interesting conclusion about online advertising.

Many advertisers have a large emphasis on the amount of exposure you get to your web site, but after running many expensive campaigns, I have learned that this is not what matters at all. The things that matters most in web marketing usually boil down to how many qualified, targeted click thrus you can generate to your site.

Click thrus are the main thing you need to focus on when creating an advertising campaign. For our company, it has been the most accurate measure of the quality of any type of advertising we bought, whether it was banner ads, email campaigns, popunders, search engine, pay per click or any other type of advertising you do on the web.

Click thrus represent an Internet user who has been motivated to visit your site by clicking on an email or online advertisement of any type. It is the highest quality traffic you can have coming to your site.

Once you get this type of high quality traffic to your site, you can then focus on trying to convert your visitors to customers and sales. If you have a tracking method or software, you can then determine your conversion ratio. The conversion ration will tell you how many visitors you will need to get to your site to convert a sale.

If you can figure out how many click thrus it takes to make a sale and you know now much it cost to get clicks to your web site, you can then use that information to predict the results of some of your advertising campaigns. Armed with this information, you will then have a lot more confidence when spending money or time on any type of online advertising.

If you are looking to generate high quality click thru’s to your web site, you will find that this is not the easiest thing to do. You will find many types of online advertising and lots of companies making outrageous claims on how much exposure you get. But when it comes down to it, exposure means nothing if you don’t generate click thrus to your web site. If you want to generate true targeted traffic to your web site, you should definitely take a good look at these types of advertising.

Email Marketing – Email marketing is probably the most direct way to generate click thrus to your web site. You can either hire a third party company to mail to their lists or you can build a list of your own.

Email is great because you can instantly reach large numbers of interested prospect and start to generate click thru’s within hours of sending your message out.

This method of marketing does have its drawbacks. It is getting more and more difficult to send email, because of SPAM regulations and extensive filtering by ISP’s. Fortunately, many marketing tools are coming out to help the average person start and maintain a list without knowing a lot of technical knowledge.

The best way to use email marketing is to build an opt-in list of prospects that you can mail to over and over again. Using a third party list or company to email will cost you a fortune if you do it over and over without building a list of your own. This is why it is important to concentrate on building your opt in list. Many of the people who opt in to your list will eventually become your customers if you have a solution to their problem.

Coregistration – This is powerful list building method many Internet marketers have been using for about 3 years now. Coregistration advertising is the process of generating opt-in email leads to add to your mailing list or autoresponder for marketing purposes. Using this form of advertising, you can build a large list of qualified prospects in little time.

The quality of coregistration leads can vary from company to company so it really pays to understand how they are generated and how old the leads are. The best types of leads to buy are called Opt-In coregistrations where individuals have specifically responded to your ad for more information.

You can also get other type of leads that are cheaper, but they are not as high quality as the leads generated specifically for your business. In addition, these cheaper leads are harder to deal with when mailing your messages.

Once you have these leads in your email system, they become a source of targeted click thrus every time you mail out to your lists. In addition, you are basically getting free advertising once you have your own list. Coregistration helps you get to that point quickly if you use it correctly and if you find some solid lead sources.

Search Engines – Search engines have long been a source of rich, targeted traffic, but competition and strict search engine rules make it difficult to simply put up a web site and take advantage of this type of traffic.

You could hire a search engine optimization company (often called SEO’s) to help you get your site placed, but this usually costs a minimum of $1000 up to $5000 or more and a significant amount of time to get results. Most web site owners would be better off applying basic search engine optimization techniques themselves and saving their money. These techniques can include gaining link partners, frequently adding fresh content, and utilizing relevant keywords. The results of these efforts can be just as rewarding as using an SEO company in many cases.

Once you get listed, you will start to receive targeted click thrus to your web site from people specifically searching for what you offer.

Pay Per Click Search Engines – If you are frustrated with other types of traditional advertising and you want a direct relationship between what you spend and the amount of advertising you get, you need to look into pay per click search engine advertising.

You can sometimes get traffic to your web site for as little as $0.10 per click. Once you try to advertise using pay per click search engines, you will find that many of the best keywords will cost you much more than this (sometimes $1 to $5 or even more)! The key to this type of advertising is to do research to uncover low cost keywords so you can bid on them get traffic to your site.

Using this strategy, you should be able to use pay per click search engines to easily produce targeted clicks to your web site.

PR and Media – If you are looking for massive exposure at a very low cost, pr and media could be your ticket. A solid pr campaign could easily bring hundreds to thousands of targeted click thrus to your web site.

Getting your business in the news can be a difficult task and you need to either hire a solid pr company that promotes from a marketing standpoint or you need to learn how to do some basic PR yourself. Hiring a PR company can be expensive, so it may pay to simply find an experienced freelance writer who will help you.

PR/media can be hit or miss and it can take some persistence to start getting stories published and to start driving traffic to your web site. But for the amount of time and effort you spend doing PR, it can really pay off in the long run in the form of hundreds, thousands to even millions of dollars in free advertising.

EBay, Amazon and Other Large Sites – Large traffic sites that allow visitors to participate, open accounts and create profiles are great places to get free exposure for your web site. There is a lot of traffic generated by sites such as Amazon and Ebay which gives you the opportunity to harvest some of it through creating user profiles and participating with their communities.

This is a simple, low cost way to generate traffic to your site since it does not really cost anything to setup accounts with these sites.

Banner Ads – Many people say banner advertising is dead, but it still continues to be a great source of Internet traffic for many web site owners. The best part about banner advertising is that the prices have gone down significantly, so if you can create a banner that works, you can get a lot more quality exposure in comparison to other types of advertising.

The quality of your banner ad and your target audience will determine how many click thrus you get from your banner campaign, but many banner campaigns range anywhere from 1% click thrus to 8% click thrus, or sometimes as high as 20%. So if you are planning on doing any banner advertising, test a banner on a small level, and see how well it converts, and this will give you an indication of how well it converts on a larger level.

Affiliate Marketing/Joint Ventures – Affiliate markting and jv advertising are both similar in nature and. Most professional web marketers would say that it delivers the highest quality click thrus available on the web today. This is because these types of marketing are “endorsement” marketing where you have a particular person with certain credentials promoting your product. This personal referral often generates visitors who are hungry to see what you offer.

You can use this type of marketing by writing a letter to a potential partner who has a large customer base or by installing affiliate software on your web site and advertise for affiliate partners. Using an online affiliate program is very cost effective because you reach targeted visitors online and you only pay for leads or sales (usually a percentage of your sale or a set dollar amount).

Popunders/Guaranteed Visitors/Expired Domains – These traffic sources have been around for a while now and are all heavily promoted forms of advertising. But in comparison to the other forms of advertising, it does not perform as well. Personally, I have experienced sending millions of visitors from this type of traffic with hardly recognizable results.

Most of this traffic is not very targeted because the web site visitors did not get to the site by choice. Instead, they were solicited from third party advertisers using popunders or tricky web pages, which does not make that person a qualified visitor to your web site. There are some networks of advertisers who can provide quality popunders at a reasonable price.

Click thrus are a way to measure the quality of advertising because you can usually figure out how those clicks relate to your sales. That is why it is important to focus on how many click thrus you can produce when creating, marketing and advertising your web site. So next time you by any type of web advertising, try to get some indication of how many targeted click thrus you can expect to generate from that particular campaign, and you can get a good idea of how many sales you can generate.

Copyright 2005 Rod Davis

Rod Davis is an Online Marketing Specialist who offers “The Small Business Survival Guide” and an informative newsletter called Microbusiness Marketing. Visit http://www.microbusinessmedia.com or call 303-440-8196 for more information.

Author: Rod Davis
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Hint: don’t send send your online advertising traffic to your homepage.

How do you convert online advertising traffic into customers? The key is a phenomenon of human behavior that only comes into play on the web.

You won’t read about this phenomenon in books or articles on general principles of advertising or direct marketing. In fact, traditional advertising professionals and direct marketers often create only so-so online advertising campaigns simply because they’ve never heard of this phenomenon, even though it’s essentially the first law of human web surfing behavior.

How to convert your online advertising traffic into customers

Ready to find out what that all-important first law of web surfing is? Prepare to be not very amazed. You see, everyone who surfs the web already knows about this phenomenon of human behavior because we all do it–even you.

So here it is, the first law of human web surfing behavior, which you absolutely must take into account when marketing your website: While surfing the web, almost everyone will hit the “back” button if they think there’s a chance–even a small chance– they’ve come to the wrong web page.

The corollary to this law of web surfing behavior: Anyone who clicks through to your site via an online advertising link needs to know they’ve arrived at the right place as soon as they get there.
Immediately. Within a second. From a click glance. Without having to read anything. The average human attention span on the web has been measured at eight seconds, and you’ll have already lost a few seconds while the page downloaded.

The Key(word) to Converting Advertisement-Clickers into Customers

How do you make absolutely sure visitors feel like they’ve arrived in the right place?
Make the title and first heading of your landing page (the page on which a visitor “lands” after clicking on an advertisement) the same as the headline of the advertisement that brought your visitor there. If the landing page links to a banner (image) advertisement, use the same pictures and color scheme as the advertisement.

The landing page absolutely must immediately remind the visitor of the advertisement.

The advertisements, in turn, must flow logically from the keywords they are targeting. Even if your advertisements are appearing on websites rather than search engine results, you need to be thinking in terms of the keywords people are using to search for your product in order to speak the language of your prospective customers.

That’s why it is very important both your advertisement and landing page incorporate the target keyword prominently, in headings as well as the page body. That’s also why it’s so important you don’t send your visitors from online advertising to your homepage–it’s unlikely you could optimize your homepage for all your possible advertisements. Visitors who arrive via advertising need to land on a special “landing page,” or they may crash and leave your site.

Conversions: your advertising campaign’s goal

But what happens once visitors land on your site and decide to stay more than ten seconds? It’s no use if they just hang around. They need to convert.

Important definition: In online advertising parlance, saying a website visitor “converts,” means he or she has taken a desired action toward becoming a customer, either 1) buying something or 2) contacting you for more information, thereby becoming a lead.

The percentage of visitors who convert out of the total number of visitors who arrive at your page is the conversion rate. Your goal is to get this rate as high possible. You do that by finding the right message to display on your landing page, and also by targeting the advertising so you are getting visitors who are most likely to convert.

In order to get your visitors to convert once they arrive, you need to make sure they have a clear path to conversion from the landing page. The simpler the path, the better–a winding road might lose some potential customers. This conversion path could be as simple as a “buy now” button or a contact form, or as complex as a multi-step shopping cart with required registration with required email confirmation to scare away those who are not truly devoted buyers.

Targeting your traffic

What you show visitors who arrive at your site is only half the equation. The visitors themselves are the other. As with everything in life, you can’t convert a sow’s ear into a silk purse. In this case, the sow’s ear is paid traffic that is not targeted, or is coming from popunders or other forced viewing, or is just plain faked (there is software specifically designed to emulate human visitors so fraudsters can sell the “traffic”).

Even in the best of cases, some traffic converts better than others. Generally speaking, visitors who are looking for you are the likeliest to convert, so conversion rates tend to be highest from advertising on search engines. Conversion rates tend to be lower from advertising on websites (so-called “content” or “contextual” advertising).

Conversion rates are lower still on advertising on website popups, and lowest of all on so-called adware (programs that display popups on a user’s computer; the people who sell this advertising often label it “targeted traffic”). Sending emails that consist of nothing but your advertisement, even if you’ve skirted the legal definition of spam, is not worth the bad will and damage to your brand.

Preaching to non-converting online advertising traffic
A significant percentage of visitors, maybe a majority, will never just click “buy now.” How do you reach them?
Many people simply will never make a purchase without speaking to a salesperson first. For them, provide a convenient contact form, as well as a live chat option–if you can afford the time and expense–your email, and a telephone number. A telephone number is especially important since there are some visitors who will never convert without hearing the voice of someone on your end.

For visitors who are not ready to convert immediately, you should have informational articles, “about us” pages or FAQs ready to help them make up their minds.

For visitors who simply will not be ready to convert today, give a reason to bookmark your page. Good articles. A special offer. A newsletter to sign up for. Free advice.

Just make sure you don’t place these alternative non-converting options in too prominent a position, or you’ll risk distracting prospective customers. A few paragraphs up from the very bottom of the page is a good place to catch people who are interested in you enough to read the entire page, but still haven’t converted. The very bottom of the page should be reserved for a conversion option for all the prospective customers accustomed to scrolling to the bottom of the page to get a quick overview.

After all, if you want your visitors from online advertising traffic to convert into customers, shouldn’t you at least make it easy for them?

About the author
Joel Walsh has written as a staff writer for St. Martin’s Press and Barnes & Noble, as well as numerous online publications. He is the head writer for UpMarket, a website content provider and online advertising resource for small and medium-sized business websites. You can get a template guide for writing a landing page, with samples, at: http://upmarketcontent.com/landing-page-template.htm

Author: Joel Walsh
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Whether you are checking your email, shopping on a website or just searching for information, online ads are everywhere! A new marketing landscape, the Internet offers a new and cheaper advertising space, as compared to traditional spaces like print, television, radio and outdoor advertising. It’s a revolution of sorts and small and home business owners are making the most of it.

For a home based start up, online advertising is a potent tool that can maximize visibility, drive traffic to the company’s website, up the sales and build a solid brand in the process. Going to an expensive advertising agency to run your campaign would most definitely burn a hole in your pocket. The good news is you don’t have to do that. Just remember the twin mantras of focus on what you want and a strong dose of imagination; and you’ll be on your way.

Take the guesswork out of online advertising

Online advertising is not a function of elaborate guesswork and a myriad of hits and misses. Like the traditional offline version, online advertising must also follow some basic rules. Know what you want your advertising to do, where to get it and what to do with it once you have it. Here are some guidelines to get you started.

http://www.marketingprofs.com/preview.asp?file=/2/honabach1.asp

1. Define your advertising objective: Shut the door, switch off the lights, take a deep breath and think why you need to advertise. Clearly define the goals you want your advertising program to achieve. Is it generating new leads, increasing the number of hits on your website, making your company visible in the market place or to increase on/off -line sales? Each goal will have a different advertising path. You can only expect your program to maximize returns, if you know for sure what you want your advertising to do.
2. Decide “where” you want to be seen: It makes a difference to be seen in the right places. Like in offline advertising, the placement of your ad is very crucial to success. Advertising (Co-advertising for higher benefits) on websites that are most relevant to your line of business would be the best place. Also consider top Search Engines, Online Yellow pages, Service Provider directories and large sites or networks. Explore trade –specific websites for a more focused audience.
3. Tailor the message for your target audience: when you want the caveman to listen, beat your chest! Craft your message to appeal to the target audience. Your message for a visitor on a trade forum’s website would be different from what you say to the guy clicking on your ad on a home business site. The trick here is to align your message to the mindset of your audience. Equally important is that the message should convey the promotional goals your advertising desires to accomplish. So if you are selling ice to an Eskimo shopping in an Internet mall, don’t forget to mention the discount on your season sale!
4. Be Creative: In a marketplace teeming with new ads you can easily get clobbered on the head with run-of-the-mill ad copy. Your most valuable asset in this crowd is your creativity, which will make your ad stand out. Be creative not only in the copy, but also in the placement of the advertisement. An online contact lens clinic pulls hundreds of people every day to take an eye test with a simple ad. The small 1” X 2” banner says, “ Think You Don’t Need an Eye Test?” in the same format as you see on the reading sheet in an optometrist’s clinic, with alphabets running vertically in a decreasing order. This is a classic example of a simple but creative idea getting the desired results.

   Add more depth to your advertisement by using rich media like HTML, DHTML, Java and layered ads. Use animated messages doubled with pull down menus for better use of space and for expanding possibilities of response.

5. Choose the advertising medium well: They say, “Well Begun is Half Done”. If you are going to spend a sizeable amount of money on creating and placing ads, they should do more than just wiggle and pop. To maximize response, choose the advertising medium carefully. You have several choices like banner ads, contextual advertising, ezine advertising etc. Research and read on various formats and the factors for each one’s success. Then decide on what format works best for your campaign. Once you have decided on the format, it is equally important to choose the vendor. If you have decided on banner advertising, research and list the websites that would give you the maximum exposure to the right kind of audience. Check out the option of using advertising networks and the pay-per-click options as well. [http://a1portal.com/]

   Once your campaign has been set in motion, take care to monitor response and be ready to change or completely redo your copy and the advertising vehicles you use. Keep a track of the ROI (Return on Investment) for every advertising purchase that you make. This way you can figure out which forms of advertising are working for you and which ones aren’t.

All online advertising is aimed at inducing “action”. Every online ad that you see is built to make you act: ‘Register for a free newsletter’, ‘buy now and save dollars’, ‘get a quote on your requirements’…the list goes on. The thing to remember here is that once the prospect has been pushed into an action, there should be real value for him at the other end of the pop- up. Unless you can fulfill the promise your brand is making, your online ad has been wasted.

A well-planned and well-executed advertising campaign can fuel the growth of your home business tremendously. Use online advertising following some simple guidelines and see how it impacts your sales, visibility and brand building, all at the same time.

Also see: http://www.web-source.net/internet_advertising.htm

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Good Advertising creates more production, thus greater consumption, faster turnover and lower sales price per unit. To a great extent it determines the success or failure of the mail order operator!

When working up an advertising program remember that what is genuinely desirable to you may or may not appeal to the majority of your prospects!

Different types of merchandise or services demand completely different advertising media. Your ad must be built around the ADVANTAGES of the product and designed to APPEAL to the specific customers who will BENEFIT from your offer!

Since you MUST spend advertising dollars in order to make money in the mailorder business be sure you spend WISELY and with CONFIDENCE.

RETAIN all advertising information, brochures, sales letter, catalog, etc., you receive. USE THE IDEAS from this information as a guide in formulating your various advertising programs!

There are thousands of top mail order products to choose from, more than you can every use so choose the right ones for your programs!

If the product or service can’t stand the Truth do not advertise it…Don’t handle it! Truth in advertising is a must! Your FIRM NAME, preferable, should be SHORT, DESCRIPTIVE AND EASY TO REMEMBER!

When you find the item that is a mail order “HIT”, repeat your ads on the product in a number of magazines and other productive advertising media in order to PYRAMID YOUR PROFITS TO THE MAXIMUM!

Advertising cost divided by inquiries = Ad cost per inquiry! Advertising cost divided by orders = Ad cost per order! Orders received divided by readership = percent of response! Number of pieces mailed + by orders received = Percent of return!

Continuously use the simple formulas (above) so you will know who your advertising dollars are paying off!

Ad to find new Products: “Calling all manufacturers, importers and suppliers … We will feature and sell your new products in our catalog … Send your information, sample products and programs to…..!”

Test the position of your ads in the various Media!

Test one ad against another on the same offer!

Make your sales letters friendly, clear, simple and to the point!

Your potential customers are more interested in themselves than in your product, consequently your ads and sales letter must be directed toward their point of view and their self-interests! Make them want your product because it will benefit them or will do the job better for them!

Powerful attention getting words include: Free, Amazing, Weird, Odd, Strong, Rare, Big, Secret, Latest, Easy, Fortune, Now, New, How-to!

You must put yourself in the place of your prospects and know how they feel, think and react to your ads! If “you” were the customer would your ads persuade “you” to buy?

Your Ad must have a strong headline! It must tell the prospect what to do, such as: Order Now! Rush $5.00! Use order form and reply envelope! Act Now! Action words that urge the prospect to order. Explain with simple words JUST WHAT THEY WILL RECEIVE FOR THEIR MONEY! What the product will do for them. Use believable testimonials. Appeal to their reason and get their confidence, then use a powerful close. You can get the order!

Repetition is one of the secrets of making a lasting impression on the memory.

Use coupons in some of your ads!

Since Suspense is a strong force in advertising, consider entering the name of your product toward the end of your ad!

Most everyone wants prestige, confidence, money, security, advancement, leisure time, good health, popularity, less worry, happiness, success, more time, recognition, improvement, business ownership, independence, more knowledge, satisfaction, savings … Appeal to your prospects… use such appeals in your ads!

Quality, usefulness, reasonable price, up-to-date, and appealing to the sight are points to stress!

Make no misleading claims about your products.

Review the many ads presented in leading mail order sales magazines advertisers. Make note of the many attention getting words and phrases that catch your eye and cause you to read the rest of the ad! Use these same words in your own headlines!

With certain type products, consider turning the picture in your display ad upside down in order to attract attention from the ordinary … If handled properly, curiosity will sell!

Study the operation of other firms to get New Ideas for sales letters, methods of handling promotion, nature of offers and any other details which may be helpful!

Some programs require a good deal of literature in order to present all the facts necessary to sell a product! With this type of product you should first advertise for inquiries then send the full ammunition by direct mail. Write up a list of important reasons why a person should inquire about your offer. Use the strongest of these reasons in your ad!

If you usually pay cash for your ads, why not set up your own advertising agency as a secondary part of your business? Your registered business name as an advertising agency may qualify your business for the 15% discount when advertising in many publications!

Direct Mail, mailing lists, not ads, are used to obtain business. You determine what type of person would best buy your product; then compile, rent or buy name lists and proceed from there.

Lists compiled from business listings in the Yellow Pages are good for many kinds of mailorder products; however the names and addresses contained in the white pages seldom get any reasonable response. Ads in the daily paper are also generally poor for mail order products. Stay with the successful operators and advertise in the various media they use … stick with quality name lists in the right category for your products!

Unless your ad is read you will come out in the red! Make it clean, clear, concise, simple, professional and focused to the “right market” for the type of product being offered!

Always test! test! test! before spending large sums to promote or advertise your product … Be sure it is a hit then go all out!

Your ad must name the product, describe it, tell what it will do for the reader, how he can obtain it, and where to get it!

The best part of your advertisement is the words that can be read “between the lines”!

The direct mail packet consists of the sales letter, catalog, or brochure, order blank and the business reply envelope.

The ad must attract attention and create interest and desire before the customer will act!

Know your product well so that you can be specific, sincere and positive in writing your ads! Enthusiastic ads properly laid out will generally get enthusiastic results!

It is simple to record test results for your ads and programs in the various media. DO IT!

If your product has distinctive features or trademarks, use them over and over again in all your ads … Take advantage of the repeat psychology of keeping the name of your product constantly out in front of the Public Eye! If your product is familiar to the user, prove that it has better quality or price over competing items. Educate the consumer when presenting brand new items.

Prospects are usually more impressed by what others have to say about the product than by what the dealer tells them. Write to your customers, asking for their opinion on what your program or product has done for them and request permission to use their endorsement in some of your ads. Retain their letters as your authority for using their testimony.

Classified ads must have a great deal of thought and preparation! Use as few words as you can, but don’t leave out image building words that tell stories, paint pictures and compel action!

One way to increase the readership of your ad is by inviting persons to send in money saving ideas. Print the best idea each week, or month, and award the winner $$$… They will read the ad in each issue in order to find out if they won and if not to see if the winners ideas are better than the ones they submitted!

Many products can be readily adapted to radio & TV selling. This can be arranged whereby you pay the station a percentage of only what is sold. There are publications available which explain how to present such offers to the stations and lists of stations that supposedly operate on this basis. You can locate such firms by a search at your local library or through salesmen and opportunity magazines….However; this method for selling mail order products is not readily available on a flexible basis, unless you have something really special.

You must be in a position to change your advertising approach with changing times and conditions. The First Paragraph of a sales letter must create attention and interest or the entire message will go to file 13!

The Second part, or body, of the letter must arouse desire by pointing out the advantages and describing the product, preferably in use, or in action and should state the price…or the entire message will wind up in file 13!

The Final Portion of your letter should strongly urge the prospect to act and tell him how to order or the entire message will go to file “13″!

You don’t have near the space for your message with classified and small display ads, as you do with the sales letter so unless they are well presented they may make a faster trip down the tube to file 13!

Always use TOP QUALITY letterheads, mailing materials and supplies…This is your BUSINESS IMAGE in mailorder!

It could be good policy to place your ads through a legitimate advertising agency…It costs no more than if you place your own. Before doing business, get full information about the agency, its services and rates.

Since you must get your message across in top form, in order to pull inquiries and get orders, the ideal ad made just for the particular item being for sale is another great secret for mail order profits….Many times just one little word will change a dead ad to one that pulls thousands of orders!

Since you do not have a “window display” to use for mailorder advertising you must either draw pictures or use picture words to describe your product. Prepare advertising copy so that your prospects can “visualize the product” in their mind and “see” themselves using it to good advantage.

The headline of your ad must be powerful enough to catch immediate attention.

Use words that emphasize your product or service at the beginning or end of sentences!

Another gimmick for obtaining name lists for nothing…An ad such as…”?BIG MAIL? Send 200 of your address labels and 50 cents. We will send to mailorder dealers, wholesalers, distributors, etc….!”

“Before and After” type ads get great response on certain products.

Test and compare with different worded ads on the same type of merchandise in the same media.

When advertising make your most important points first!

When you find a new product that has possibilities for mailorder, test it! Prepare an ad for a quick test in a magazine or in a paper with a fast closing date (time from date ad is received to date it is published). As your test prove out “HIT” that particular item hard and heavy in other publications!

Test various price levels for the same product.

Qualify your prospects with proper classified ads.

Get the prospects confidence by offering free samples, by allowing a full money-back guarantee, by building your business image without exaggeration, and by showing proof of satisfied users.

Use the P.S. in sales letters to gain added attention!

When using an illustration or picture of your product in an ad, have one that shows the product in use! Picture the merchandise in use giving the owner profit or pleasure thus generating a positive, confident “YES” attitude. Remember that a picture will often sell better than 10,000 words.

Command attention to your ads or mailing pieces by marginal sketches, cartoons, different size and type styles of various words and/or paragraphs…Take the monotony out of the ad!

Consider greater pulling power of colored ads on many kinds of products. Test for added response and sales, as balanced against the much higher printing costs for color! The use of borders, lines, etc., can enhance your ads but be certain they are not placed in such a way that they detract from your message.

Type is expressed by “points”. For example, one point equals 1/72 of an inch. A pica is 1/6 of an inch. Learn the various type styles and sizes. Use the right print in your ads to emphasize the best features of your product.

Don’t bore the reader; Keep the sakes letter to one page whenever possible.

Offer something extra or something free in order to get immediate action!

Test only one factor at a time in order to determine which “change” made the difference in the number of responses received from your ad!

By the end of the first month after receipt of the first response from your ad you should receive 60% of the return you are going to get from monthly magazines, 75% from weekly newspapers, 75% from direct mail, 80% from Sunday newspapers, 90% from daily papers and 100% from Radio or TV! Within 2 weeks…From magazines 20%; Weekly magazines 40%; Direct mail and Sunday papers 60%; Daily papers 75% and Radio and TV 90%. DON’T DEPEND ON SUCH STATISTICS!!!!! Response can vary drastically depending on many factors, including products offered, media used, season, price, economy, etc.!!!! Your ad should be repeated again and again, as long as it is bringing back a profit….After the saturation point is reached, pull the ad. Test it again in a few months. The classified ad is the best to use for testing. For fast results, newspapers can be tested periodically. Magazines with the greatest number of responses for the least cost per inquiry should have priority for your ads. Only tests can prove which are the best ads and media for your various offers!

Have a “Built-in” follow-up program when preparing your initial advertising and promotion materials!

Your ad must end with words that compel action…Ask for the order! Now! Don’t let the prospect put the offer aside or it will usually end up in file 13. Notice the many ads in the mailorder publications that close with action getting words and sentences. Use such ads to develop ideas for your own ads!

Use the personal touch in your sales letters! You must have a good mailing list for direct mail advertising. Your sales letter should be written as though you were talking in person to the reader. Read it out loud…Does it sound like talk or is it canned?

Offer mailing labels with personalized pictures, photos, or cartoon caricatures, at cost, in order to build name lists of mailorder buyers!

Choose the publications with the greatest pull for your particular ad…Determine the greatest circulation for every dollar spent…Is it better to advertise in a magazine with 10,000 readers at 20 cents per word, or pay $2.50 per word for one with 3,000,000 circulation? Even this must be tested. Perhaps the 10,000 readers are buyers of the type of offer you are promoting and will order more than the 3 million!

Determine the kind of person who reads the various publications and buy your space accordingly…Advertise ladies apparel in a media read by women, not in a science publication!

Publications which carry a large classified section generally produce good results. Be sure to advertise under the right classification for your order.

Don’t be afraid to ask for the order.

Take advantage of free advertising and publicity whenever & wherever available!

If practical for a given program, include a picture of yourself, your business building, or a photo of your product…This, of course pertains basically to direct mail programs or for display ads.

Your ad will fail if: The program you choose has already been worked to death: A number of dealers had an ad approximately the same as yours in the same publication; You are advertising an out of season product; Your price is not competitive; The offer wan not attractive; Your copy was poorly written, or it you advertised in the wring classification for the item being offered!

You generally get nothing but curiosity seekers with ill placed display ads.

“KEY” you ads in order to know what is the best way to spend your advertising dollars. Final sales volume, is the measurement of success or failure of your advertising programs!

Combine the best features of your product in preparing your ad. Not so much as to the physical characteristics but by the feeling and interest it generates in others!

Generally, you should $ ASK $ for the money in classified ads only when a small amount is required for the product! Do not expect to get good response from a high cost item asking for money with a small classified ad. Offer free details to get the inquiry first, then send your direct mail packet…Sell your low priced items direct from the classified or display ad!

Build and maintain your list!!!!

Remember….For us in the mail order industry, advertising is a must! We cannot reach success without it! We can’t operate successfully with it, unless we do it right! Advertising is second in importance, only to a high demand product at a reasonable price, but neither can win without the other…The day we stop advertising is the day we give up the mailorder business and go back to punching the old worn out time clock!!!!!!!

Copyright by DeAnna

This article may be freely distributed on the Internet as long as the resource box is included.

DeAnna Spencer is a virtual assistant that helps entrepreneurs run a successful business by providing affordable administrative help. She also publishes a blog for small business owners. Visit this small business resource today.

Author: DeAnna Troupe
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Programmable Multi-cooker

If you could master the art of advertising, you would soon be an extremely rich individual. An “Advertising Master” could not only sell just about anything, for any price, but could also sell his or her expertise to others for untold sums of money, especially if that Master could guarantee results.

Now the bad news. Becoming a true Advertising Master is probably as difficult and time consuming as it might be to become a nuclear physicist! Advertising is that hard! Advertising is that elusive! Advertising is that much of a mystery!

Advertising is like writing a brilliant poem on the sand of a beach. Just when you have written a masterpiece, the tide comes in and washes it away forever. Then when you try to rewrite the poem, it turns out not to be so brilliant the second time around – even if you wrote the very same thing. The poem may stay the same, but the world around it changed. It lost it’s the original relevancy that made it brilliant the first time around. That happens with great ads all the time.

Is this starting to sound like a philosophy lecture? But here’s the thing about advertising: You never know what good advertising is until it works. That means you can’t tell if an ad is a good, effective ad before it is actually used.

Now, let’s get in touch with reality here. We know a lot about advertising. We know a lot about what works and what does not work. It’s just that there’s never 100% certainty about anything. Add to that fact that advertising tends to be extremely expensive and you have a very delicate situation, indeed. Still, very few businesses can exist without doing at least some kind of paid advertising, and very often, advertising can be a tremendous source of new customers, business and profit for just about anybody who is selling anything.

When advertising is done right, the profit it can bring to a business can be truly spectacular. That’s why it’s so tempting to roll the dice with your ad budget. But when it comes to advertising, what you need is a healthy dose of common sense, combined with a strategy that risks only as much money as you think you can afford to lose.

First of all, one must decide what kind of advertising is right for the business type. The choices are:

· print advertising in things like newspapers, magazines and other specialty publications.
· broadcast media eg. radio and television.
· internet advertising is a whole new and different kind advertising world in itself
· directory advertising
· billboards and poster sites
· promotional advertising

It can all be pretty intimidating. What advertising vehicle is right for you? What if you only had £1,000 to spend. Is it best to spend that £1,000 on an ad or ads in the local newspaper, take out an ad in the Yellow Pages, or maybe buy some radio time on a local station. If you only have £1,000 to spend, which should you choose to gain maximum effect? And by maximum effect, we mean bringing in more than the £1,000 you spent on that ad!

Well, we’re only going to talk about some general principles here and give some basic guidelines. That’s because literally whole libraries of books have been written on the subject and art of advertising, and we simply can’t cover it all here. It’s a subject that is nearly inexhaustible, and any entrepreneur worth his salt should be spending a lot of spare time reading up on all the advertising information he or she can get his or her hands on.

First, never buy a large print advertisement without testing a smaller less expensive ad first. Maybe start with a classified ad, or very small space ad. If the results are promising, you can reasonably upgrade to a bigger more expensive ad in the same publication. The key is test and measure! You must have a system to determine that the ad you bought is responsible for the leads you get from that ad. It’s not always easy. Take the case of a restaurant.

Let’s say that Restaurant A buys an ad in the local newspaper. How do you know that the people who come into the restaurant are doing so because they were prompted to do so by the ad in the local paper? Is it reasonable to ask every patron who comes in if they saw your ad in the paper? Probably not. But if you included a clip out coupon in the ad which patrons can bring in for a 10% discount, you can get a pretty good idea of how well the ad performed. Simple techniques like this can make all the difference.

Companies that sell things via mail order key their ads to show where each order sent in came from. All orders which include a key from a print ad will show exactly how well the ad performed. This is an almost 100% accurate way to test a print ad.

But what about a radio ad? How could a restaurant advertising on a local radio station determine if their broadcast ads were working? It’s a lot tougher. You could ask patrons to mention your radio ad when they come in, but this is unreliable, to say the least. If business suddenly increases when the ad runs, you might reasonable conclude that the radio ad is working, but you can’t be 100% sure. It’s a tough call, and the smart restaurant owner will have to decide if the radio ad is worth it or not. If business continues to be brisk while the ad runs, it’s probably a good idea to keep it going.

Whatever the case, having a reliable way to test ads is essential to making intelligent decisions about the advertising budget. Another major point is this: Always remember the central purpose of an ad.- to bring in customers who will buy what you are selling. This point is so often forgotten and the design of the ad becomes an exercise in creative design rather than something designed to generate new sales.

The ad should produce more in income than the cost of the ad itself. This seems obvious, except for the fact that we are all bombarded every day with all kinds of advertising that is not necessarily selling very much. If this is so, then why is all this advertising being bought and paid for?

Well, much of the advertising we are confronted with every day is purchased by major corporations with very deep pockets, and gigantic advertising budgets. The big players can afford to buy ads that merely create “name recognition” and help them keep a high profile in the public mind. But small to mid-sized businesses can’t afford this kind of thing.

How many times have you seen a TV commercial that is fun to watch, completely hilarious, and really gives you a good laugh — but leaves you with no idea whatsoever about what is being advertised? We all see dozens of these ads every year. They’re fun and entertaining, but they don’t sell much. So why do people buy pay for ads like these? Again, such ads are usually the venue of major players with more money than brains, and who are also willing to take big risks in the advertising game.

But the vast majority — perhaps 99% — of businesses can’t afford this kind of thing. The purpose of an ad is to sell, not to entertain. The purpose of an ad is not to “be creative” but to produce profits. The purpose of an ad is not to be a work of art — but to get customers marching through the door. If an ad happens to entertain while making money, well, that’s fine. The trouble is, too many people have been led to believe that an ad must first be funny or entertaining, when the true first task of an ad is to inform customers about your product, tell them where and how to get it, and get them to buy.

Many small and mid-sized business owners see a lot of funny and creative ads on TV or in magazines, and then assume that because huge rich companies are using these kind of ads, they must be a good thing. That’s not the case.

There are other pressures to create ads that are nice to look at, but which don’t work. Ad agencies, for example, compete for creativity awards sponsored by advertising associations. Ad writers and creators who get awards get a boost to their careers when they win awards. This encourages them to lose sight of what their primary purpose is — to create ads that sell. Many TV ad producers tend to be frustrated film makers. How many TV ads have you seen that have the look and feel of miniature feature films? A lot! It’s great if they actually do something to sell the product, but much of the time they don’t.

So how can you be sure that your advertising vehicles have the proper elements needed to make sales? While there is no such thing as a guaranteed formula for ad success, you can give yourself the best chance by remembering the tried and true basics, and those basics are represented by the anagram AICDA — Attention, Interest, Credibility, Desire and Action.

An ad must first attract Attention. With a print ad, that task falls to the headline. In a radio ad, that means a loud, attention getting intro made up of any number of sound effects. In TV it’s something similar, but with visual effects added. In a sales letter, its teaser copy on the outside of the envelope, and an attention grabbing headline on the opening page. Photos and graphics can also grab attention in print ads — whatever the case, an ad must first capture attention before it can accomplish the next mission which is….

…. Interest. Once you lure the prospect in, you must create instant interest in what you are selling. That’s usually handled with a subhead and the first sentence of the body copy, or the first dialog of a radio or TV ad. Credibility is provided in a variety of ways, including past customer testimonials, statistics which demonstrate success and more.

Desire is created by appealing to the emotions of the ad viewer, and this is done my showing what the product will do for those who buy, such as solve a problem, or enhance prestige, or improve health. The final function of an ad is to produce Action! The ad viewer must be compelled to call, write in, stop by in person — or whatever you want them to do. Urging action usually means providing incentives and rewards to do so. For example, putting a time limit on when an incredible 25% discount can be obtained will spur people to action. There are many other ways as well.

How you produce the elements of AICDA will be your challenge. There is no one, good way to make sure you have all the elements of AICDA hitting on all cylinders. Again, this is advertising, not mathematics. You may have to test several different versions of an ad. before it really starts working. If you’re lucky, you’ll hit the jackpot the first time you place an ad.

Please be aware that this short discussion on advertising is only a primer. Getting advertising right is a major challenge for any business and an ongoing process. A lot of marketing gurus out there offer a lot of hype and unrealistic notions about what advertising can do for a business, but here at Alchemy, we don’t deal in hype. We deal only in reality, and solid, grounded business practices that are guaranteed to work. You will need to advertise, but you must take the correct and careful approach. Do that, be persistent, work smart, and you are bound to succeed. Millions of others have.

Summary

Few companies can afford to ignore buying paid advertisements to grow their businesses, but the key is to proceed carefully, intelligently, and stick to the basics. Advertising is by nature a somewhat arcane art. There are no magic formulae that guarantee success. All advertising must be rigorously tested. Buy small ads before risking major money on large ads. Remember the AICDA formula and the real purpose of an advert is to SELL! And not to entertain.

Michael Harris,
Business Growth Consultant,
Alchemy Business Transformations Ltd,
http://www.growingmybusiness.co.uk

Author: Mikey D Harris
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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