101 Sale

Posts Tagged ‘advertising’

In my direct response print and Yellow Page ad design business, I offer a FREE 60 point ad audit at my website www.InstantYellowPageProfits.com. Of all of the hundreds of ads I audit each year, most include the same 3 profit killing mistakes.

The first profit killing mistake I see in small business advertising is having a weak headline. The weakest headline you can usually have is the business name which normally contains no benefit for the consumer. Imagine you are a consumer with a leaking pipe and you go to the Yellow Pages under “Plumbers” to find someone to fix your leak.

You review ads under the heading, and the first 2 have the following headlines. Let’s say ad example #1 has “Joe’s Plumbing” and ad example #2 has, “Get Your Leak Fixed In 60 Minutes or Less!”?” Which ad would you read and reply to? It is obvious that the only thing you learn in the “Joe’s Plumbing” headline is that Joe has a big ego. That fails to be a benefit to your prospects. Your prospect will be attracted to the headline benefit of getting their leak fixed in just 60 minutes.

So when you are writing your headlines, ask yourself, “What is the greatest benefit I can offer my prospects, and what is their greatest desire when they are viewing my ad?” If you take those most sought after benefits and include them in your headline you will dramatically increase response to ALL your advertising.

The second profit killing mistake is to have no offer. If you want to increase your response to any advertising, I recommend you add a compelling offer. You kill your advertising response and profits when you fail to include an offer.

So what is the best type of offer to include in your advertising? Including a offer for your new customers is what I recommend. A “dollars off” offer or an additional bonus on thier first service is a good welcome offer for new clients. Most ads do not include an offer, so you can make your ad stand out and outperform your competition with a well crafted offer.

The third profit killing mistake is to not include a guarantee. A guarantee is something all small businesses need to include in their advertising. Small business advertisers find that adding by a 100% Moneyback Guarantee they increase ad response by removing the risk of a new client trying your business. I know what you’re thinking, “If I offer a 100% Moneyback Guarantee like Larry says, everyone will ask for their Moneyback and rip me off!”

I know how you feel, because I felt the same way before I included a 100% Moneyback Guarantee in my advertising. My concern was that my prospects would rip me off, but when I tested the guarantee I saw positive results. My guarantee more than DOUBLED response to my advertising. I was shocked that in 7 years of having a Moneyback Guarantee, there were only 2 clients that requested a refund. In both cases, things did not go according to plan and these clients deserved and got their moneyback. If I had not given them their Moneyback, I would have had 2 lawsuits that would have exceeded the price of my refund. This moneyback guarantee did double duty by increasing my advertising response and profits while simultaneously removing legal liability when unusual things happened.

Businesses that can not have a 100% money back guarantee, can guarantee a portion or part of the first purchase even if this means limiting what services you provide on their first purchase. The best guarantees reduce or remove the new client’s risk of trying your product or service.

So you can see that having doubled my business from the same size ad and having only 2 (deserved) refunds in 7 years and over 1500 jobs is a tremendous financial gain.

So upgrade your print and Yellow Page advertising by having a great headline, a money back guarantee and a new client offer. This gives you a long-term competitive advantage because when you get 200% response, you are getting new clients at only 50% of what your competition has to pay.

Larry Conn’s personal experience in advertsing and direct response marketing has been built over the last 34 years. He is celebrated world-wide as a top direct response marketing expert, copywriter, speaker and author. Top direct response marketing experts recommend Larry in their books and products for creating profitable marketing strategies, and writing copy for high ROI print and Yellow Page ad design. At his website www.InstantYellowPageProfits.com  Larry offers a FREE 60 point Advertising Audit worth $150.00.

Do you use many types of marketing and are never exactly sure if anything has worked for you?  Spending on different advertising streams without having some means to determine the sales they produce is like pouring cash down the drain and is one of the big differences between successful firms and the also-rans.  And that means you can’t understand what’s working for you and what’s not.  For example, if you choose a radio campaign that costs you ,000 concurrently with a leaflet drop for ,000 and in total make ,000 return, you need to know which has worked the best in order to know where to spend another time.

Working with somebody from Cambridgeshire business coach will bring the facts about your marketing to the surface.The secret to marketing success is to keep track of your results.

That’s why you must take the time to figure this out, and you’ll soon realise that advertising that works brings in more money than it costs.  Great advertising is the same as putting £100 in the bank and getting £200 back, since it’s basically a license to print money.  Understanding which campaigns and tactics generate the most sales gives you the edge against your rivals – an edge that most companies simply don’t understand even though you can do it for free.

Instructions For Testing & Measuring

How you measure your results depends very much upon the strategies used. Use the ideas below to inspire you in other creative ways to test and assess your marketing efforts.Use a simple tally chart, with a line for each advertising promotion; then simply place a mark when a customer comes in from each source.Use different telephone lines for each lead source, so that when you get a call from TV adverts, the radio and the local paper a different phone rings; count the calls per line and you’ve got a great measure for enquiries.  A voucher is one more method of calibrating the effectiveness of your campaigns – you just need to add the number of coupons returned in a given period and you’ll know the number of leads it generated for you.

Another very neat method for measuring enquiries is to get your customers to ask for anybody by name.  One business sent out leaflets advertising home repairs and told people to call and ask for David.  They added 1 to the score  each time anybody mentioned David and found it worked exceptionally well.

If you’ve got a website, you can ask the customer where they heard of you.  Another great way to track customer sources is to use statistical analysis on your website, often called analytics, to monitor what keywords people have used to find you, or what sites they’ve come from.

With a bit of luck this has given you some inspiration and enthusiasm to get cracking and create your own monitoring program of some kind for your marketing. 

And of course, if you need some help to get going, you can always consider business coaching uk.

All we learn comes through our five senses. Advertisers try to appeal to as many as possible. For example, smell alone can sell fresh baked goods. Taste samples in grocery stores encourage people to buy the full package. Mattresses are not sold for looks but by feeling. People want to lie on them to imagine how comfortable they would be for an extended time.

Of the five senses, sight takes first place as most important. Researches discovered that 80% of what we learn is received through our eyes. Most of the rest comes through our ears. This means that radio ads must get the consumer to recall a vision, smell, feeling, or taste of the product through audio alone.

Advertisers are smart to keep that 80% in mind when planning their ads. If they can include sounds, that’s even better. But printed ads can be read over and over and thus influence more people than sound alone.

Visual advertisement comes in two forms, words and pictures. Words are abstract for they represent a reality. The word ‘house’ stands for a dwelling of brick and wood. Words can also stand for products. Slogans have caught on and identify products. One of the most famous was, “Where’s the beef?” from the Wendy’s ad. Though mainly verbal, that one phrase sold more hamburgers than anyone will ever know.

It is rarely how many words are used but which words that is important in an ad. People are usually too busy to read a long message and it is more expensive anyway. The message must be catchy yet have content. This balance is hard to achieve.

Humor, when appropriate, is an excellent way to capture the attention of the public. For example, Alaska airlines portrayed their company’s strength through exaggerating the competition’s weaknesses. It was humorous and kept people watching, and flying with them for several years.

Sometimes the ad is whittled down to just a motto, a logo, or a symbol. These along may associate a particular product to people’s needs. The colors of Pepsi without words will sell the product. In other words, the wordless picture is the whole ad.

When ads use visual and audio, use effective words, and add a touch of humor, that ad will surely get the attention of the public. It is a difficult combination, but certainly possible. Some are able to concisely express their product and then have the message flown over a large gathering of people. This is called a banner ad. It is an effective way to get a well planned message out to a large audience at a minimal cost. And with the added attention attractor of the plane’s motor, the two major senses of sight and sound are used effectively to get the message to the public.

When you are confident your message appeals effectively, it is time to contact a company that flies aerial banners and begin the process of getting it into the air. In no time, your well planned message will be presented to thousands of people and the impact for you will begin to be seen.

PPC search engine submission can basically help you to get traffic without paying for PPC promoting. PPC promoting involves paying for each person that clicks an advertisement to get your internet site. Search engine submission often involves getting search engines to note your internet site.  This is one of techniques that Affiliate Classroom 2 covers.

But PPC search engine submission is a particular type of marketing. When you start a PPC ( ppc ) campaign, your site wont necessarily show up on a search results page. It’d show up on another internet site thats part of the network.  

If your internet site is about roses, for instance, your pay per click ad might show up on a site with info about roses. This will help visitors of that site who are obviously interested in roses find your site through the ad.  
But pay per click search engine submission campaigns help your add show up on a search results page when a person searches for information about roses. It can also involve strategic search engine submission of your site to raise its visibility.  

Some advertising campaigns of Affiliate Classroom 2.0 use ppc marketing, search engine submission, search engine optimization methods and a selection of other strategies combined to give a domain the most exposure possible.  

To use pay per click search engine submission to get lots of traffic without paying for an advertising campaign, you must use good SEO techniques. Through SEO you can get your website mentioned on the first page of search engine results for particular keywords.  

By doing this, for no charge at all your site is featured for a particular keyword, just as the paid adverts are. Search engine optimization techniques like making sure the keyword shows up a specific number of times in your page can help you achieve that high ranking.  

According to Affiliate Classroom 2.0, getting other web sites to link to your internet site will also increase it’s ranking. Also, having several pages on your website that are all rich with the keywords you are trying to find can help your site rank higher.  

If your internet site is about propagating hybrid roses, then ensure that phrase makes up about 1.5% to two percent of the text on one of your web pages. Employ a keyword tool online to find the p.c., or simply make sure it shows up five to 7 times per 5 hundred words or so.  

Make sure the phrase is in the title of your page, the first sentence of text, and in your meta description. Submit the site to the search engines ( or just wait for their bots to move your page and save it in their cache ) and then see where your internet site ranks.  

Search on your chosen keyword in a search engine of choice like Google. If your internet site is among the first few that show up in the results, then your SEO results have had success.  

Your internet site is getting as much exposure through PPC search engine submission as those advertisements you see on the right, and you have done it all for free.

See also: Affiliate Classroom 2.0

Advertising is a key aspect of promoting your business and without it, you’ll never reach your full market potential. Expanding a business is easier as the client base expands. 

For small business – big budget options are out. 

It means using, using local media, using word of mouth promotions and maybe vehicle signage which maybe includes car door magnets. Keeping it simple and servicing locals is what’s needed.

The strength of small business is working locally so it’s to be expected they’re good at this. They also utlize their cars for both business and personal uses. With the prevalence of dual business/private use for small business people, a car magnet is excellent for the money for value utility they deliver.

They are one of the least expensive ways of getting an advertising message on a vehicle. It transforms a car in seconds into a mobile advertising billboard. And in the same time, revert back again to your private life.

As these magnets endure this on again, off again life, car magnets must be cared for . Briefly, it means having them clean front and back, peeling them on and off the vehicle and avoiding long term installations.

Importantly when car magnets are off the car, you have to care for them. With a new, specially designed protect-a-mag pocket your days of concern protecting your car magnets will be a thing of the past. 

Custom printed vehicle magnets are a low cost way to get your message out there before your clients and prospects. And all that’s required is one vehicle magnet on either side of your car and your business profile will rise. 

In business, in sport, and in many other walks of life the true greats are those who stand out from the crowd. They have a presence about them; a kind of aura. We could take the golfing legend Tiger Woods as an example or perhaps even the President of the United States of America Barack Obama. They have a certain way about them, a confidence and self-assurance. It is essential that any advert that is produced to promote a business or product really makes a major impression or stands out from the crowd.

I am a person who is involved in a number of different vocations including speech therapy (I had a stuttering problem for eighteen years of my life), advertising and I also run a web promotion company in England.

I have always enjoyed travelling around the world. These trips are not merely for a vacation they are also where I attempt to educate myself culturally and also where I try to develop my business knowledge. A great number of top ideas are bought to the UK from different countries after having proven to be very successful there. These can often be found by searching for catering supplies on one of the major search engines.

I have recently returned from visiting a number of countries in the Far East. I was intrigued to see the way in which their restaurant and bar owners attempt to attract additional customers. The majority of these bars and restaurants had advertising boards with various cost reduction food items. Some of these had the words flashing and others were of a rather poor quality. The effect was some what mixed; in a way it could be construed as being “over the top” as most of the bars and restaurants had these types of advertising signs but the ones that looked the business; the ones that stood out from the crowd certainly looked ultra impressive and did make me want to venture inside.

So what did I learn from this experience? Well I suppose it is all rather simple in a way; these neon flashing advertising signs certainly do work however they need to be of a certain quality. At the moment in the UK we have a few of these signs mainly operated by pizza take away outlets but these are a poor imitation of the “real thing”.

Do you like wasting money? Obviously not is undoubtedly your answer. Why have I asked such a question? The question is actually not that ridiculous as many many dollars are basically wasted each year on advertising projects that simply do not work. It is never good practice to waste your money but in a recession, like we are currently in, it could spell disaster. What we need is advertising for small businesses that work.

So you have a restaurant, we will use a restaurant as an example of a small business. The owner or owners of the restaurant obviously want to fill their establishment every night and to do so they must attract customers. Before deciding on the best way of promoting the business the owners need to do their homework to ensure that they only choose restaurant advertising accessories that work, this sure helps with cost reduction.

In this particular industry a neon lighting menu board is becoming ever more popular and is an idea that has been bought to these shores after achieving high success in the Far East. The attitude here is “if it works over there then it could well work over here”. Quality is the watchword, if it looks cheap then what does that tell the potential customer about the standard of your food and overall service standards? I think you understand the point I am trying to make!

In other businesses, small or large, doing your homework before going ahead with an advertising campaign is crucial. What has been the success rate of other similar ventures from other companies that are in your sector? I would even go as far as to speak to these companies to here it from the horse’s mouth so to speak.

In this day and age a large percentage of advertising spend goes into promoting a company website. A high quality and professional web promotion service does not come cheap but if the results stack up then it can easily be money well spent.

Certain areas of the internet are very competitive such as debt management, web design and companies offering cheap calls however if you are offering more of a niche product then this should not be so expensive as it would be far easier for the web promotion expert to obtain high search engine rankings for your site.

At the heart of any marketing communications effort should be a respect for design that communicates clearly and effectively to bring you the results you are looking for, and your selected design agency should be familiar with all forms of visual media. Print management with a view to not only cost effectiveness, but also how your brand is expressed to its maximum impact across all above, below and through the line channels is vital to effective communication with your target audiences. This all becomes even more important with 3D marketing of the brand such as brand environments, large displays, simple pop-up units or fully fledged exhibition stands.

Whether it’s uniquely different banner sign printing or exhibition stand design and custom built display solutions, you need to make a distinctive eye catching impression with an identity and execution that not only looks good in the medium it inhabits but is easy to erect and dismantle.

Central to all this is the initial corporate identity design and logo. Aside from its creativity and how it captures the spirit of your proposition, its ability to translate across all those myriad expressions will determine its longevity and impact. What looks good on A4 print materials may not be so wonderful by the time it’s enlarged to fit exhibition graphics.Equally, any logo can be enhanced in an exhibition environment by an imaginative use of lighting that can produce a number of different effects.

Portable Display Stands, Banners, Pop-ups, Modular stands and Shell Scheme Graphics all have their own unique requirements as to how strong they need to be and how long they will need to last. Design that works will take all this into account from the very start. Point of Sale Material, Window Graphics and Signage have similar marketing functions to fulfil, but require entirely different lifetimes. These items need to be more durable and able to last far longer than temporary exhibition materials and with POS are often left unmanned and need to work entirely alone. They must therefore be considerably more robust than temporary graphics, but still retain the same sense of style and unity of corporate design as all the other relevant items of marketing colleteral.

If you want to bring in a lot of traffic to your site, one of the most effective ways is to start a blog. However, if you really want to drive huge volumes of traffic to your blog, you will need to do more than just blogging. This article will detail most of the top secret traffic generation methods that exist for your blog. The following strategies can do a lot to bring in a high volume of traffic to your website or blog. 

 * Create high quality content that is rich with your keywords and phrases. This brings two main benefits. If you want people to trust you and buy your products you need to remember to keep your website or blog of high quality. By keeping in mind that keywords for search engines should be used on your articles, keeping your blog fresh will help with your search engine traffic. 

 * Optimizing your blog post titles for search engines is also an effective way of driving traffic to your website. You will need to optimize your blog post titles and use all the keywords or phrases which people use while searching for information on the internet. This will make your website more visible on the search engines, and your website/blog will also rank higher for all your keywords, driving additional traffic to your website/blog.

 * Use opt-in list building with your blog by offer a free product for your visitors to signup to your list. This is an effective way of bringing readers back to your blog as well as to creating a opt-in list. If you have an opt-in list it can help you to sell products because you can pitch directly to your opt-in list. By using an auto responder, you can send emails to your list about updates to your website/blog, hence driving even more traffic to your website/blog. 

 * Social bookmarking is yet another powerful way to drive traffic to your website/blog. If you have a high rank on social bookmarking site, this will be enough to bring in a high amount of traffic to your site. There are several well known social bookmarketing websites that you can use to meet your goals. 

 * RSS feed for blog traffic. RSS feed is another way you can use to keep people coming back to your blog because after people subscribe to read your RSS feed, they will get updates continuously as you make post on your blog. This means you get readers back each time you make a new post. 

 * You can use some of your blog posts and covert them into articles. All you have to do is put up more content for viewers to your blog, and also you can write a catchy heading for your article for article submission. Writing and submitting articles is one of the most popular forms of driving large amounts of traffic to your website/blog.

Article Source: Article Productions Create Articles, Spin Articles, Compose Articles, DripFeed Your Blogs, and more… Article Marketer

How to create a survey using Survey Galaxy

Writing surveys is considered easy; but is it? The reality is that writing surveys is easy but writing surveys that will be effective is a little bit more difficult. The following tips will help you with your survey questionnaire design so you can write more effective surveys.

1. What is the survey’s purpose?

Questionnaires are conducted for many reasons. By phrasing the questions and structuring the answers surveys can be used in a multitude of ways and for a variety of reasons. When designing a survey don’t lose sight of its purpose.

2. Title the survey

The survey title is key and an opportunity to instantly summarise a survey’s objective and encourage respondents to participate. Respondents need to invest time in completing the survey so encourage them that the investment they make will be worthwhile.

3. Try to keep the survey as short as possible

Every question that is asked should be asked for a reason. Pay attention to the ‘need to know’ questions and minimise ‘nice to know’ information.

4. Use plain English, maintain consistency and avoid terminology, acronyms and asking questions that could result in ambiguous answers

Word the question carefully. If a question can be interpreted in more ways than one then there is a risk that any analysis of the survey results will be worthless or at the very least suspect.

5. Avoid having long questions

Try to use succinct sentences wherever possible. Long questions can cause a respondent discomfort and lead to them abandoning the survey.

6. Ask one question at a time

Avoid confusing the respondent with a question like ‘Do you like football and tennis?’

7. Do not influence the answer

Do not load the question. ‘Should irresponsible shop keepers who sell tobacco to children be prosecuted?’ is likely to have no value.

8. Make sure that the answer format used allows the respondent to answer the question being asked

Ensure that the respondent can answer how they really feel or they may be inclined to abandon the survey. As a last resort consider the benefit of including a “No comment”, “Can’t say”, “Don’t know” or similar response option.

9. When you are compiling your survey consider how the compiled data is going be analysed when the survey is complete

When asking questions that allow for a free text open ended response, such as when asking the respondent for their comments, appreciate that such information is likely to be difficult to score and/or summarised. Consider grouping the answers into groups that will match your analysis requirements. For example “Indicate your length of service?” – ‘less than 3 year’, ‘between 3 and 5 years’ and ‘more than 5′.

10. Ensure that the questionnaire flows

When asking questions group the questions into clear categories as this makes the task of completing the survey easier for the participants.

11. Target your respondents

You may want to target a specific group, in others a cross section. If you can’t control who responds to your survey consider including questions/answers that will allow you to filter out respondents who don’t match your target profile.

12. Provide a channel for your respondents to expand on their answers or make comments

Allowing respondents to make additional comments will increase their satisfaction level and the comments will also give valuable feedback on the specific questions and/or the survey as a whole. Keep in mind though that for a large sample collection it may be difficult to analyse free text open ended responses.

13. If the survey you are conducting is to be confidential ensure that you honour your pledge

If you have assured the respondents that the survey is confidential ensure that the individual data is not to be shared with anyone and not used for any other purpose. Confidentiality must be maintained and any contact information deleted after the survey is complete.

14. Consider the benefits and disadvantages of allowing respondents to be anonymous or identifiable

If your respondents are to be anonymous then you will be unable to follow up or match “pre” or “post” surveys. There are advantages to allowing people to remain anonymous for example it would allow people to respond without possible peer pressure.

15. Carefully consider what the best response format will be

Maintaining a consistency in the format used for responses is good practice. When designing your survey keep in mind that when analysing the data single selection radio buttons are easier to analyse than multiple selection check boxes. Do not use a check box format if a radio response format would do.

16. Advise the respondent as to the approximate time it will take to complete the survey

Respondent drop out can occur if the survey appears to be a stream of never ending questions. It is good practice to give an indication as to how long the survey is likely to take so that the participants can determine the best time to complete the survey.

17. Inform the respondents of the survey end date

Encourage respondents to complete the survey as soon as possible but advise respondents as to the survey’s end date so that they have the opportunity to schedule the necessary time.

18. Trial the survey

Before publishing a live survey publish a small pilot survey to check for questions that are ambiguous or confusing and to ensure that the survey is aesthetically pleasing.

19. Before publishing the survey proof read the survey carefully

Check and then check again that a survey is grammatically correct and makes sense. If possible get someone else to proof read the survey before you publish, if no one else is available then take a break before checking again.

20. Say ‘Thank You’

To complete surveys respondents have to devote their time and should be thanked either in a covering letter, at the end of completing the survey or in a follow up letter. You may even want to consider an incentive such as a reward of some sort.

Getting started is easy and there are many survey software websites to choose from.