Category: Advertising
Where Not to Put Your Money
Using and finding an online marketing plan that works is not easy. However, if you can wade through all of the list building and joint venture membership sites there are a few that actually work that will not break your bank. The biggest difference between a brick and mortar business and an internet business is a budget. Very few online advertisers give this any thought they just jump into a list building membership, pay their membership fee and find that it takes a lot more work than they are lead to believe. This generally leads to more money spent and sometimes show no inkling of a return on their investments i.e. more loss than gain.
AdSense a Better Investment of Your Time and Money
We see the billboard equivalent advertisements in the form of banners and popup windows with clickable links that drive traffic to the specific websites for the product and services presented. Moreover, the breakthrough that showed the most promise was a program called AdSense designed and implemented by Google. The AdSense advertising program innovated the industry of online advertising by integrating advertisements germane to specific websites that were similar to the products having representation by the banner and text ads. This would appear on the side panels at the top or bottom of a given website.
The biggest drawback of the list building and Joint Venture Memberships is that they sell no actual product or service. They sell systems and as usual not all systems work because at the start they become over populated within months, sometimes even weeks from the release and so no real money can be made using them. It is the same with affiliate programs. The only way to promote them, in a realistic manner is through an AdSense campaign. This targets your audience by putting ads on the side of search pages about similar websites to yours and you earn money through the amount of clicks and of course through selling the actual product or service associated with the affiliate program or your own service or product.
Coupled with an AdWords campaign
AdSense drives higher quality traffic through the keywords specified and congruent with the given product or service presented in the AdSense campaign. Move forward to the year 2014 and the internet, coupled with television make a match unsurpassed by any other combination of media in history. Add social media, which has integrated all forms of media like magazines, News shows, Sitcoms and any other type entertainment. So why not use AdSense to drive quality traffic it is cost effective and easy to put into action.
An instant outdoor advertising campaign is one of the most cost effective ways to communicate your message to your potential and current clients who live and work in the area. Signs work to remind people you are there, implant thoughts, sharpen an identity and state a brief message. They are the original Geo-targeted advertising!
Many small businesses think outdoor advertising is just for big brands. The think the cost is prohibitive and never even consider it as part of their advertising mix. That is a big mistake.
Dollar for dollar and pound outdoor advertising is is one of the most cost affective methods you could use to target local markets.
Instant advertising campaigns can be set up where your customers live work and play in …well in an instant. The artwork is often included in a monthly fee for leasing a location and it doesn’t have to be a full size billboard costing thousands a month. Prices start as low as $50.00 a month for things like bus benches and usually reflect the traffic flow. Competition for return on investment guarantees this media is priced right because unlike newspaper advertising and other print media there is a limit to the number of locations available.
Street furniture like bus benches and recycling bins can be found in hundreds of cities in Canada and the US displaying advertising to local markets.
Outdoor advertising like this is a great place to start an advertising campaign, drive traffic to a website, build a local brand and remind your customers you are there for them.
Many of the businesses using this method start with one unit and scale up as businesses increases.
Does it work?
Well I manage advertising campaigns in 263 locations for over 100 clients. Most of them stay with me year after year, on average more than 5 years on a single location and some have been on several locations for more than 25 years.
Instant outdoor advertising campaigns are custom made for businesses on the street looking to master local markets. All kinds of businesses.
Our services are custom built for shop owners, doctors, lawyers, dentists, plumbers, real estate agencies, pharmacies, drug stores, dry cleaners, restaurants, garden centers, boutiques, publishers, physical trainers, pool cleaners, grocery stores, bookkeepers, therapists, insurance brokers and anyone else with a business, service or store with walk in traffic.
When you start your own business, you have a budget and you have a need to stick to that budget. After all, you’re in business to make money. You know you need necessities like a roof over your head, a phone system, a computer, a printer and whatever supplies your business specialises in, but what about stationery?
Is stationery a valid office expenditure? Is it a waste of money? Won’t ordinary paper do the exact same thing fancy stationery will? Ordinary plain paper would definitely be cheaper, but you’d be surprised at just how effective the right stationery is for increasing your business.
Standard paper is cheaper. You don’t have to order it specially, you can pick it up at any paper store and you can print anything on it without having to worry about correct borders and margins, etc.
Regular paper is just that, however, it’s regular. It doesn’t stand out. If you mail someone a sales letter and it’s printed on a normal computer, it will look like every other sales letter that potential customer has ever received. It will be so lacklustre that it might just get tossed in the rubbish bin before it’s even read. Don’t let that happen to your important business letters and other transactions.
Instead, you’ll want to create a lasting memory with your customer. And you can do that by having office stationery designed for you.
With stationery, you can make a statement. If your business specialises in specific colours, having stationery designed with those colours will mentally let someone know that the stationery belongs to your business. With the right logo, the right motto, the right font and the right design, your stationery will become embedded in the customer’s memory so that they’re more likely to choose your business over the competition.
Although having your own stationery can be more expensive, but so is any other type of advertising. That’s right, stationery is a form of advertising. It’s advertising just like a phone book ad is advertising, or a billboard. When your stationery crosses someone’s desk, or your envelope reaches someone’s mailbox, you are advertising your business to that person. It’s an investment every business should make, as any advertising is good advertising, but only if it is carried out professionally.
If you’re one of those business owners that hold onto their money as tightly as they can, don’t worry. There are many ways to go about getting cheap, but effective, office stationery. You only have to shop online to see the wide ranges of office stationery available. Don’t be tempted to design your own as these only scream ‘amateur’ which will do little for you or your business.
Having correctly designed office stationery is one of the best things you can do for your business and there is stationery to fit any budget. As long as it’s designed correctly, it’s simple and easy to read and it stands out in the customer’s mind, it doesn’t matter what it costs, it only matters that it’s seen, remembered and generates further interest in what your company has to offer.
Digital Signage is the answer to the on-going Retail question of how best to influence customers during the final stages of their purchase decision.
Reaching consumers in their homes is an increasingly difficult task and advertisers are looking to Digital Signage as a new way to effectively reach potential customers. The power of digital signage comes from the targeting ability, flexibility and cost efficiency. Companies need only compare the cost for a few seconds of television that might reach a small percentage of their customer base far away from the point of purchase, to that of Digital Signage.
Running branded advertising within the retail store itself means you will have a much shorter time line from promotion to purchase. This advertising method has been called Point Of Sale (POS) or Point Of Purchase (POP) . While these are not new methods, using Digital Signage is relatively new and gives the ability to deliver timely content that is dynamic enough to catch the attention of your target market in store.
The ability to update advertising instantly from within the store can help move slow moving stock. Target a particular time and area of your store to promote a particular item or sale. This is the power of POS advertising, made faster and more dynamic by digital signage.
Successful retailers are rethinking advertising thanks to a new in-store approach to messaging. Its called point-of-decision marketing, and you can use it improve the shopping experience of your customers. It can increase how long your customers shop and the size of their purchases. It can even motivate them to decrease the time they take deciding to buy.
Point-of-decision marketing gives you an effective tool to restore declining revenue and improve sales of high-margin transactions. Thus making it capable to Recover your ROI in couple of months leaving you with huge margins.
If digital signage is done well, it is proven to deliver a high return on investment. Advertising is an obvious source of revenue, the effective deployment of digital signage will also have a big influence on consumer buying behavior. Digital signage eliminates the overheads that are associated with traditional print media and studies show that the use of digital displays in retail can increase new product sales by as much as 300%.
One should also be very careful will choosing the digital signage solution and ensure that it one of best and latest solution offered to them. Truknox technologies offer one latest and finest digital signage solution for the retail industry.
Truknox (‘truenox’) Technologies, headquartered in New Delhi, India, is an avant-garde business entity committed to the design, development and support t of quality software. The company developed the Tru-i, which is revolutionary product for digital signage and associated communication systems.
Tru-I is digital signage software designed for the (Windows VISTA) platform. Simultaneously being XP compatible andreadyforWindows7,thus safeguarding your investment for the future. Its highly modular and scalable architecture, combined with an intuitive drag and drop Graphic User Interface, makes Tru-I unmatched in exibility and user-friendliness.
B2B websites can offer huge opportunities for international traders. This article offers detailed information on how these business to business websites work.
A B2B website serves two parties – the buyer and the seller. These are also known as leads. The main function of this website is to enable visitors to find the leads they want in the shortest possible time. A buyer may be looking for seller leads, and a seller may be looking for buyer leads.
By using the search function, one can easily locate the right type of leads on a B2B website. The search tool will allow a visitor to search by country, and to view only buyer or seller leads. The search starts when the visitor enters a few keywords (likely to be keywords for some product or service), select the required options, and click on the search button. The website will then make a query to the database and return the search results.
Alternatively, a visitor may choose to browse the leads in the business directory. Similarly, he can choose to see leads from a certain country, or only buyer or seller leads. These two simple functions will help the visitor locate the leads that he wants quickly.
To serve the needs of international traders, the better B2B websites even allow freight forwarders to list their services for free. This is important for any import export business. With the information, an online visitor can easily check the charges for using these services when importing from various countries. In addition, you may also expect to see information for trade show events that are posted for free by trade event organizers.
Given the numerous benefits offered by B2B websites, one would expect a listing to be pricey. However, contrary to popular believe, a listing in a B2B website can cost as little as 25 USD a year. Often, B2B also allow businesses to sign up for free. They do so because they want businesses to try out their services, and also because they want to attract as many leads as possible. Active B2B directories with many active business listings are certainly more valuable to international traders.
Sometimes, when visiting a B2B website, you may come across a special feature called “Keyword Auction”. Keyword auction allows businesses to bid for higher positions in the B2B directory. For example, when a user searches using a keyword phrase “phone”, your contact details may be listed at the bottom of the page. As such, the user didn’t have a chance to contact you. For more exposure, you may want to consider using this feature to bid for a higher position. This gives you greater visibility, and will allow you to receive more leads.
Finally, for maximum exposure, you can always buy banner advertising on a B2B website. This is more costly than listing services or keyword auction, but it will attract attention more easily. If the products and services you offer have a more general appeal, this advertising channel may work well for you.
As you can see, there are many ways to advertise your services on a B2B website. Be sure to choose those that will give you the maximum return on investment.