Advertising Inserts

Writen by Lance Winslow

One of the best and easiest ways to advertise without having to worry about shelf life of those who would most likely use your services or buy the products from your small business is to use inserts in your local newspaper. A marketing piece might also be to insert our flyers in the daily newspaper. This usually ranges from $23.00-35.00 per thousand if we print the flyers and $25.00-50.00 per thousand if the newspaper prints them. The newspaper rarely prints flyers in house, although some do. They contract it out because their printing presses are all computerized and specialized for that industry only. Large newspapers such as The Los Angeles Times have really neat programs whereby they will mail a flyer to every residence, which doesn’t take the paper. Christmas time is a bad time to do inserts because it gets lost in all the shuffle of 20 other color catalogs of every retailer under the sun.

Under no circumstances should you do inserts on Thursdays or Sundays. On Thursdays grocery stores typically come out with their ads and on Sundays, which is usually a newspaper’s highest circulation day, all businesses try to get in. A good day is Monday, Tuesday or Saturday. Most people don’t read the paper on Fridays because it’s the weekend and they’ve got things to do. Also, you want the phone to ring on Mondays and Tuesdays since they are the slowest days for many small businesses.

Most people call on the first or second day after an ad. Over one-half call immediately and the other one-half call over the next three weeks. When the ads are designed properly, we get 0.5-4.5% market penetration (phone calls). This is three times as much as placing an ad in the newspaper. Ads in newspapers, much like the telephone book, don’t work for us very well at all. It’s a waste of money and you will be under whelmed by it’s dismal results. Weekly newspapers are good if you advertise in the service directory because the shelf life is longer. Inserts in weekly newspapers are awesome. They normally will fall into the same price range as daily newspapers. When placing an order for inserts be sure to ask which days have one to three inserts or no other inserts. This is your best choice for days and it will raise your inquires by 1-2%.

If your current newspaper advertising is not pulling for you the way you wish it were, try inserts next time. Think about it.

Lance Winslow

Advertising Has Never Been Cheaper

Writen by Vernon Stent

If you run a small business you have probably already found yourself having
to be multi-skilled in accountancy, law, interview techniques and a whole host
of other areas. If your small businesses doesn't have the resources to hire a
marketing firm, you will also need to be adept at getting your products or
services publicized.

Things are not as simple as they once were. There are so many media outlets
out there that even large marketing agencies are finding the array of
possibilities daunting. There has certainly been a shift towards digital
marketing, ranging from the now established web banner ads to RSS feeds, mobile
telephone messaging and pod casting, not to mention the use of blogs and viral
marketing. There has been a clamour to put out on line video messages as the
definition between television and internet has become increasingly blurred.

Let's be realistic. If your business cannot afford an agency, you are
unlikely to be at the cutting edge of these new technologies. Do not despair. If
you can't beat 'em then don't join 'em! As marketing spends have been stretched
more thinly across all the available media, this has left traditional outlets
struggling to win business. Print media has been hit particularly hard as have
tv and radio. This means that in these outlets it is a buyer's market with
plenty of bargains to be had.

Perhaps tv may still be out of your financial reach, but newspapers and
magazines will fall over themselves to offer one-off production facilities and
will advise on how best to get your message across. Radio is more user-friendly
as ever, offering low cost script-writing and production expertise. If you are
planning a marketing campaign on a modest budget, I would seriously consider
these options. If your company trades in a discreet locality then a joint local
radio and press campaign could be put together at little expense. You could even
put together a do-it-yourself national campaign using these traditional media.

There was a time when the use of traditional outlets may have proved
intimidating for a small business. Pick up the phone and call one of them. You
may be pleasantly surprised at the hand-holding they will offer you. Remember
that many agencies have negotiated rock-bottom prices with them and it is those
agencies that are calling the tune. Direct approaches from companies actually
offer a greater margin for print and broadcast media. Despite the fact that you
will be paying more for your column inches or broadcast minutes than an ad
agency, you will still get a bargain, especially now while these outlets are out
of fashion.

Things may not always be this way. Traditional media has seen a lot of
consolidation over recent years and this is set to continue. They are pooling
their ad-selling resources. Larger print titles are taking over smaller rivals.
Many of those remaining independent are sharing third-party agencies to sell
ads. There has also been an exaggerated swing towards new media and there is
bound to be a correction. The buyer's market will not be around for long. Like
all true markets, balance will be restored and the bargains will be harder to
find.

So, now is the time to act. Contact your local newspaper or your trade
magazine. Contact your local radio station. With their help, you can put
together your own professional campaign. While the big boys play with their new
digital ad toys, you can steel a march on your competitors using traditional
outlets. Do it now before it's too late!

Vernon Stent is marketing manager for various companies, including Arkay
Hygiene, selling Insectocutor Electric Fly
Killers. As an example listen to this radio
commercial, which was produced without the use of an ad agency.

Search Engine Optimization for Dummies

Writen by Daegan Smith

Lets face it. Search Engines rule the World Wide Web today. Anytime you want to look up some information or a product you want to buy, you put the relevant keyword in the search field of a major SE like Google. And Violแ! The efficient little engine throws up pages and pages of website URLs which carry your keyword.

SEO has become the most popular and the most effective strategy for increasing website traffic today. It gives you more exposure, pulls in more qualified visitors and helps you substantially increase your income. So, if you are a home based business owner with a serious web presence you would know the importance of attracting quality traffic to your website. Among all the strategies and tactics you can employ to attract focused web traffic to your site, optimising your website to get in top SE rankings is the most important. However to keep your rankings that way you have to be on top of what is happening in the SE industry. To understand how search engines work, spend some time at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/0,4621,316408,00.html

Here are some great ways to optimize your site to get to the top of the SE rankings and stay that way:

1. Reciprocal links: Fish out relevant (but non-competing) websites that complement your services and products and ask them to link to your site. It’s a big hit with search engines to see a large number of sites linked to yours. However more important than quantity is the quality of the linked sites. Search engines look at how relevant the links are, that is, how much the content of the linking site has in common with the content on your site. The more relevant, the better. SE s also gauge the importance of these sites; their online presence and the number of hits they get. In a nutshell SE s believe that company matters!

2. Keyword is the king:however much the SE industry changes its rules, algorithms, indexing methods…. the right keyword is still the most important reason they will pick up your site to put on their top result pages. So keyword inclusion and placement is very important. The best places to place your chosen keywords are:
   • Domain name: Putting your keyword in your domain name is both most obvious and the most important. But take care to put it in the root of the URL, not in the stem…that could SE s angry and do you more harm than good.
     
   • Title tags: in the title tags of your source code
     
   • Meta description: In the Meta description of your site.
     
   • Meta keyword tags

3. CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT: Create content rich information pages to get traffic coming your way. A word of caution…unless these pages contain information of some value to the potential visitors SE s may not pick them up. Search engines hate "pointer pages" that have no content and exist only to add to the number of links pointing to a site.

4. Online Directories: Almost all major portals have industry specific directories. Submit your website’s URL to directories like Yahoo and About.com as well as smaller directories. This will increase your chances of getting a boost in your SE rankings.

5. Go Forth and Multiply: Create your own community of sites that point to each other. A good idea would be to have different sites if you sell different types of products and services. You can also concentrate on using specific keyword phrases on each site. The more content rich sites that point to your site the better. So that’s another great way to boost your search engine ranking.

Now lets look at some of the most common mistakes that can prove to be the undoing of your website.

- The number 1 mistake is not putting enough CONTENT. Your website must have keyword –rich content that adds value to the visitors’ info search. Without meaningful content your visitors can click out just as easily only to never come back again.

- Using frames is a technique that makes the Webmaster’s life easy but can easily prove to be a major put off for SE s. SE s may find it difficult to move around in frames and will fail to include all of the pages in their list. These missed out pages will never show up to the people who are looking for them and defeat the whole purpose of your exercise.

- Enclosing text in graphics is another technique used by web designers to give the website an even, uniform look for every visitor. Unfortunately, SE s cannot differentiate between a photo in a graphic and text in a graphic. Hence they will overlook it. There you go again! Beat this problem by putting the real information in plain text that search engines can recognize.

Being visible the Internet is the first step to being found on the Internet.

So take advantage of these proven success tips and avoid the traps that will make your rankings fall down in the SE abyss. What you’ll be left with is a great website ranking bringing in focused qualified visitors to help you boost your sales.

For more information check out these websites:

http://www.powerhomebiz.com/vol127/optimization.htm

http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/DummiesTitle/productCd-0764567586.html

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