Advertising @ Home

Dear Visitor,

Today, I am going to talk about a singular experience and present to you a rare opportunity to advertise your products, to one of the greatest and most controllable markets, accessible almost for free, through an overlooked media. (It has nothing to do with Pay-Per-Click, or newspaper )

I am talking about college students as the market, and the college campus as a center of marketing research and experiments.

Is A College Campus A Flea Market In Disguise?

I come from Mirebalais, a small city in Haiti. And when I was a boy I used to go the market (make it flea market or open market) to buy chicken, which I intended to raise without my mother knowing. (that’s a different story).

But if you’ll bear with me, you’ll see the relationship between a college campus and an actual flea market. And if you can see the relationship you’ll see the vast opportunity for market testing and covert marketing research that a college campus offers.

How Much Controld Do You Have Over Your Audience On A College Campus?

In a flea market, people are gathered to buy and sell their products. On a college campus, students are gathered to buy education, and sell themselves to each other. Those students carry with them their everyday dreams, their everyday wants, their everyday desires. And these emotional buttons can put in motion by your advertisement because those students carry with them the same emotions that people carry with them in the marketplace.

Control? Wednesdays and Saturdays were the market days in my little city. And when you go to the market, you could not avoid the sellers: the people crying :” Fresh milk, right from the cow. Buy now and mix with your coffee..” You could not avoid the other merchants yelling: “Sweet potatoes. Delicious sweet potatoes. Big ones too. Unearthed today, boil them and delight your family. Give your children good food. Sweet potatoes.”

Once you step into the market place, you were ‘prisoner’ of the offers.

The same thing goes for college students. Once they enter the buildings, they are prisoner of your advertising. They’re under your ‘control’, we could venture to sayfor as long as your flyer can attract their attention, they won’t fail to miss it. As long as your offer taps into one of their emotional needs for recognition, love, amusement, success, they won’t fail to respond to it.

And here’s how the college campus becomes a place of marketing research and market testing for any company that sells products that college students want.

Direct Response Advertising Using Flyers

The college campus becomes A MEDIA where the students are held captive (they have to go through the buildings). And that gives you control on the delivery of your message. That also enables you, if you are disciplined, to test different messages. This wouldn’t apply to hit-and-run companiesthat do one special promotion and drop the ball.

And because you’re certain of having these eyeballs for the next three monthsyou can test different messages and see which flyers get more responses. Which flyers are picked up quickly and which are ignored religiously. You can research the reaction to your offer, covertly. I am not talking about focus group, but direct response advertising through flyers.

(of course, we should remember that the population is diverse. Age, ethnicity are two major points of diversity. Most college students are old teenagers and in their mid-twenties, but more and more older people (30’s and up) are returning to college, for many reasons (career change, get education.)

Now if you sell something that college students want, all you have to do is present your offer to them.on campus.

How do you do this?

Four Key Elements In College Campus Advertising

Message (Content and Design)

Support(what type of paper, what color of paper, what size of paper)

Delivery (when and where on the college campus)

Measurement (Response Device and direct observation)

How do you compete against the clutter of flyers that abound on posting boards?

Stay tuned.this question I will answer in my next post.I’ll back up my answer with a specific campaign/market testing I conducted at Massasoit Community College in Brockton, Ma.

Swans G Paul

Why Ad Agencies Won’t Tell You These Advertising Secrets Guaranteed To Make Your Phone Ring With More Sales? See The Details at: www.magazine.instantresultsadvertising.com/magazine.php

Tags: advertising and media, direct marketing to college students, flyers on college campuses

If you own a web site yourself or know someone that does, you are probably familiar with the importance of internet marketing tools. The site may have a professional design, quality product or service, great content and functionality, but if the right internet marketing strategies are not utilized, your site may not be attracting the key to real success, highly targeted traffic. Getting a lot of consistent traffic has very little to do with the web site itself, but rather how the sites owner or webmaster choose to advertise the site. There are hundreds even thousands of sites competing on the web today, so you must use the most effective internet marketing tools to achieve targeted results.

There are many different internet marketing tools that can be used effectively, all of which are designed to increase your web sites traffic. Simply put, you must find a way to get people to your site. Put yourself in the “shoes” of your prospective visitors and clients. “Where do they go to do web searches?” is a key question that must be answered and can be quite simple to answer, the search engine. The webs most popular sites are search engines and portals, therefore, you should focus your internet marketing efforts to the search engine.

When surfers browse search engines, they will be more inclined to view a site placed high on the search engine, as opposed to a site with poor search engine placement. With that in mind, you must use the correct internet marketing tools to build a strong (high) search engine ranking. This is where the term Search Engine Optimization is derived from. SEO, as it is called commonly, is a set of methods and tactics aimed at improving your search engine ranking and the visibility of your site in search engine results.

Search engines index sites in several ways, one of which is by looking at the keyword density of the web site, or the sites content. Content alone, is one of the most valuable internet marketing tools to utilize. If your site has excellent relevant keywords aimed towards achieving a high search engine ranking, as well as providing valuable information, you can expect a high search engine position. But because of the high competition of web sites using the same internet marketing methods, you must continuously find new and better ways of attracting targeted traffic.

Today, one of the most popular and effective internet marketing tools is the use of Pay Per Click advertising. This method involves bidding for a particular keyword in a specific search engine, the search engine then compares the bids of all the merchants for that specific keyword, and the highest bid gets the top placement for that specific keyword search. For example, if you bid $.75 and a competitor bids $.73, you will be awarded the higher position. This internet marketing tool is being utilized by thousands of web sites on hundreds of PPC search engines. Google Adwords, Yahoo Overture, and the new MSN Adcenter are the three most popular sites who offer pay per click ad services today.

Content and pay per click advertising are just two of many internet marketing tools that you can utilize to improve your search engine optimization and achieve high web site traffic. There are literally hundreds of other techniques and methods, both free and paid, that you can use successfully to increase your sites visitors and profits. Internet marketing tools are the true key to SEO and generating profits in the highly-competitive online business battlefront that we call the Internet.

James Bradley has been involved in internet marketing and affiliate marketing for over 4 years. He has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine. http://www.supermoneymakingsecrets.com

Tags: internet marketing, pay per click advertisements, PPC, search engine optimization, SEO

If you are looking to improve your marketing results, then you need to follow these quick & easy guidelines.

1. Know your consumer. You just cannot market to a market that you do not know. You have to get to know your market as if it were a person. What motivates that “person” to buy your product? How old is the average person buying from you? What gender are they? Where do they live? What kinds of jobs do they have and what is their income? The more you know about your market, the more you are able to target your message effectively.

2. You need to have the right timing to market effectively. You can have a great marketing message, but your market will not be interested if it does not reach them at the right time. Think about certain times of the year that your product or service can be advertised aggressively. Holidays such as Christmas, Fourth of July, and Easter could be exploited to increase revenue for your business.

3. You have to have the right offer. In direct response marketing, the experts say that only 20% of your results are based on your creativity. Then, 40% is dependant on your offer, and the last 40% is dependant on your list. With this in mind, you have to test your offers. You have to find the right offer that will beat all your other offers, and then turn around and test it again. You need to TEST, TEST, TEST, TEST, and then TEST again. In addition, after it is all done and over with, you need to start all over again, with your testing. In this way, you will be testing and refining your results for the better on a continual basis.

4. It is all about your communication and message. If you know your market well enough, you will be able to use that knowledge to create a message that hits them in the core. Your message will resonate with their hearts. It will address their needs and your service or product will differentiate you from your competitors. Be sure that you stress benefits over features. All too often, advertisers are hung up on the features, and leave prospects wondering what the benefits are. Do not assume that your prospect will already know the benefits. You have to spell them out for the market.

So there you have it. With these simple power-strategies, you will be able to approach your next marketing campaign aggressively. By knowing your market, you will ensure that you reach them at the right time. The right time means that it is the time when they are ready to buy from you. By experimenting with your offers and testing them on a regular basis, you will be able to find the most productive offer.

Enigma Valdez is an internet marketer dedicated to helping businesses grow and succeed. You can access his sites at

http://resultsbasedmarketing.blogspot.com/

http://sevenfigurecopywriter.blogspot.com/

Tags: Advertise, advertising, business, content, Internet, market, Marketing, online, sales, web

A big challenge for every small business owner is the need to ‘find time’ for marketing.

I can relate. None of us are full time marketers. We’re all providing services to clients. And when you’re serving clients too, it’s hard to fit in sales calls and marketing activity. It’s hard to maintain momentum.

One thing is for sure, whatever shape our business is in right now, we all have the same 365 days in 2006.

Will you use that time to create a structure that supports you and brings in clients automatically, or will you still be complaining about ‘lack of time’ when 2007 rolls around?

Despite being one of the most disorganised people on the planet, and someone who was earning all my income from selling my time just 18 months ago, I have managed to create an ‘autopilot’ marketing machine, generate passive streams of income, and I now earn more than I ever have, whilst working less hours. I truly believe that you can do the same, so in this article I want to share with you a few ideas that may help if you’ve been having trouble ‘finding time’.

1. If you don’t enjoy it, you’ll never ‘find the time’

If the idea of marketing and selling your services leaves you with a yucky feeling in the pit of your stomach, then let me assure you, you’ll never ‘find time’. As long as you feel like this, there will always be a more attractive activity pulling your attention. Even if your fairy godmother gifted you with two whole weeks, you’d still find ways to avoid marketing and selling. It’s called ‘Creative Avoidance’.
Is your problem is really a ‘lack of time’ or are you creatively avoiding marketing and selling?

2. If your business isn’t structured properly, you’ll never find the time

If meeting your revenue goals is dependent upon you working with clients 4-5 days a week, then it’s going to be really hard to find time for marketing. You may need to take a closer look at your pricing structures and put together a business plan that includes time for marketing, administration, rest, and time to reinvest in yourself. E-Myth author Michael Gerber calls this working ‘on’ the business, not just ‘in’ the business. My own experience was that I had to simultaneously increase my prices whilst slashing overheads to create a situation where I did have time to work on my business.

If you’re working flat out just to keep afloat, then you definitely need to take a closer look at what you are charging.

3. If your only way of generating income is by selling your time, then you’ll never ‘find the time for marketing.’

Somehow you need to break this catch 22, and the way to do that is by ‘productising’ your services. Sharing your expertise through a book, an audio package.

I know, I know! You’re too busy working with clients to have the time to create products. The good news is, there is a way to create revenue producing products that does not have to take hours of your time.

The first product I ever created was simply a recording of a day long seminar that I ran. That product brought in

Tags: Advertise, advertising, entrepreneur, income, market, Marketing, promote, promotion, small business, time man

Like what many marketing gurus said, having traffic alone is not sufficient to ensure that you have a successful Internet Business. The key to success is “Conversion”. If you have 100,000 visitors to your web site but only 10 of them were making purchases, you are still not as successful as someone who has 1000 visitors with 5% conversion rate (i.e. 50 purchases). The reason for low conversion rate could be lack of targeting in your ads. That is very important but not my topic of discussion today. Another reason which could be more important could be poor sales copy. If you have low conversion rate, one of the area you should seriously look at is your copy.

There are 3 very important key components that you must have in your copy to ensure that you have higher conversion rate. They are:

1. Unique Selling Proposition.
2. Think the same frequency as your target market.
3. Powerful Headline.

1. Unique Selling Proposition.
You copy must have an Unique Selling Proposition. There are hundreds if not thousands of competitors out there. Why must your target audience buy YOUR PRODUCT or even buy the product from YOU (if there are so many people selling the same product)? You need to be able to articulate all the strengths to your audience. That’s is not enough! You need to be careful that you are selling your benefits not features. You must first understand their pains, their concerns, their frustrations and provide them with solutions to their pains etc. You need to list down clearly how each of their challenges can be addressed and how they can enjoy the benefits your product or services will bring them.

2. Think the same frequency as your target market.
When you communicate with your target market, you need to understand their demographics. Like what many said, heart-ware is more important than hardware or software. Understanding the emotions of buyers and communicate at the correct level with your target audience will get you going. If you are trying to address too wide and audience, you may be in for trouble. That’s why most marketing gurus ask you to find your niche. You need to know their fear, their objections so that you can present your message in such away that will keep their fears in check and objections answered. For example, providing a guaranty so that you can address the fear of buying a wrong product. Sometimes customers fear that they purchase a product that is not suitable for them. That makes them think twice. If a strong money back guaranty is given, they will be more willing to take the risk since the risk is no longer there.

3. Powerful Headline.
Looks like I am putting the most important thing last. Surely, the headline is what your reader see first and it has to be powerful and captivating. Without which, the rest is useless. The head line must grab the attention of the readers. It must make them wanting to continue to read on. You need to arouse their curiosity positively. One of the very effective head line is “HOW TO …..”. Things like “how to make $20,000 in a week…”, “How to lose 20lb in 3 months…” are some of the examples. You should avoid headlines that are too general like “the value of quality services…” “the internet business guide book…” etc.

So, bearing these in mind, the next time you write your copy, make sure the above 3 components are there. I wish you success in you Internet Marketing Business.

Copyright 2006 Randy Sei & Probase Consulting

Randy Sei owns www.bizgenerator.com and www.bizgenerator.com helping people achieving financial freedom with Internet Business. He is also a trainer in IT business.

Tags: Advertise, Conversion, copy, Sales Letter, writing