Posts Tagged ‘ads’

Business In 2010 A New Face of Marketing

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

The term “internet marketing” was virtually non-existent a short 8 years ago, now it is a growing phenomenon that is raking millions every year. Because of this expanding industry, the internet landscape it changing. Where are the changes going to be? I fully expect a growth in interactive end-user experiences – an online environment catering to the individual preferences of a singular visitor. I also foresee a massive change in the way we market online. A change could include “personalized” advertisements embedded so deeply into the product that the user does not realize it as an ad.

Where is this marketing going? Where will it be in 2010? Here are some ideas:

Personal Ads:

Not “Single white male seeks.”. Advertisements displaying personalized data to the end user. This trend has started with products like Google’s AdWords, where visitors are greeted with ads specific to the content on the page. With the free flow of personal information on the internet, it is feasible that in a few years, the advertisements could be as specific as, “Bob, the Buick is over due for an oil change, here are the 3 closest Quick Lubes”

Advertisement Channels:

Cable channels are expanding so quickly it is hard to keep up, soon, we could be surfing over to channel 1430 for the “2010 Chevrolet Series”, where we actually sit down and watch a one hour special on Chevy’s – this mode of advertisement would work for a couple of reasons:

- It is highly targeted

Current television advertising (commercials) often get the MUTE button treatment or we get up to get more popcorn, leaving an unknown number of viewers watching the 30 second ad.

- Accepting market

When viewer tune in specifically for a product, your message effectiveness grows exponentially. For example, if you the viewer are not interested in the “Home Depot Shed Products” advertisement channel, don’t watch. For those of you who are interested in home and garden and Do It Yourself, this channel would serve as your personal how-to expert. Home Depot reaches only those interested in their product while maintaining their orange apron image.

Customized Webpages:

On some webpages now, a visitor can change the color and theme of the webpage. This makes for a more enjoyable destination – leading to more recurring visitors. Once a user has spent the time to build their own portal, they will return and use that as their primary resource of information (think MSN).

Webpages of the future must be able to support a “no two alike” mentality. End users must have the option of customizing their content, color, theme, and functionality.

The changes are on the horizon, prepare your business to capture visitors and give them the “one-on-one” feeling.

Jacob Madison is an internet marketing professional specializing in high-return growth and advanced marketing tactics. Find out more about him at http://www.jacobmadison.com

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How to Add Warmth, Color & Texture to Your Advertisements

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

“A powerful agent is the right word” –Mark Twain

And what true words those are! Your marketing efforts have the ability to succeedor to failbased on the words you choose to represent your products, services, and yourself in your ads.

You have the ability to choose any words you desire. The problem is, sometimes, we draw a blank. Our minds seem amiss of anything creative to say. This is when a diverse collection of pre-written phrases, designed to bring miraculous changes to your ads, comes in handy.

A collection of pre-written phrases, which you can drop right into your ad text, offers a lot of magic, a good deal of choices, and an incredible journey through words which develop warmth, color, and add texture to your ads. With pre-written buzz-word phrases, you can bring your ad to life – immediately.

So how do you come up with these phrases and buzz words?

Step one is to become aware of every advertisement you’re exposed to, whether it be on television, in a newspaper, in email, or in a magazine. Just pay attention and study those ads.

Step two involves gathering your pre-written phrases. Write down words which make an impact on you. Make a notebook, or a computer document, and as you are exposed to the ads around you, jot down those phrases and buzz words. Here’s some phrases and words I jotted down recently:

Accept nothing but the best
Because you’re worth it
Consider it a gift from youto you

The third step is to take these phrases and integrate them into your ads. The best way to do this is work with an ad which you’ve already written. How much impact does it have? How much sparkle and pizzaz does it possess? Does your already-written ad grab your attention? If the answer is NO, then it’s time to input some marketing miracle phrases – sprinkle them about your ad, pick some from your list which fit with your product or service – and revise.

Let’s take a look at an ad I found written by someone who is not using marketing miracle phrases:

“New ladies brown leather coat. Size XL.”

The ad for this item really didn’t capture my attention. The photo of the item did – it’s a nice product! Let’s see how the actual ad can be spruced up with the use of some marketing miracle phrases:

“Give radiance to everything when you wear this exquisite, full-length, chocolate brown leather coat. For lovers of fine quality everywhere, you’ll experience comfort and luxury, for just a fraction of the retail price. Handsomely crafted, it will make a chic addition to your winter wardrobe. Ladies size XL.”

See the difference? Using marketing miracle words gives you a new way of impacting your buyers with words and phrases designed to bypass the mind, get your product deep into their heart and soul, and reach the core of their deepest desires.

So why not try it with your own ads? Just follow the three steps in this article to add warmth, color and texture to your ads. See the change in your ads, and the change in your bottom line sales figures. Good luck!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Michele Jai Johnson is the author of 777 Marketing Miracle Phrases. Multi-published, her articles and short stories have appeared in many online publications, as well as national print magazines and newsletters. She is also the author of instructional courses and has written many short reports and tips booklets, in addition to 777 Marketing Miracle Phrases. You can pick up your own copy of her handy booklet here: http://www.michelejanine.com/777mmp.html

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Creating Your Own Pixel Advertising Site

Monday, October 12th, 2009

As I promised in my previous article “Pixel Advertising – A new trend in Online Advertising”, this is a guide on how to build your pixel ad site. The best part of making this site is you don’t need to buy an expensive script; all you need is the cost of registering a domain and web hosting.

To make it easy for you to follow, I organized it step by step.

Step 1
Register the domain name you will use for the site.

Step 2
Prepare the web hosting account for the site.

Step 3
Create a mysql database and user in your hosting account. Make sure the database account has full access to the database. If you are using cPanel, just click on the mysql icon.

Step 4
Download the FREE pixel ad script at www.pixeladraptor.com and uncompress it to your PC.

Step 5
Locate and edit the file config.php and enter the details of the mysql database you created in step 3. You will also have to enter an admin user account and password.

Step 6
Using an FTP program (I use smartftp, its FREE), upload all the files to your site. Iif you want the pixel site to run in the root domain (www.xxx.com), you have to upload the files in the root folder (usually in public_html). If you want the pixel site to run on a subdomain or specific folder, you have to make sure you upload it to the right folder.

Step 7
After uploading the files, access the admin site which is under www.yourdomain.com/admin/ using the admin account you entered in Step 5.

Step 8
Click on the “Settings” tab and enter all the details asked on that page.

That’s it.

If you installed the scripts in the root domain, you will be able to access the pixel ad site by typing www.yourdomain.com. If you installed it in a subdomain, enter www.yoursubdomain.yourdomain.com. If you installed it in a specific folder, enter www.yourdomain.com/yourfolder/

Marvin Gorospe is writing for OnlinePixels4u.com and maintains the site below.

OnlinePixels4u.com
XsiteProTemplates4u.com
eDirectoryPages.com

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How To Sell Your Products or Services on Value And Stop Selling On Price Alone

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

Have you ever met with, or talked to a prospect that wasn’t ready to buy what you had to offer? What did you do with that prospects? Most sales gurus of the 1980’s and 90’s wrote books that told you to move on to the next prospect who is ready to buy now, and not waste your time on those that aren’t ready yet.

Here’s the wrong assumption to make in that situation. You took the time and educated the prospect; they walked out, and you automatically think that they either bought from someone else, or they were just tire kicking. Wrong!!!

Why Prospect Shop Price Alone

Did you know that your prospects were conditioned by your industry to make price the overriding issue when looking for products and services? Whose fault is this? In my opinion, I would have to say that in most cases, it’s the fault of the vendors that are selling your product or service.

Why do I say this? Think about it…most prospects that call you have done most of their research regarding the type of product or service that you offer and are now ready to buy. The typical prospect makes 3 to 5 phone calls asking who can provide the best price, because they’ve already done the research and know what their needs are. What might you tell them? You might jump at the opportunity to gain a new client and say, “I’ll give you the best price, what did the other guy offer you?”

Have you ever wondered how to sell your products and services more on value than simply on the price?

Understanding The Educational Spectrum

Think of the Educational Spectrum as a horizontal line from left to right, with the letter “A” representing the far left hand side
of the spectrum and “Z” being the far right. Prospects jump on
the educational spectrum somewhere from A to Z. A is when the prospect first gets the idea that they have a need for what you have to offer. We call these “Future Buyers”. Z is when money changes hands and they acquire the goods. We call these “Now Buyers”.

Here’s a simple illustration of the Educational Spectrum. The key is to determine where your prospects are on this spectrum and help them move comfortably and consistently towards the right of the spectrum where they then become the “Now Buyers”.

“The Educational Spectrum”

A====D=========G=====J=======M=======P========S=======V======Z

A- Prospect firsts gets the idea to buy what you sell

D- Starts gathering information on an informal basis

G- Asks friend & associates for recommendations

J- Heavy-duty fact finding

M- Narrows choices by process of elimination

P- Narrows in on favorites; decision is coming soon

S- Makes decision to buy but not necessarily who to buy from

V- Waiting for the right time

Z- Money changes hands

A====D=========G=====J=======M=======P========S=======V======Z

Just like we know that having a baby takes 9 months, you have a good idea what the selling cycle is for your products. Whatever it is, you know it is fairly constant. So why rush the future buyers to buy when they are not ready? Why not use the selling cycle to your advantage?

Become The Logical Choice To Do Business With

Understanding the job of effective marketing will allow you to assist your prospects when you know that they are not ready to buy what you have to offer by providing marketing materials that are hit their hot-buttons and educate them in a systematic way until they are ready to buy.

This process should be systematic and automated, so that they receive industry significant information that helps them to make a quality decision. In other words, you can become the advocate for your industry that prospects look to for advice. When they become “Now Buyers”, where do you think they will go for their purchase? Good chance, it will be you!

Think of yourself as the fountain from whence all information flows when it comes to buying what you have sell.

It should not be important who your prospect buys from as long as you are committed to providing the best information and knowledge so they can make the best buying decision for themselves and their situation.

In the end, no one wants to feel like they made a bad decision to purchase your product or service, so it is important that you assist your prospects every step of the way as they are gaining confidence in doing business with you.

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Can I Really Earn Money With Articles and Adsense

Sunday, August 30th, 2009

The question regarding making money using articles and adsense has been asked many times. The doubters will tell you that it’s not possible. If that were true, there would not be so many people making their living writing articles for their Adsense sites.

In order to make money with Adsense, you need to find a profitable niche. When you are just starting out, you should pick a niche that you have some interest in. By doing this you will be more interested and it will not be quite as challenging for you to write your articles. If you are interested in gardening, you could write articles about different plants, soil conditions, watering, the best planting times or even about those pesky insects that invade your garden. The possibilities are limitless. When you become more comfortable writing articles and have your site profiting for you, you might then try a niche that is new to you. Go to the search engines and do a search for whatever niche you want to try and research that topic. You might find that you have more of an interest in that topic than you thought.

When writing your articles, be precise, be informative, and by all means, don’t tell them the same thing that everyone else is telling them. Make your articles new and interesting. Give them unique content. Don’t write one or two articles and think that will be enough. You need to keep writing, keeping your site full of fresh content. Don’t forget to put your name and website address at the end of your article in the resource box. As you write articles that are interesting, other website may pick up your article and publish it on their site or in their newsletter, thereby driving additional traffic to your site.

By keeping your content fresh and informative, the search engines will spider your site more often. The search engines love new and unique content. They will make numerous trips to your site if you keep adding to it. The more often they visit, the higher in the ratings you can go.

You need to also submit your articles to the article directories. Each article directory has its own submission guidelines so before you submit be sure to check their guidelines out. Make sure your resource box is included with the article when you submit it. Without this resource box, readers will not know who wrote the article or how to get more information from your site. These visitors will also help increase your search engine ratings.

When you sign up for Google’s Adsense program, they will place Adsense ads on your site that are directly related to the topic that you are writing about. Google does this work for you. When a visitor clicks on one of the ads, you are paid for that click. The amount you are paid depends on what the advertiser is paying for that ad and only Google knows that. The more traffic that comes to your site, and the higher your click through rate (CTR) is, the more money you can make.

It’s not as hard as it may appear. The hardest part is getting started and keeping the momentum going. Don’t give up. It can take several weeks for your site to get traffic. The most important thing though is to keep the articles going to your site. If you want, you can also ad articles written by others, just be sure to include their resource box.

Loretta Miller has a site where the goal is to help people increase the traffic to their website. increasesalesinfo.com/

Loretta Miller has a site where the goal is to help people increase traffic to their website. increasesalesinfo.com/

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Moving To The Next Level With Adsense

Monday, November 17th, 2008

When you first start promoting Adsense on your site, the potential is obvious. After a few months, however, you need to move to the next level to maximize revenues.

When it comes to Adsense optimization, most will talk about different ad sizes and colors. These can make a difference, but the biggest and best enhancement has everything to do with placement.

Assume you are reading the sports page or some other part of the paper one morning. The page is full of images, text and advertisements. What do you see? Typically, you first read the headlines and look at the images. After that, you either read a story of interest or turn the page.

You will note that I didn’t mention looking at advertisements. This is because you will have developed a filter over time that causes you to ignore the ads on the pages. In practical terms, this is the equivalent of Pavlov’s dogs, but backwards. You know the ads are in certain areas and you just tend to avoid them naturally so you can focus on why your team is losing, you stock bombed or the latest scandal. This concept applies to the web as well.

People inherently avoid advertisements on web pages including Adsense ads. The number one Adsense improvement you can make is to move your ads. Should you place your ads at the top? The bottom? The side columns? The answer to all of these questions is absolutely not. Here comes the secret [drum roll].

The best location for your ads is in the middle of the page. For most sites, this means between the paragraphs of text on a page. Few sites take this approach, so readers are not conditioned to skip over the ads. Since Adsense ads track with the keywords on the page, this position is a gold mine because the ads are read by the visitor as the naturally move down the page. If they naturally read it, a higher percentage of them will click through and that is good news for your revenues.

There are a lot of tips on how to generate more revenue with Adsense. When you cut through the riff raff, however, the placement of your ads is everything. Try it and see.

Halstatt Pires is with MarketingTitan.com – providing internet marketing services.

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Advertisements

Sunday, July 13th, 2008

Love or hate ‘em, you’re hitched to advertisements, and by default, also to their fine print. There are many discussions on whether ads work, what effect they have and who they’re really intended for. We don’t, as a whole, take ads seriously unless we are one of the converted. Yet we should take small print in ads seriously, especially if we are converted.

In print, ads are not so much of a bother; we can easily skip over them. On live TV it’s different. At best we can mute the channel or, god forbid from the point of view of whoever paid for the ad, switch to another, get up for a break, snooze, or take care of some small business. In any case, here we’ll look at what’s really going on and what we can do to shield ourselves from the hazards of small print and fine print. Note that fine is not necessarily small.

Advertisements tell us about what kind of choices we have in the marketplace, yet note that the choices given are only what the advertisers see as viable commercial ones, not the possible ones and there’s the rub. The not so viable commercial choices are absent, yet we may want them if we know what they are.

Advertisers are also more interested in you if you have more money to spend. The more money you have, the more money they’ll spend on advertisements targeted at you. Their prize is your pocket book or wallet. Your well being may or may not be in their picture. On the other hand, folks with less money are not ignored. Witness the advertisements for help with bad credit.

Values are subjective constructs and advertising unashamedly plays with them. It makes things more real than reality itself. Perceived values are embellished. Colors are intensified or flattened and background details are added or subtracted to create special effects that are designed to trigger the impulse to buy or to get you to relate positively to the message. Voice and sounds are manipulated to reinforce images and pitches. There is no doubt that advertisements are a species of propaganda. Enjoy the ad ride, but be aware you’re not in an amusement park. Disney World it isn’t unless it is.

Ads are sometimes written by tricksters. Here are two examples. An ad with bold, towering print and low price quotes for cruises had the following very fine print disclaimers:

Limited availability; prices shown are min. for selected departure dates (not stated); other dates higher; not responsible for last minute changes of prices or itinerary by cruse line, or any errors or omissions in the content of this ad; some restrictions and cancellation penalties may apply. We don’t know availability, the selected dates, higher prices for non-selected dates, penalties for cancellation or other restrictions.”

What do they know? They hope you will ask. The fine print in the ad , whatever you can make out of it, is actually a litany of questions to ask the agent if you are not scared to dial the toll free number. Note that the word ‘minimum’ is abbreviated- easier to miss that way. That list of disclaimers is a beauty. Should you call? Only if you haven’t read the fine print. In that case … enjoy the cruise whenever, wherever, at whatever price.

Travel fraud is not uncommon and folks planning a vacation seem to be in a frame of mind that makes them vulnerable to ads with exotic landscapes. So check out destination details, which may surprise you. The advertised choice hotel may be a renovated shack. The beach front may be a mile away. It’s much better to seek out a travel agent than have one seek you out.

A large newspaper ad for a Pope John Paul Memorial Commemorative coin was advertised to be issued directly from The Roman Monetary Authority. The fine print on the bottom stated that the so-called Roman Monetary Authority is simply an Independent Corporation. The ad in bold print says that only a total of 500 Commemoratives will be issued per nation. How many nations are there? You get different answers depending on who you ask. The United States recognizes 192 independent nations, excluding Taiwan for political reasons. Using the 192 figure, we come up with a 96,000 coin “limited release”. Then again, who’s counting?

The bottom line is that you should step cautiously in the minefield of advertisements. Here’s an Ad Checklist:

  • In advertisements look at the small fine print first.
  • Check the offer date limitations in advertisements.
  • Are photos for illustration only and do not represent advertised items.
  • Do discounts or terms of the offer apply only to minimum dollar or quantity purchases?
  • Are there specific items excluded from any discounts? What are they?
  • Are any of the advertised products excluded from the promotion?
  • What is the interest rate after the end of any free financing period?
  • Are there limits on multiple purchases?
  • Are rain checks available?
  • Is the offer good only while supply lasts? What is the supply?
  • Are any locations exempted from the promotion?
  • Are there Free Delivery distance disclaimers?
  • Does a warranty apply only to the original owner?
  • If a monthly service is cancelled, is the monthly service fee prorated?
  • What is the order cancellation policy?
  • What, if any, is the return policy?
  • If the so-called monthly billing cycle 12 or 13 times a year?
  • If you are making a financial investment in a new venture, check with your tax and/or legal counsel.
  • If you are making a financial investment in a new venture, check for missing fine print. Are they telling you everything?
  • What are the late payment penalties? These can knock you out. And they’re always in the small print.
  • What does the advertisement or contract say about discontinuing any service?
  • Is there a minimum purchase amount for the offer?
  • Never make a late payment if humanly possible. The penalties for late payments are serious.
  • Never use credit until you know what your credit limit is.
  • Review your credit report before borrowing more.
  • Know exactly what all the advertisements you read or watch say.
  • Remember: advertisements are propaganda.
  • Shred all advertisements for unwanted credit cards.

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