Tag: small business marketing

Copyright (c) 2008 Christian Fea

The format of an advertisement refers to its type and the position it occupies on a page. Web based advertising formats are most similar to the types used in traditional print media advertising because of the visual medium of both. There are a variety of advertising formats to consider when you are looking to strategically market your business.

Banner Ads

The granddaddy of internet marketing advertisements is the banner ad, a clickable rectangular image, displayed across the top of a web page. The placement of an ad at the head of the page is a strategic choice. Westerners are taught to read top to bottom, left to right, so whatever information appears at the top of the page is in a targeted real estate area for grabbing attention.

Banner ads were one of the original internet advertising tools, have enjoyed a great deal of success, and are reliable and proven way to attract customers to your business and services, and your website. Banner ads however are not foolproof or one hundred percent successful. Banner ads have become so prevalent that web users have started to get desensitized to the images, sometimes ignoring the images altogether. This phenomenon was first described by researchers at Rice University as banner blindness, and it is this issue that eventually gave rise to other forms of internet advertising.

The next phase

The market saturation with banner ads prompted a new crop of internet ads to be born. Tower ads, inline ads, sliding ads, pop-up ads, and video based ads are all popular forms of web advertising you see on just about every web page now, and are types of ads that morphed out of the success of the original banner ad.

Most of these advertising types are a variation on the format of the banner ad, changing the placement, orientation and style of the ad to gain more of an edge for visually capturing one’s attention. A tower ad is a vertical rectangle banner placed either to the left of right of the web page content. An inline as is a smaller, more narrow banner ad that is inserted into the middle of web page content.

Aggressive advertising

There are a couple of banner inspired internet advertising formats that are more aggressive ways to grab a viewers attention and tend to be more controversial, spurring loyal fans and staunch opponents. The sliding ad and pop-up ad are two of these more aggressive marketing tools.

A sliding ad is an advertisement that literally moves around the web page, often until it is accessed by clicking. These ads are some of the most infuriating for internet users because they force you to stop what you are doing to acknowledge the ad and make it go away, and one of the most successful ads for strategic marketing for the same reason: the advertisement demands the viewers attention.

A pop-up ad is the most infamous of these aggressive methods, literally popping up into a new browser window when you click on a web link. These ads are another type that cannot be ignored – you must acknowledge the ad to dismiss it, thus the advertisers have achieved their goal by capturing your attention.

Most companies use more than one of these types of ads to make for a collaborative marketing platform. All of these advertisements can be used in affiliate marketing systems and using a combination of these methods is an intelligent way to strategically market your businesses products and services.

Source by Christian Fea

I personally know of several very successful small businesses that don’t spend a dime on advertising? Why? Because they have implemented a referral marketing program that automatically brings in more clients than they need.

The very best way to get a new customer is to simply ask a happy customer for a referral. And do you know the best thing about referred customers? You will almost always be able to charge them full price because they are presold on your quality and work.

This article discusses three very simple but power referral marketing strategies. Pick the one that most appeals to you and work to implement it in your business today.

Referral Strategy #1: It takes One to Know One
Don’t dismiss this referral marketing strategy as too simplistic. I promise you it is very powerful. Here’s how it works.

As soon as you have completed a successful transaction with a good customer, simply ask, “Do you happen to know anyone like yourself that would benefit from my products & services?” The key to this referral idea is twofold.

1. You have completed a transaction with the customer that ended in high satisfaction.

2. You have asked for the referral at the point of maximum impact.

You’ll be amazed by how much new business you can bring in by just asking a happy client for a referral. Most satisfied customers will be happy to provide a name or two upon request. Don’t be shy about this one. It may be simple, but it works!

Referral Strategy #2: Show Me the Money
This referral idea uses the idea of complementary businesses. A complementary business is one that serves the same target customers as your business but is not a direct competitor. For example, let’s say you owned a roofing repair company. Complementary businesses would include other types of home repair business such as weatherproofing, tuckpointing, remodeling, etc.

I recommend only approaching businesses you have some type of established relationship for reasons that will be obvious in a moment.

Work with one business at a time and ask them to mail out a letter to all their clients introducing your business and recommending your products and services. In return, you promise to pay the company a percentage of all sales that you obtain through this mailing.

Don’t be stingy here – make it worth their while. While you may need to offer 25% or more of first-time sales produced, the value comes from retaining these customers for future business.

This referral idea really does require you have a trusting relationship with the complementary company as they will be relying on you to track the business you book from the mailing.

Referral Strategy #3: You Scratch My Back & I’ll Scratch Yours
This referral marketing strategy is simple but powerful. Your client sends you people that make a purchase and you give them coupons worth 20% off a specific product or service.

Let’s say you are a consultant and have an established relationship with a client for whom you are working on a project. The project is a day-long training event and you are charging $2,000. You tell your client that you will knock 20% off the price for every client they send you that makes a purchase.

What makes this system so compelling is that there is no limit to what they can save. If they send you 5 prospects that end up doing business with you, then their $2,000 training session is free (5 x 20% = 100%).

Would you trade a free service for five new paying clients? I would! This referral provides a strong incentive for the client to send you good referrals.

Pick one of the above three referral strategies and work to integrate it into your business. You’ll be surprised by the results!

Source by Corte Swearingen

Rather than focusing on making tons of money online with huge marketing competition, start to invest in making small amounts of money into your online processor account – where you won’t need to do marketing. This is to make money using Paypal. There are currently various ways on how to make money and getting it in your Paypal account.

Most people coming to the internet, and that are completely new to its interface and on what it may offer, often find them in the predicament of bumping theirselves into either a scam-related program that promises a lot, and don’t give that much in return, or the program is so poor, in terms of support and providing some sort of training – that internet beginners are forced to fail.

Yet, there are now litterally thousands of ways that you can make money online. And it comes in a very much more simpler package, than what the far most opportunities would likely bother you with. And although not much at first, one can make lots of money as money can start to stack up.

Most of these “small ways” to make extra money, in my own opinion, should weigh up more than that which everyone strives to. The benefits? There are ways that you can earn daily money into either your Paypal/ Alertpay accounts. Daily. This is a strong point versus the money you need to wait for if you earn affiliate commissions which could take up to 8 months in wait, for your money, in some countries. And even though Clickbank now have schedules within the USA and Canada for weekly direct deposits of affiliate commissions, earning money with Paypal/ Alertpay would totally still outdone affiliate marketing, once more.
Why would I say that?
You will need to make money by marketing the affiliate program. There are millions of competitors, while 97% of all online marketers really fail. In contrast with that, with Paypal and Alertpay, there are especially various ways you can make money if you are a good writer. From witing articles and get paid $1, $2 or more when people view it, to writing reviews about different topics about your life or a review about a product you used, online or offline and getting paid $2 or more per review. . . If you put all of these little streams of money together, it could mean daily income of $20, $30 or even more as time will pass. Without ever marketing. In fact. You can indicate with exact mesure how much you will earn per day, every day.

Find more information by visiting my lens (you will find the link further down).

Source by Jason Jumat

Principles of marketing cover nearly all the products and services which sell across the global in today’s market. Even people need to market themselves in order to come in public eye, no matter how popular they are. Hence it is very much essential that the newbie in business or service providing sector is familiar to the principles of marketing. Only putting up information and assuming that public will get attracted towards your product is something impossible.

In order to get your business marketed properly it becomes very important to carry out certain marketing things.

For instance, the main concept behind presenting a product must be the communal responsibility involved with the product and service and not just approaching people to buy it. In the process of purchasing an item, consumers tend to look at the usability of the good as well. The way of your marketing should make people feel that their product is not only cost effective but it will also benefit them in different ways due to the support of company. Once the customers are able to build a faith on the business they will surely maintain a good business relationship.

Another important aspect of the principals of marketing is known as target marketing. If you have more liquid cash that does not mean you will set up your business anywhere you want and then advertise at various places of your choice, set appropriate target before planning any marketing strategy.

Super Bowl advertisement is the most excellent illustration which signifies target marketing. Those people who are fascinated with different kind of sports will surely watch the super bowl match. But if you place an advertisement related to the dog day care during the time slot of super bowl it is not going to make any sense as it is not reaching your target audience even though you got a wide exposure.

The people who watch the puppy bowl on the Animal planet channel will be the ones that you should aim as target audience for doggy day care center. In this case your ad wont be watched by millions of people but it will be watched by those are really attracted towards your commercial; this can give you significant business. It could be that, the people who are watching this cute puppy advertisement are those who already have a dog or are planning to own the one. Idea of Doggy day care centre will be more appealing for the people who are watching channels related to animals rather than people who are interested in sports.

It is important to select proper marketing distribution pattern which goes with your business. Your advertising should be done in the same state where you are providing the service, this is because if the service offers doggy day care and you are advertising is some other state it is very obvious that none of them will come all the way long to just drop their dogs. Therefore focus more on the marketing efforts and sketch out which one will be the most beneficial for the company, a proper plan would surely help you see positive results. The principles of marketing always state that it’s of no use wasting your time, money and resources on something which is not going to be any good for your business and something which is not targeting the customers of your service area.

Source by Travis Huff

Anyone who owns a website knows the importance of internet marketing tools. You may have a terrific idea for a website with an excellent product or service, superb design, content and functionality but if you do not use the right tactics, your site may not attract the all important highly targeted traffic. Getting a lot of traffic into a site has very little to do with the site itself but with how the webmaster or site owner advertises it. With hundreds of competing sites, you must employ the most effective internet marketing tools that will truly deliver results.

There is different internet marketing tools that you can use. All these techniques and methods aim at increasing your website traffic. You must find a way for web surfers to find your site. To do this, you must put yourself in the shoes of your prospective visitors and future clients and see the internet through their eyes. Where do they usually go whenever they are looking up something on the web? The answer is the search engine; in fact, the two most popular websites on the web today are both search engines and portals. Thus, you should focus your internet marketing efforts on the search engine.

People will usually search for something using a search engine and click on the top results that these engines give. Therefore, you must use the right internet marketing tools to get a high search engine ranking. To gain a high ranking in search results, you can use several internet marketing tools. Search engine optimization is a set of methods that are aimed at improving the visibility of your site in search engine results. Since a search engine indexes sites by looking at its keyword density, your site’s content must have favorable keyword density that is search engine friendly. Content is one of the most important internet marketing tools itself. If you have excellent content that is geared towards achieving a high search engine ranking as well as provide information then you can expect a high search engine ranking. However, this is not as easy as it sounds. Countless other sites may be using the same internet marketing tools as you do. Thus, you must continuously find new ways of attracting more traffic.

Aside from the traditional marketing techniques such as print ads, billboards, brochures, testimonials, flyers etc. you must use other more effective internet marketing tools to gain more traffic. One of the most popular internet marketing tools today is the use of Pay per Click advertising. In this method, you will bid for a particular keyword in a specific search engine. If you have the highest bid then your sites link will be the top result. This internet marketing tool is now being used by thousands of sites. It is also gaining popularity because of its relatively high success rate in attracting high traffic.

Fashion Marketing 101

In a nutshell, fashion marketing is a profession that takes the latest trends and designs in clothing and communicates them to a target market in such a way that the consumer is not only aware of the product, but wants to and ultimately does buy the product. A target market is a sector of the consumer market to which a company wishes to sell (i.e. market) its clothing. To fully know what fashion marketing is, it is important to understand that marketing does not stop at ads in magazines or commercials on TV. The world of marketing is just as dynamic as the world of fashion. Marketing clothing includes elements such as determining which stores the apparel should be sold in, what price the clothing should be sold for—all the way to how the in-store displays should look. Fashion marketers often are as savvy about business as they are about fashion and popular culture.

Fashion marketers are creative. At the core, the profession is about connecting with the image—the lifestyle—the consumer wants. For example, in the fashion industry, comfort, style, material, color, symmetry, and usability are just the beginning of a list of elements designers must consider when developing a line of clothing. Fashion marketers take the task a step further by determining the best way to promote the characteristics of the clothing to the consumer and to which group of consumers to promote it to. What a 65 year-old female is looking for from a piece of formal eveningwear is completely different from what a 21 year-old male wants from casual everyday wear. Consequently, fashion marketers must stay abreast with the latest fashions as well as know what styles will be successful for a variety of occasions, age groups and demographics.

Fashion marketers play an essential role within the fashion industry because they are the link between designers and the public. The success of a line of clothing does not rest solely on its design. Often, successful marketing is just as crucial, if not more so, to the line as the actual clothing itself. This is because marketing is the tool through which the designer identifies with the public, and the public identifies with the designer. Without this exchange, it would be difficult to establish the consumer base required to have a successful line of clothing.

Ultimately, fashion marketing is a fun profession—changing and reinventing itself just as often as the clothes it promotes. It integrates the artistic nature of fashion with the creative aspects of business—making for a highly rewarding career to the ambitious and innovative.

Source by DEV DAAS