Author: kwh

Good advertising techniques are key to the success of any business. As a business owner, you need to decide how you are going to advertise and what exactly you want your advertisements to accomplish. There are many different possible objectives when advertising. Your different advertising goals will require various advertising methods.

Although your ultimate goal is to make sales, advertisements are often not used with the intention of directly making a sale. Instead advertisements are often an important step in bringing more customers to your business and ultimately increasing sales and revenues.

In some cases the main goal of your advertising methods may be to generate leads. Advertising provides you with an opportunity to attract the attention of people who may be interested in the products and services provided by your business. Those who are interested in your business after viewing your ad, are likely to visit your website or contact you to learn more about your business. Some of these individuals may very well become customers after learning more about your products and services.

You may be using your advertising methods with the intention of increasing visitors to your site. The more visitors you have, the more sales you are likely to make. This is especially true if you use your advertising to carefully target those people who are most likely to benefit from your business. By identifying and targeting your segment of the market, you can greatly improve the chances that those visiting your website, will indeed become customers.

Advertisements are used to spread the word about your business. If no one knows that your business exists and what your business does, you cannot be successful. Advertisements mark your business visible in the marketplace. Your ads can be used to tell people what your business name is, what your business has to offer to customers and how they can visit and learn more about your business.

As a business owner, you can also use various advertising mediums in order to announce important information about your business. For example, if your business is new, you can use advertisements to inform people of your new business. Some ads may be used to announce the grand opening of your business. Your various methods will be used to provide exposure for your new business. You can also use advertisements to advertise sales, special promotions and events being offered. This allows you to reach potential customers. It also makes it possible to attract the attention of those who may not typically consider making purchases from your business. For example, if someone sees that a particular product is going to be on sale, they may visit your website because the product or service is now more affordable for them.

Your goals when advertising may also have some different objectives if your business is both an online and offline business. If you have a business that is also available offline such as an offline store, you may use advertising methods that will bring more customers into your store. Advertising may be used to attract more interest in what your offline business has to offer to customers.

When planning your advertising campaign, there are so many advertising options. The advertising methods you use will depend upon the goals of your advertising campaign. You may advertise online or even offline. Even when your business is run entirely online, you still have the option of advertising offline. This provides you with an opportunity to reach even more potential customers. By advertising offline as well as offline, you open up even more opportunities for advertising.

Your advertising campaign can include an assortment of advertising goals and methods. You may very well use a wide variety of advertising mediums. Some examples of online advertising can include; text ads, banner ads, search engine ads and so much more. Offline you can advertise in the yellow pages, on billboards, in magazines and newspapers, to name just a few.

Whatever your goals of advertising it is important to carefully plan your ads. Identify your goals, Experiments with several advertising methods to find those that work the best in helping you to achieve your goals. Be creative and have fun when advertising.

Hard work is one of the most if not the most important ingredient in the recipe for success. People rarely if ever get rich fast. There is no 48 hour road to success and wealth. Success comes as a result of hard work and dedication. Most small business owners have long since forgotten what it is like to work 9-5. Weekends sometimes become workdays. Evenings are sometimes just the middle of the workday. It really is not all that bad. The point is that to be a success you must work hard.

Anyone who is considering starting their own business must realize the amount of time and effort that goes into creating and maintaining a profitable business. Current business owners must also keep sight of the fact that hard work truly does pay off. Sometimes you can work fewer hours and sometimes you work more hours. But as with anything in life you must work hard to become successful and stay successful.

When it comes to running a business hard work is well worth the time and effort. Running a business can be fun, exciting and certainly rewarding. It is rewarding in more ways than just earning a profit. You get a chance to use your talents and skills. As a business owner you can provide products and services that help others in their daily lives. Your creativity can bring about positive results.

Almost every aspect of running a business involves hard work. You work hard to plan a new business. Then you work even harder to turn your dream of a business into a reality. You select products and services to offer. Deciding how to finance your business becomes very important. You make many decisions like deciding whether your business will be online or offline. How will you advertise your business? Will you have employees? How many? Etc.

As a business owner one of the things you will work hardest at is planning and then implementing an advertising and marketing campaign? Why is this one of the areas where you must put in the most work? Because without an excellent plan, your business is likely to flop. You must get out the word about your business. You must reach your target market and bring a lot of people to your business. (For the purpose of this article we will use a business website as an example). If no one knows your business exists, you will not have customers or sales.

Hours of planning and action must be spent on your marketing and advertising plans. You will first need to decide who is your target market? At times the answer may be obvious. In other cases, you may need to do some thinking and research to decide who the people are that would be most interested in the products and services offered by your business. You will then need to decide where you will advertise. Again this can take some work. For starters, you must find out where your target market is most likely to be found. If you are marketing a website for example, decide what types of websites and forums your target market is most likely to visit and decide to advertise their.

When you know who to advertise to and where to advertise, you must then plan your ads. Write content for your ads. Decide what type of ads you will use. For example, if you are advertising online will you use banner ads or text ads. What other forms of marketing should you use? Decide how you will optimize your website? Will you submit your URL to directories? What other creative ways can you promote your business?

After making all your plans you will need to carry out your plans. All aspects of a business involve hard work. Advertising and marketing may be among the hardest. Promoting your business and doing so well is key to the success of your business. A great deal of time and research is needed to plan and create a great advertising campaign. Be assured though that your hard work will pay off. When you see how well your business is doing, the time and effort will be well worth it to you.

Having a great website and offering great products and services, is not enough to make a business successful. You must also work hard to reach your target market through your online ads. These ads will be used to bring visitors and hopefully potential customers to your website. When placing ads on the Internet, it is absolutely necessary that your ad copy be written and planned out well to bring you the best results.

The first part of your ad that customers will read is your ad copy. Without a good headline, the remaining content of your advertisement will not mean much to viewers. In fact, if you do not have a good headline that catches the attention of viewers, they are not likely to even read through your entire ad.

A headline must attract a person’s interest. The headline should present to the reader the benefits of your products and services. Make the reader understand why what your business has to offer is of importance to them. What can your business offer to anyone reading your ad? If you do not show a viewer, why they need your products or services, they are not likely to visit your website or to take a look at your business.

Some ads are simply just text ads. However other ad sites and ad types may include graphic ads. If you can ad a picture to your ad, go ahead! People are often very visual and using a graphic is yet another way to attract people’s attention to your ad. You will also want to make sure that the headline of your ad stands out from the rest of the ad. You can place the headline in bold or italics for example.

Your ad should “show” viewers why they should consider your products and services over those of your competitors. What makes your business different or unique from others? You may be offering the same services or products as another business and therefore it is essential that your potential customers know why they should do business with you over someone else.

Before you even begin to develop and ad, you need to identify your target market. The market you will be attracting for your business will affect the content of your ad as well as where your ad will be placed. Take time to carefully place your online ads in locations where the people most likely to benefit from your products and services can be found. For example, if your business offers products for college students, advertise on websites for college students and other websites and forums that college students are most likely to visit.

The purpose of your ad need not be to make a sale. Your ad should be used to gain people’s interest so that they will visit your website. After visiting your website they may decide to make a purchase. Or your website may interest a person enough that they will visit again and may become a customer in the future.

You know the saying, “if at first you don’t succeed: try, try again.” Not every ad will bring great results. And not every location online where you place an ad will bring results either. You need to be flexible and willing to make changes to your ad campaign. If one idea does not work well, try another. Be creative!

In order to know how well your ads are working, you need to track those ads. When using online ads, it is important to track the results of each ad. This is the only way you will be able to see which ads are bringing the most visitors and the most results. If one ad isn’t working, try to develop a new ad. When some ad locations do not work, find some new websites and venues to place your ads. In time, you will find an advertising campaign that works well.

Creating online ads takes some time and work. You need to first decide who your target market will be. Come up with places where you would like to place your ads. Carefully plan out the ad copy. Remember that you want to attract people’s attention from the very beginning (headline). Make certain your ad copy shows people how they can benefit from your products or services.

Test your ads. Try out different colors and fonts. Rework your ad copy until it sounds great and brings in the most visitors to your website. Try placing ads in various locations to find those that bring the most results. Carefully plan your ads, but also have some fun doing so. Your creativity will pay off!

Whether you own a blog or a traditional site, the road to niche domination is clear: traffic. A leader of a given niche has to actually be seen by the target audience. The best ideas are sometimes never found online because of insufficient exposure. Here are some tips to help you break in, move up, and take over your niche.

Update frequently

Like Google, users love fresh content. A stale website or blog isn’t going to gain many visitors unless your site is really, really good. Know the difference between data and information when it comes to your readers. Until processed, data is simply raw facts. Information, however, is the real goldmine to focus upon. Information is data that’s been processed for users. In a sense, data is akin to the ingredients for a good salad or a well done casserole, whereas information is the finished meal itself. Which one would your users rather have? The Internet is chock full of data just waiting to be turned into valuable information for your site’s visitors. This is the #1 secret of membership-driven websites and even books.

For example, you can learn how to get into copywriting, or even just how to become a better cook with free articles online, but many still buy books written by Bob Bly and Alton Brown, respectively.

Link wisely

Links are good, especially when they are links pointing to your website. However, do make sure you are linking to related sites. Visitors tend to trust sites that aren’t “digital islands”. Throw out the lifesaver to your visitors by linking to interesting content that you think will benefit them. Combined with good commentary, this can easily lead to you becoming the “expert” and information filter in your niche.

That said, be careful with your linkbacks. You may not wish to link to many sites that have unrelated content. It may be fair to link to a friend that has supported you and your website, but you don’t need to link to 2 million personal blogs simply because you know the blog’s owner.

Research your niche thoroughly and regularly

Keeping current is the name of the game, but how do you begin the journey? Research other sites within your niche, and pay attention to the details. What is the prevailing tone of the other sites? What are they doing, and is it successful for them? What news is being discussed on a daily, weekly, and even monthly basis? If the niche has a parallel to the real world, are there any authorities that are making waves offline? Researching takes considerable time, but helps to set you apart from those that haven’t done their homework on the niche. Over time, the research you gain will bring you more visitors than if you just sit and piggyback off of what everyone else is saying and doing. Adapt some of the techniques of others if you feel they’re worth it, but don’t be afraid to bring your own flavor.

Go above and beyond

Researching your niche extensively should help you get over some common jitters, like fretting over PageRank. PageRank is only a small slice of the overall picture – if you’re worried about visibility, PageRank should be the last thing on your mind.

Your research into your niche should give you a good picture of what is working for the niche overall, what isn’t, and ways you can add value. Visitors like sites that go above and beyond just normal “reporting”. Release a video on your niche – if that’s something that would be interesting to your readers. If your site is technical, releasing code that does something a lot of people want to see can go a long way when it comes to sustaining traffic.

Looking at other sources of visibility also leaves questions for the site owner: do you have users searching for your blog in Technorati? If you are running a traditional website, how likely are your users to submit your site as a story on Digg? If a reader typed your website’s name into a site like Squidoo, what content would come up? All these questions are easily addressed once PageRank is put on the back burner where it belongs. After all, there’s so many elements of your website and its promotion that you can control; why worry about something out of your hands?

Go to the real trenches

Those at the top of their niche also know when to give back. If you’re aiming to be any type of subject matter expert, you’ll really want to check our relevant forums. What better way to move up and gain bonus points with existing and future visitors than if you’re on a forum sharing what you know? A quick search on Google should yield good results for forums relevant to your site’s niche.

If you can’t seem to find a solid community within your niche, take advantage of the void and build your own. Generate noise about it on your website, and frequent visitors to are bound to be curious.

Conclusion

It seems that any strategy of building up exposure online takes time, but those that are patient in this game truly come out on top. Building up a web presence isn’t going to be done overnight; there are some fortunate enough to do this, but don’t consider yourself entitled to overnight popularity. All good things come to those that wait, link popularity and site visibility included.

When not plotting niche domination, Isabella Murphy writes about small business, accounting, personal finance, and more on Keeping You Honest.

An email from EmailLabs correcting their pricing. This email came in response to our earlier White Label Bulk Email Provider review.

From: EmailLabs
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2007 1:00 PM

I saw this blog but wasn’t sure who had posted it. http://www.howtoadvertise.net/white-label-bulk-email-providers.html

I wish I had figured it out earlier as the pricing you mention is incorrect. It is $250 for every ten sub-account, which breaks down to $25 per client. It isn’t $250 per client. That’s obviously my fault for not being clear when we spoke, so I apologize for that.

Out of curiosity, do you guys or your clients do anything with web analytics, landing pages, pay-per-click or deliverability monitoring? I ask because we are releasing our HQ product on the 15th and all of this functionality is going to be integrated into one dashboard with an all-encompassing pricing model based on the seat license concept. It’s a first-of-its-kind product in this industry and is going to offer companies a powerful way to standardize tracking and reporting and allow them to make actionable decisions based on the subsequent analyses. Currently clients are required to deal with multiple vendors to have access to the same data and functionality, which means multiple points of contact for support as well as multiple reports showing disparate metrics. With HQ it is centralized tracking, reporting and support. A true one-stop-shop to consolidate your digital marketing efforts.

Sorry I was ambiguous on pricing up-front as I think we are a great solution for you.