Posts Tagged ‘advertising’
3 Types of Advertisement that Can Assist to Increase Sales
**Note: This is a guest post written by one of our readers. For more information on how to submit a guest post, please read ourguest posting guidelines.
Advertising is an important requirement for any business. This aspect of business caters to informing the consumers of a product and its benefits. No business can be successful without meaningful advertisement. There are different kinds of business advertisements and these can be altered to fit the requirement of a company, irrespective to its type and size.
Different types of business advertisements have different advantages and so business owners must choose and use those advertising options that cater to their individual requirements. Here are the different kinds of business advertising and the advantages of each one of them.
[image by AKZOphoto on flickr]
Guest Post: Comparing Advertising Techniques
How Do I Know Which Advertising Technique Would Be Right for Me?
by Cami Hughes
Advertising Techniques
- Build a website that gets high search engine rankings
- Use Pay Per Click through Google to build traffic
- Purchase ad space on niche-specific websites
- Create an e-zine to send regularly to customers
- Use direct mailing postcards or letters
- Create a commercial for a local TV station
- Send a Press Release to local newspapers
- Create an ad for newspapers or magazines
- Advertise on local radio stations
- Create word-of-mouth opportunities through Facebook and Twitter
- Use a blog to connect with your customers
- Promote specials and discounts on social networking sites
Questions to Ask
- What’s my advertising budget like?
- Who is my target audience?
- How local do I need to go?
Author
Advertise or Re-Design? – Part 5
This is the final post on a series about using advertising to answer the big question – is it time for a new web site?
Earlier posts: Week 1 – Week 2 – Week 3 – Week 4
If you’ve been waiting throughout this series of blog posts for The Big Reveal, I’m afraid I have good news and bad news. There is no “climax” to this story. There is no moment when I tell you how to find the final piece of conclusive data that snaps things together for once and for all. If only life were that simple. This is an intuitive process, not a logical one.
Here’s the good news. If you follow the steps that I’ve laid out for you, you’ll have your own Big Reveal. It will come in the form of a “Eureka!” moment. You will realize what you need to do – and it might happen in the middle of the night.
That said, here’s the final step in the process that I’ll be sharing with you here. If you read weeks 3 and 4, you may be considering implementing a PPC campaign or a Facebook advertising campaign. If you’re particularly driven and ambitious, you might have already started looking for someone to help you execute it. In week 4, I talked about blogging as a vehicle for drawing your perfect audience out of the woodwork. If you took action and started a blog, great. If not, chew on the rest of this post while you consider the possibilities moving forward.
An information product is just what it sounds like – a product that someone can buy, consisting of some form of information. The nice thing about information products is the fact that you can create them for free. The risk level is low, and it’s easy to try something else if your first experiment doesn’t work. You can self-publish a book using Lulu or CreateSpace – and now, you can even sell books for as little as $0.99. The possibilities are endless. Before getting started, though, remember our primary purpose – to test and gather data. Do you need a new web site? The process of creating and selling information products will give you some deep and useful insight into that question.
In other words, don’t think of this as a money-making endeavor. If you make money, great. But the point of selling an information product is to teach you who your audience is.
Rather than reiterate what I’ve already said before, I’d encourage you to read my earlier posts in this series if you haven’t already – particularly week 4. If the idea of writing a book to sell is intimidating, a blog might make for a better start. Another form of information product is a workshop. You can teach a 2-hour class on a subject that expresses your expertise – even if that class has nothing to do with your business. You can do that offline in a physical building, or online using something like a webinar. Like everything else I’ve talked about here, a class will show you the reality picture of who you attract to you naturally.
Caveat to all of this: be as authentic as humanly possible. If everything you create is driven by a desperate need to sell, you’ll fail. Take an honest look at your situation and ask yourself if you are desperate for the money.
In closing out this series, let me save you some time and simplify things. Your heart knows the answer. You have known the answer deep inside all along. I’m not saying this to be all mushy and kum-ba-ya. To put it bluntly, most people know exactly what they need to do, and don’t have the guts to do it. The process that I’ve shared with you over this series is intended to make that as painfully apparent as possible. If you follow it diligently, you’ll find your excuses disappearing. That may make you uncomfortable, and it might lead you to abandon the process.
The answer to the original question I posed in week 1, therefore, is probably a lot simpler than you think.
See you next week. Leave a comment here if this series was useful to you.
