Friday, September 5, 2008

Smart Advertising That Will Skyrocket Your Business Profits

If you want to Sky Rocket your profits immediately in your business today. Learn how to write killer Sales & Advertising Copy and win the heart of your customer so they buy over and over…Read On!

Here are the basic steps of marketing & advertising you must know & use, if you want to make huge profits in your business.

Did you know?...

Marketing and Advertising work together you simply can’t overlook the fact that if you’re running a great ad for truck parts, you may want to think twice about running the ad in ‘Dolly” magazine. Yes it sounds logical, but you’d be surprised by how many times something like this will happen each and every day.

Businesses blow hundreds and thousands of dollars everyday on ads that do absolutely nothing and pull zero response! Later we will learn why.

Businesses everywhere need this information and any business that’s “in” business, is in the business of MARKETING! That’s what it really boils down to…

Simply reading this information won’t bring sales into your business. It’s all about taking massive action and testing your ads over and over again.

The key is PERSISTANCE. As with anything, unless you persist, most of the time nothing much happens. Don’t get too disappointed if you ads don’t work the first time around…just keep trying new things till you get it right.

But remember always focus on the benefits of what your product or service will do for your prospect, NOT the features, or company or YOU for that matter!

Here’s 9 Golden Must Do Steps You Need To Follow To Get The Most From Your Advertising and Start Making More Money Today!

1) Focus on buyer benefits, not features. Your prospect is only interested in one thing. THEMSELVES!

2) Know who your prospects are, where they are and how you will reach them.

3) Understand your competition. Where are they and what are are they currently doing to source prospects.

4) Understand the frustrations & problems of your prospects and how you can solve them quickly and easily.

5) You don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars on advertising – there are plenty of low cost and no cost ways to market and advertise your business effectively.

6) Look at offering your prospects irresistible bonuses if they act on your offer within a specific time frame.

7) Always ask for the sale. Don’t expect your customer to shove money at you – they are waiting for you to ask!

8) Be Persistent. This is probably the most important rule of them all. Never ever give up!

9) Focus on buyer benefits and not on product features, it’s not about YOU!

Put into ACTION this information and your well on your way to reaping the rewards of your ACTION and maybe putting your competition out of business.


Marketing and Advertising Careers


There is not much of a difference between marketing and advertising. Both are related with the sales of products. Today both marketing and advertising have become extremely essential for big as well as small establishments. The marketing of save a product through advertising has become essential for its sale, as advertising is a powerful medium that connects directly with the masses. Due to this increased demand of marketing and advertising, it is a good career option today. The marketing and advertising industry deals with multi-million-dollar campaigns and there is a lot of glamor surrounding the clients and the promotion of their products. This glamor is popular with the younger segments of the population.

This industry offers a lot of variety when it comes to careers, as it includes media representatives, radio and television anchoring and the Internet. The most important thing that counts in a marketing and advertising career is hands-on experience. The first most essential step towards a marketing and advertising career is to gain enough theoretical as well as practical knowledge about this industry. Experimentation also plays a very important role and innovation is wholeheartedly welcomed always. Public and private colleges as well as universities offer degrees in marketing and advertising. There are various initial options such as account manager, media consultant and market researcher which help to give a fair idea about the marketing and advertising industry as a whole. Marketing and advertising careers generally start with small amounts of money but there is enormous growth potential in these fields.

There is a tremendous demand for educated marketing and advertising professionals as this industry is growing day by day. A career in marketing and advertising helps a person to give vent to his creative side along with financial satisfaction. This industry provides a fresh outlook for youngsters with powerful communication and public relation skills.


Difference Marketing vs. Advertising

Marketing vs. Advertising: What's the Difference?

You will often find that many people confuse marketing with advertising or vice versa. While both components are important they are very different. Knowing the difference and doing your market research can put your company on the path to substantial growth.

Let's start off by reviewing the formal definitions of each and then I'll go into the explanation of how marketing and advertising differ from one another:

Advertising: The paid, public, non-personal announcement of a persuasive message by an identified sponsor; the non-personal presentation or promotion by a firm of its products to its existing and potential customers.

Marketing: The systematic planning, implementation and control of a mix of business activities intended to bring together buyers and sellers for the mutually advantageous exchange or transfer of products.

After reading both of the definitions it is easy to understand how the difference can be confusing to the point that people think of them as one-in-the same, so lets break it down a bit.

Advertising is a single component of the marketing process. It's the part that involves getting the word out concerning your business, product, or the services you are offering. It involves the process of developing strategies such as ad placement, frequency, etc. Advertising includes the placement of an ad in such mediums as newspapers, direct mail, billboards, television, radio, and of course the Internet. Advertising is the largest expense of most marketing plans, with public relations following in a close second and market research not falling far behind.

The best way to distinguish between advertising and marketing is to think of marketing as a pie, inside that pie you have slices of advertising, market research, media planning, public relations, product pricing, distribution, customer support, sales strategy, and community involvement. Advertising only equals one piece of the pie in the strategy. All of these elements must not only work independently but they also must work together towards the bigger goal. Marketing is a process that takes time and can involve hours of research for a marketing plan to be effective. Think of marketing as everything that an organization does to facilitate an exchange between company and consumer.


Thursday, September 4, 2008

Cumulative Effect of Marketing and Advertising

The Cumulative Effect of Marketing and Advertising

One of the most difficult for people to get used to is the fact that they do not get any return on their advertising dollar.

When you start testing advertising and marketing done the emotional response way, you'll have to decide whether advertising and marketing campaigns you start and test are working well enough to continue.

All the biggest myths about advertising and marketing that are professed by all the so called "gurus" is that there is a cumulative effect of marketing and advertising. That "name recognition" builds from this cumulative effect and eventually results in business.

Image marketing can and does work in very limited circumstances. Those circumstances are strictly in situations where someone has so much money and so much time that they can afford to build name recognition that eventually leads to a large and successful business.

For example, we all know McDonald's and Coca Cola, and we've all seen the polar bears and the Golden Arches. We know about those products as things implanted in our brains. Keep in mind though, that Coke and McDonald's spend literally millions and millions of dollars a year to get and keep that kind of name recognition.'

In many businesses, while some large companies do have name recognition, there isn't always a so-called "taste" as there is with Coke or McDonald's. People go to buy those products and eat or drink them because they like the way they taste. They don't go just because they recognize the name.

Now keep in mind a very, very important difference between these types of products and many other kinds of services. In services, nobody knows what you taste like, or whether one office of "Great way Brokers" is better than "Smart Financial Services".

Why? Because many services are highly personal. They require making personal connections. "Name recognition" won't help you a bit if your advertising isn't seen by anybody because it's boring and uninteresting.

The cumulative effect and measuring the success of your marketing clearly presents when you want to do any direct marketing project, it either works well right away, or it doesn't. Occasionally, you have a mediocre result that can be tweaked and improved. Normally you know instantly whether your advertising and marketing is working.

Let's say for example you were in sales and you decided to run an ad in your local paper for $40. After two days you receive eight leads who leave their name and address in your Voice Mailbox. Now, using a ballpark of $10/lead as the maximum acceptable cost for any type of marketing or advertising campaign, you can get an idea of whether your promotion is in the ballpark or not.

With this $40 ad divided into 8 leads, you're paying $5 a lead. Which is certainly an acceptable cost per lead. This sort of cost-per-lead range will end up being very productive and successful for you as you move through the testing and increase the frequency and size of your ads.

But, if you ran the same $40 ad and only got two responses, you're at $20 a lead. That tells you that the ad probably either A) has the wrong headline, B) is in the wrong place in the paper, C) is in the wrong publication altogether, or D) is in the wrong time of the week or month, or any combination of the above variables.

This would work the same way if you were in the retail business. Instead of getting leads you would get customers. Wouldn't it be better to get 8 customers to respond to you rather than 2 customers? The ad cost the same no matter what your response is, however the bottom line on your business makes it a huge difference.

To be honest with you, even though you can take educated guesses and get pretty good at figuring things out over time, as you get more experienced in response marketing, you still never know exactly why a particular campaign does or does not work. All you know is either A) it does, or B) it doesn't.


Proterra Advertising recognized with two awards of Distinction from the Print Communicator Awards 2007

(DALLAS, TX) Jun. 19, 2007 – Proterra Advertising won two Awards in the 13th Annual Communicator Award Print Competition. The Communicator Awards are judged by industry insiders and draws contestants from around the globe, with winners spanning all 50 U.S. states and numerous countries.

In their first year to enter the competition, the agency received awards in two print categories. The awards were for work executed for their client, American Airlines Center, for their Invitation and Holiday Card entries.

The Communicator Award is given to companies whose submitted work exceeds industry standards, and it is this distinction that Heather Norton, Director of Client Services, knows further sets Proterra Advertising apart from other agencies.

“This award is a direct representation of the high quality of creative work we provide to our clients regularly. We are honored that we have been recognized as an agency that exceeds industry standards in communications,” stated Norton.

“Proterra Advertising always amazes us with their creativity. It is wonderful to have an agency that keeps providing us with fresh creative that reflects our brand as a Premier Sports and Entertainment Venue and makes us stand out in our industry,” said the Marketing Director for the American Airlines Center.

Proterra Advertising looks at competitions as a chance to show-off the hard work of their staff. Honored to receive awards of distinction, Proterra Advertising approaches each campaign with the intention to create work that is unique and award-worthy.

Established in 1993, Proterra has grown into an established marketing firm used by some of the best-known brands in the country to bring their message and products to consumers everywhere.


Internet Marketing Companies, Online Marketing Degree, Online Marketing Service

ONLINE MARKETING SERVICE

Online Marketing Service, also referred to as Internet marketing service is about using the Internet as another channel to market your business or organization. It’s about broadening your Web visibility, attracting qualified visitors to your website or getting interested people to email or call without even needing to come to your site. When visitors do come, through on-site marketing efforts and strong features, you lead them to do what you want them to do: fill out a form, register for an event or make a purchase from you through the internet usage. Some people would be eased to make their necessary work about their company by providing online worker from other place to make their job more easy to do.

Online Marketing Service builds, executes and measures direct response strategies using the Internet. Some key areas that the company should consider to concentrate on are acquisition of specific information, retention of the data being given on the site, awareness of how the site should be handled, optimization of the site content and behavior, and conversion of details through a more useful resource to the users online.

Here are some of the processes that the company should consider in getting their online marketing more effective:


1. Define Your Goal - work together with every member of your company to help clearly define exactly what it is you want to accomplish towards a more fruitful future using the online marketing service and how to set up goals which are important to the company.

2. Develop the Plan – the company should develop strategic, effective and measurable direct response marketing plans designed to achieve the company goals. Through the company's efforts of each member, a more suitable and easy way of conducting the plan can be performed.

3. Execute the Plan - provide capable and experienced project management throughout the entire implementation process. Each member of the company should be reliable, thorough, well-connected, and determined to make satisfied clients that are connected to the company. With these at hand, satisfied clients are willing to cooperate and pay more for the efforts of the company.

4. Measure the Results - No online marketing campaign is complete without measuring the results. Internet marketing strategies take tracking and measuring of the clients website advertisements before implementation occurs. This way, the company can measure their effectiveness to the clients as well as how better they know their company's effectiveness in the process. With the good results that the company is displaying, more and more clients are willing to be with the company and won't have second thoughts of paying a good amount for a good service that the company offers. Clients' satisfaction are very vital when it comes to consideration about the company's main goal.

ONLINE MARKETING DEGREE

Online Marketing Degree generally refers to the degrees that are offered in the internet through advertisements and well-presented by different courses that are being offered by the colleges and universities throughout the globe. It most likely want to prepare individuals in undertaking and managing the process of developing consumer audiences and moving products from producers to consumers by the use of the internet.

A more easy way to determine whether you're making the right decision in improving and pursuing your career as student is to continue studying and taking one of the major courses that the college or university offers. Online Marketing Degree includes instruction in buyer behavior and dynamics, principle of marketing research, demand analysis, cost-volume and profit relationships, pricing theory, marketing campaign and strategic planning, market segments, advertising methods, sales operations and management, consumer relations, retailing, and applications to specific products and markets.

Many colleges and universities have come up with the idea of advertising their different online courses because through this, a more practical, faster and easier way of advertising through the web can be seen and noticed. They will no longer have to make certain advertisements through television and radios just around their country but through online marketing service. The degrees that they offer will be seen by anyone from anywhere around the globe by the use of the internet. An effective way of advertising without the high costing.

A slight example on the online marketing degree is the Bachelor of Science in Business Administration – Marketing (B.S.B.A./MKT.) which puts working professionals on a clear path to lifelong learning and success. Maximizing their career opportunities, making important contributions to the profession, reaching the potential—that define success.

Through a program that combines academic theory with practical application, and includes courses in Ethical Leadership and in Social Responsibility, the students will gain knowledge and experience in areas vital to business and society. This concentration will help the students develop insights into an organization’s marketing effort by learning not only the traditional disciplines of alternate marketing channels, sales management, advertising and research, but also emerging marketing approaches related to consumer motivation, global customer management, customer relationship management, and marketing on the Internet.

Another example of an online marketing degree is the Master of Business Administration in Marketing (M.B.A./MKT.), it provides students with the ability to examine the relationship between marketing and corporate strategy and the tools necessary for developing and implementing strong marketing tactics throughout the companies in which they work. Through a hands-on curriculum including case analyses, this specialization lays the practical groundwork necessary for students interested in strengthening or furthering their career as a marketing professional or decision maker.

INTERNET MARKETING COMPANIES

Internet Marketing is a broad term that can include everything from pay-per-click management to a full-blown online marketing campaign that builds traffic and tracks site visitors to increase conversions from all mediums. Internet Marketing can be thought as encompassing all of the following disciplines: search engine optimization, pay-per-click management, link building and affiliate marketing.

Internet Marketing Companies work solely towards getting their client’s product or services marketed online, and this is really becoming something that modern businesses can’t live without. Obviously, an Internet marketing company can’t use the same techniques that a traditional advertising agency would use, such as television commercials and special promotions.

The things that an Internet marketing company can do are pretty amazing, though, because the costs are fairly low and the results can potentially reach a global audience. The interactive nature of Internet marketing, which allows businesses to draw out an instant response from potential customers, is a unique quality of the medium. Internet marketing companies can bring creative and technical aspects together, including design, development, advertising and sales. Internet marketing methods include search engine optimization, pay per click management, display advertising, email marketing, interactive advertising, blog marketing, and viral marketing.

The services that an Internet marketing Company offers aren’t always something tangible that people can see, although things like banner ads and social media marketing (using sites like MySpace) are quite visible. Things like search engine optimization and pay per click management are more intangible, but they help promote a website by placing it where people will see it when they are looking for that type of product or service. Internet marketing companies grow and promote an organization using online media.

An Internet marketing company does not simply build a website or promote a website… They make that website visible to people who are likely to become real paying customers. For some reasons, people are making easier ways of advertising their products and news through the Internet because of its lower cost and its effectiveness. Consumers can see the products and massive orders and requests could be in any instant on line with the company which provides the products.

An online marketing campaign is necessary these days with the Internet become bigger and bigger by the day. Therefore, it is crucial to hire an effective Internet marketing company to help your business achieve the online results you are looking for.

Since the advent of the World Wide Web, there have been many new evolutions to online marketing. Thankfully, there are many Internet marketing companies that can show you the ropes about the industry so that you can capitalize with your online venture.

There is a wide variety of items that a quality Internet marketing company can provide to your business. One of the main sources of online marketing is in search engine optimization, commonly referred to as SEO. This process simply refers to the act of ensuring that your website appears in the top of the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. This is achieved by submitting articles and keyword phrases all over the Internet because the more links that your website has on the Net, the higher your search engine ranking will be. Since most customers will choose to use the services of a company that is among the top ten in the search engines, SEO can work wonders for your online venture.

However, an Internet marketing company also has many other services that can benefit your business. Many of these particular companies also provide website designing and graphic design help that will make your website much more appealing to the public. If you search hard enough, you will be able to find a quality company that will produce your website from the ground up and then use SEO to ensure that your site gets the recognition it deserves.

Advertising Do's and Don'ts

As you begin marketing and promoting your online business you are going to run into some unbelievable advertising opportunities. Generally speaking if the ad offering sounds too good to be true--It is.

There are companies that will tell you they will get you listed in the top 10 search engines or place your link on millions of sites or they will get you listed in the top 10 returns of search engines. This last one sounds similar to the first, but there is a big difference.

Google searches over 3 billion pages during their searches. The companies that tell you they will get you listed in the top 10 of the major search engines would have to defy all the principles of math to do this. They could not work with more than a few companies in order to achieve this and honestly, there is no way they can get you listed in the top 10 of the search engines placements at all unless they make up their own search terms and people search on that specific term.

Stay away from the companies that tell you they are going to place you in search engines for a fee, for the most part they will do nothing more than use a site software submitter. You can get your own software for this or use an online service and submit your site yourself for a lot less than what most SEO companies charge for this service.

Guaranteed traffic-- They work fine for free sites or if your goal is to build a database of names, but if you are selling a product or service, you will get hits, but not many sales.

Mass email -- Any company that tells you they will send your ad to millions of people for $20 or $30 is simply taking your money. This might sound inviting, but do not waste your money. They are either using site submit tools or sending your ad to millions of harvested email addresses. The companies who tell you they are going to submit your site to millions of pages will most likely do what they say, but you will not see any return and may even get you Spam complaints.

Mass emails are a complete waste of your money regardless of what product you are selling. There are many sites that will tell you they will send your ad to double opt-in lists of people. We have tried over a dozen of these services and have barely received a hit, much less sales. The problem is you lose control over your ad when you use mass email companies. There is no way to verify the ad was sent and if you could verify it was sent, there is no way to tell it was sent to the numbers they promise. Plus, you run the risk of being accused of Spam.

Solo ads-- These are by far one of the best methods of promoting your product and service. They are targeted, you can verify the numbers and you can subscribe using a unique email and verify the ad was sent on the day and time it was supposed to be sent.

Consultants-- Use your best judgment when hiring consultants, call some or send an email and ask about a money back guarantee if they cannot meet the objectives they set forth. I am not a big believer in money-back guarantees because if a service is valuable and you can see the value before you buy, then a money back guarantee is not necessary. However, if someone comes to you and says, I can make your site profitable within 30 or 60 or 90 days and it is going to cost you X amount of money, then they should give you your money back if they do not achieve the desired results.

A good consultant will work with companies that he or she knows they can help by relying on their background and expertise in certain areas of marketing and advertising. Nobody knows everything, but if someone has an expertise in an area that I lack knowledge with, I would hire him or her in a second if they can honestly help me and they can prove they can help me and they will back up what they tell me.

We get emails every day from people who want to join ISOR with the plan of retiring in a month, making a million dollars without doing anything, etc. and we turn every one of them down. There is no business on the Internet or in traditional business where you can accomplish this type of unrealistic goal.

There are, however consultants who will tell you what you want to hear, just to get your business. They take your money and run and they will not help you a bit. We hired a copy writer one time who seemed like a good fit for our company and only after she finished the writing at $120 an hour did she tell me that she would not buy my product. Not because she could not benefit from it, but she refused to pay for anything online. Her copy was terrible and we ended up re--writing the entire sales page. Her feelings and beliefs came across in her writings. It was simply impossible for her to write positively when her mind was telling her negative things.

We have many marketing and advertising partners and all the companies we partner with have been tested by us to offer valuable services, but there are thousands of other companies on the Internet and you might find a very good company with a very good service that works for you and within your budget. Not all companies are out to cheat you, but the purpose of this article is to forewarn you regarding where you spend your advertising dollars.

We have spent a lot of money and time buying and trying different advertising options and by using our own ad campaign and link tracking system for all our advertising campaigns we have the data to back up what we say.

Research your advertising options carefully and do not get pulled into a good deal just because it sounds like a good deal. You do not need to spend a lot of money to advertise and promote your business, you just need to use your common sense and think long term.