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Since most of us are always online and our business is online, we often forget the importance of advertising our business offline. Print advertising can be one of the best forms of advertising for your buck. Why? Well, with print advertising it’s in the form of hard copy and is always in view of your potential customers. Thats just one small example. Think about your daily newspaper…try hiding that in your email box! The following are just a few hints and ideas for you to consider before you place an offline advertising campaign.

—>Expiration Dates

You want to be sure to include an expiration date so that the possible customer sees that there is a limited time BUT don’t make the date to end too soon. Why? You want to give an “extended expiration date” on printed material especially because for one thing printed material has a chance to “lie around” longer, it may not be the “right time” for the possible customer OR they may know of someone else that may be interested in what you’re offering. Give them time to pass it on or “come back later”.

—>Track your ads

If you have anyway of tracking your ads, use it.
A couple of ways you can do this is:

1)Have the customer email/call/mail their orders to you.

2)Have a special code they need to use to receive the special. Use a different code for each advertising campaign you use. If you don’t have the ability to use coupon codes you might want to check out PayCodes.com which is a new service developed by PayPal to help you in this situation.

—>Types of Ads to Generate Interest

Freebies! Everyone loves freebies!

1) Offer the prospective customer a free gift with their purchase.

2) Have them email/call/mail for a free sample.

3) When you send them their free sample, send them a card for another free sample to give to a friend.

4) Have the ad offer free shipping and handling.

5) Offer a “Buy One Get One Free” Promotion.

6) Have them contact you for a free catalog.

Discounts.

1) Offer a discount (ex. 10%, 15%, 20% off) for their first purchase.

2) Offer one product at full price and the second

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Have you ever seen an ad on television that was beautiful, slick, and stylish but didn’t fit the product? How about a magazine ad that, though gorgeously photographed, didn’t make it clear what was being sold? Or have you heard a catchy radio ad that neglected to give contact information? If you pay attention, you’ll notice these money-wasting advertisements in all types of media.

If a corporation puts out a bad advertisement, the marketing department will have the resources and budget to make a mid-course correction (sometimes). Often the thousands of dollars a small business puts into an advertising promotion are the bulk of the marketing budget for the entire year (usually). There’s no money, time or resources for a do-over if the ad doesn’t bring in customers. Small business people simply can’t afford to spend money on expensive ads that don’t work.

Preparing an effective ad is harder than it looks, but even the smallest business can produce an ad that works if some simple rules are followed. Following are four tips you can use to create a great ad for your business, regardless of your budget, marketing experience, or the media used:

1. State the Product or Service Clearly

Make it absolutely clear what product or service you are selling. Keep it simple and honest. Instead of advertising “meticulously crafted, threaded fastening accessories” just say, “best steel wing nuts.” Don’t make it hard for the customer to pinpoint what you’re selling and don’t overdo the flowery descriptions.

2. Use a Call-For-Action Phrase

Forgetting the call-for-action is the biggest mistake I see in small business advertising. A call-for-action is a short sentence telling the customer how to get the product or service, such as “call us for a free sample,” “order online at www.mywebsite.com,” “get Product X at these fine retailers.” The call-for-action is important because it reinforces the customer’s decision to buy and gives specific instructions. Without a call-for-action, a certain number of customers will change their minds almost instantly, as their attention is drawn elsewhere. Others will ignore the ad unless you make it clear you want their business by telling them exactly how to spend their money.

3. Check for Correct, Complete Contact Information

You must include a phone number, address, and/or website (preferably all three). Triple check to make sure the information is correct. This sounds obvious but consider this real-life case: A plumbing company in my hometown advertised 24-hour service but only put the number of the main office in their telephone directory ad. The office was only open 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. That was little use to someone with a leaking hot water heater at 2:00 a.m. The plumbing company also had a website where, with some digging, a desperate homeowner could ferret out the 24-hour service numberbut what customer is going to spend time hunting the number down when he’s up to his ankles in standing water?

4. Sell the Benefits

I often see ads that try to sell the customer on the features of a product or service rather than the benefits to the customer. What’s the difference? Features describe the product or service; benefits tell the customer how those features will help him or her. Let’s take a common product like bread. Say you’re selling a special kind of nutrition-packed wheat bread (it was granny’s secret recipe). You could list some of the features of this wonderful bread in your ads:

Contains 3 times the usual vitamin D and calcium

Extra potassium

Uses only rolled oats

(That all sounds very healthy, but I don’t know how eating more of those things will do me any good. Besides, I like my usual brand of wheat bread. I pass by your delicious, nutritious wheat bread and buy the same supermarket bread I’ve eaten since I was a kid.)

Now let’s state those features as customer benefits:

Builds strong bones and teeth

Helps control high blood pressure

Lowers cholesterol

(I didn’t know I could lower my blood pressure by eating a different brand of bread. That’s sure sounds easier and tastier than taking supplements. I pick up a loaf, and some of your whole-grain dinner rolls, too.)

Translating the features of wheat bread into benefits isn’t that difficult. What if you have a very complicated product or service? Drilling down to the benefits can still be done quite easily. When I get stuck writing up a benefits sheet, I filter everything through this phrase: “What’s in it for me?”

These four marketing tips are a great place to start when preparing your advertisement. See Marketing Tips For Small Business - Advertising That Works, Part II, for more tips and insider tricks.

Segarin Monk is a marketing specialist promoting social betterment programs for governments and non-profit organizations. He believes in high-integrity, pass-it-on, pay-it-forward marketing. See more articles from this author at: http://marketingyogi.blogspot.com/

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How To Gain FREE Advertising That Will Make You Rich!

Okay-Just What Exactly Is “Free Advertising”???

Before I get into the specifics of actually HOW to get free advertising - it’s important for you to completely understand exactly what free advertising is.

“Free Advertising” is any mention, listing or “blurb” about your product in a magazine, newsletter, book, manual, directory etc. You see, advertising does not have to be paid for. There are tons of ways in which you can attract public attention to your product or businessand never pay a penny!

Imagine seeing your profits soar thanks to publicity you gained for FREE. It’s one hell of a buzz I can tell you. So let’s take a look at a way to gain free publicity which is quite literally making people tens of thousands of pounds…

Viral Marketing

This method is mainly applicable to gaining free publicity via the internet. If you want to make big money these days you’ve got to be involved in the net somehow. And viral marketing is proof of the amazing power of the internet. This method is HUGE in America. Viral marketing is the key to the success of the massive site Hotmail.com. That’s right. Hotmail used this technique to get their name out there and recognised. Now it’s your turn to do the same.

Whilst viral marketing may sound nasty, it is a truly powerful way to get your name noticed. You see, people will be spreading your marketing message without even knowing it. This is a great way to sell a truckload of your products, and have other people doing your marketing foryou guessed itFREE!

The easiest way to explain viral marketing would be to use hotmail as an example. In case you didn’t know hotmail offer free email. The way they make money is through selling advertising on their site. Obviously the more people that see the advertising on their site the more they can charge for companies to advertise.

Now this is where viral marketing comes in. Every time an email is sent out from a hotmail user, at the very bottom of the page is a marketing message that says “Sign Up For Your Own Free E-Mail Address At Hotmail.com”. So every time an e-mail is sent out people are unwittingly helping hotmail market their site. It spreads like a virus. Their own customers are helping them market their web site!

How One Free eBook Could Make You Very Rich

Now don’t panic. You don’t need to have to write your own ebook (electronic book). I’ll show you a way where you can get FREE products on any subject for you to turn into your own personalised eBook in just a second. But eBook viral marketing can make you a whole load of money. eBooks don’t cost a penny to send as you can send them via email or as a download, yet they can make you tens of thousands of pounds in extra sales. I’ll give you a concrete example of how this work’s in a second.

Rather then selling your eBook for

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